Ann Arbor Renters Commission Meeting 4/20/23

001April 20th meeting of 2023 of the Ann Arbor renters Commission as you all know the purpose of the renters commission is to advise the city council and the city administrator in matters affecting renters in the city of Ann Arbor uh the Hanover renters commission is made up of voting members appointed by the mayor and approved by city council two non-voting city council Liaisons one non-voting liaison from the housing and Human Services Advisory Board I think that seat is currently vacant two non-voting members representing different landlord perspectives and a non-voting representative from uh the University of Michigan Student Legal Services to speak during any of the public comment opportunities you will be able to speak through the webinar link if you're calling it through Zoom or by phone for phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter

002meeting ID 935-8080-1941 that's meeting ID 935-8080-1941 to be called on to speak uh if you're calling um with your phone press star nine or use the raise hand function if you're calling it through Zoom you can always access the web link through 82gov.org forward slash renters commission meeting with a capital uh first letter of each of those words and then you'll be called upon by City staff and uh you'll be able to give your three-minute uh comment period after three minutes you'll be placed on mute so that the next speaker can can get their comment so let's move on to roll call um same as always because it's electronic we have to say what we're calling from so I am here I'm calling from Ann Arbor commissioner Chen absent commissioner Peterson hi I'm here calling

003from Ann Arbor welcome commissioner Kelly is also absent commissioner Cohen Smith cheers they're absent actually she resigned didn't she is that official um she um was not seeking reappointment so um her appointment goes through May I believe okay that's what I thought and thank you uh commissioner rumel oh I'm sorry I'm here Ann Arbor Township wonderful welcome I got some popcorn there commissioner droppleman president in Ann Arbor welcome commissioner else I am here in Ann Arbor loads present in Ann Arbor welcome commissioner Tibbetts I am here in Ann Arbor commissioner Rosen I'm here calling in from Ann Arbor welcome council member Regina here in Ann Arbor councilmember Harrison here in Ann Arbor welcome so uh oh yeah city of Ann Arbor staff Kristen um I'm here and um Attorney General wonderful okay now I throughout

004the meeting I know we've been using first names if you're uncomfortable with that just you can speak up during the meeting and if you prefer to be uh you know use the last name your title that's totally fine just let me know either during the meeting or send me an email um always open to feedback okay so moving on to uh number three item three approval of agenda is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda so moved by Jeff is there a second second by Lucy thank you um all those in favor of approving our agenda say aye aye aye aye aye all those opposed saying okay unanimously approved move on to item four approval of last meetings minutes uh so we have the minutes of March 16th meeting of 2023 is there a motion

005to approve the meetings from last minute the the minutes in our last meeting rather ocean okay thank you Lucy motion by Lucy second uh do we have a second Ed second by Jeff thanks um see uh all those in favor of um approving last minute last meetings minutes say I oh there's a post a name okay unanimously approved wonderful so now we move on to our first general public comment period item five and I'll pass it over to Kristen public comment can be made by phone by calling 877-853-5247-488-788-0099 and enter a meeting ID 935-8080-1941 or by um using the zoom web link and that is a2gov.org renters commission meeting and if you are calling in you can press star 9 to raise your hand or if you attend through the web link you can use

006the raise hand feature we'll give it just a moment and there are no callers or attorneys okay thanks Kristen so we'll move on to item six uh which is our business um and we will have public comment uh on our action items so tonight that would be uh we we have a resolution 6-b um and I think that I'm not sure if there's anything else on there that has public comment but we will move on to our first piece of business 6-a which is a presentation about Equitable engagement so welcome Heather thank you I really appreciate you inviting me to attend um or at least allowing me to attend I think I had asked to be part of this um and I appreciate you allowing me to spend some time with you to talk about

007our Equitable engagement initiative so I'm going to share my screen I do have a presentation and as I'm doing that just to give you a little bit of background about myself my background is in urban planning and social work which brought me to do this kind of work um I'm now actually over at the Housing Commission so again my background in urban planning and social work has brought me to work on affordable housing but prior to that I was in a group called systems planning at the city and um focused on things like long-range planning projects as well as engagement so took this up because what I was seeing is what was just kind of a lot of imbalanced Engagement I guess I'll call it um and so let me get the presentation going and

008I will share the story of this initiative and the outcomes so really this all began because we wanted we as an entity as the as the city government as well as the community um Express a value in having inclusive and Equitable um community and we see those of us who are in the game of um of Engagement really see as Equitable engagement as really Central to that and so what we sought to do was to develop a shared understanding of what Equity means so really have that common language and then develop some policies guidelines and practices that could be implemented to help us be the inclusive City that we desire to be so before we did that we realized that we needed to get grounded as staff so we brought staff together and and this

009was really a multi uh multi-discipline and multi-department efforts so we pulled in people from OSI they were very interested in doing this um people from each are people from planning um Laura ortad who you may have met became involved once they came on board the city we had people from public services involved and so with that we started off just as an internal team trying to ground ourselves and we began looking at promising practices from other communities so what were other places doing that were successful and then looking at local and Regional conditions related to equity so where do we stand basically so we were looking at a bunch of data related to that and then we also looked at what our current practices were one of the things that the city has been doing

010for a long time is using something that's called the community engagement toolkit which is a method of going through thinking through a series of questions about who we engage and how do we engage what are the the ways in which we're going to reach out to people and and how are we going to ask the questions what are the questions that we're asking however this engagement toolkit isn't universally applied across the city so that's something that we needed to dig into why were some people using it some people not to some people it felt cumbersome other people um it just it seemed to take a lot of time and so didn't bother with it so trying to figure out what the ups and downs were with that toolkit we also looked at demographic data and

011I'll talk about that in a little bit more at least show you the data and we began collecting this back in 2019 so right before the pandemic and with that we wanted to get an understanding of who we were reaching so we can determine ways to to broaden our efforts um we also started doing staff training on engagement best practices so there's an international group called The International um International Association of public participation iap2 that does trainings specifically on engagement and so we invited them to come start working with staff again this was right before the pandemic so those trainings ended up getting shut down but we're starting to revive them and this was really just to help all staff gain a higher Comfort level with engagement as well as understand methodology a little bit

012better we also looked at what we've done in the past with youth and there's been a number of things that the city has done throughout the decades reaching out to youth but one of the more recent efforts was holding a class with Central High School um or I'm sorry Community High School and inviting youth over to come into City Hall to help them learn about how the city operates and to really impress upon them that they have a role to play in making decisions that will affect them as adults in the future assuming that they'll stay in in the community and then we also looked at our public participation requirement for developers which is a little bit above and beyond what other communities do but I just really started examining does how is it working

013is it effective um um are there things that we wanted to change about that so this is the demographic data and as you can see on here uh We've compared this against census data so how do we compare you know with people who are coming to our meetings and taking our surveys again some of this is from right before the pandemics that we had physical meetings a lot of it was confined to just online meetings and online surveys but as you can see um basically the people that are participating with us are primarily White wealthy homeowners that are older in age we knew this um you know we this was our assumption that's what we were sensing at our meetings in this um the state of verifies that so thus the steering committee was born

014and what we wanted to do was not get the usual suspects so not the same people that were coming to our meetings already and our events already but really reaching out and so we did um a strong effort with trying to reach Again The Not So Usual Suspects um we did some of our standard stuff by going through our social media so Twitter next door Facebook are kind of the big three that the city uses we also did a press release um we put out flyers which seems kind of old-fashioned but really we're going back to doing things like that because what that does is it captures people that are just passing by so not people that are already on our lists are you know and that and that's part of the problem is we

015just kind of keep reaching out to the same people that have already signed up to be part of our system so um Flyers helps us get to new people um we also sent out flyers through Meals on Wheels which is not something that we've traditionally done and we're starting to do more more and more we put it in a community newsletter we did do email distribution we also sent a flyer out through schools so inviting both Youth and parents to be involved in this and then we put together a PSA that was on CTN which I don't know that very many people saw but it was just another means to get something out there which we don't typically do with that we got 80 applicants so that was more than I had anticipated so it

016really shows that there's kind of a craving for this there's a lot of people out there that really want to talk about this um we felt that that would be too big for a steering committee um so we made a tough decision to near it down to 30 people which is still a big steering committee but we just didn't want to narrow it down any further um so one of the first tasks that the steering committee did was Define equity so what do we mean by equity and this is the definition that they came up with Equity is the fair and just practice practices that ensure all community members can Thrive Equitable practices acknowledge and address structural inequities historic and current that Advantage some and disadvantage others and this is distinguished from equality which is

017treating everyone as if their experiences are the exact same the topics that we covered during our steering committees which took the course of over about a year and a half um are these and I have to say I started off with this very linear path in mind I had all of the meetings planned out in my head and this um you know this project plan this this neat tidy project planned and it really we deviated from it quite a bit because what I learned early on is that we really needed to go with really talk about the things that were meaningful to people and we couldn't just talk about engagement which is what I had kind of sought out to do we had to talk about all of these other topics too all everything that

018relates to equity you have to address that when you start talking about um engagement as it released Equity so where we began was talking about the opportunity index which is something that the county has put out there if you haven't seen it I really encourage you to to go look at that so the opportunity Maps area as in the county that have more opportunity than others and it's based on a variety of criteria which the website explains so again if you haven't had a chance to look at that I do encourage you to to take a look we also reviewed demographic data that's the data that I just showed you and dug into that a little bit more and talked about why that was why why are we only getting white wealthy older homeowners coming

019to our events uh we did talk about the engagement toolkit and kind of picked it apart what's what seemed to work well and what doesn't work well we also reflected on engagement efforts that were in process at the time so one of those engagement efforts was the American Rescue plan act funding um which several members of the committee felt um we could have done a better job at so we looked at that and then some members got really involved with the water treatment plant project which is an effort to to examine how we're going to restore and rebuild our water treatment plant so some members got involved in that other members got involved with other projects as well so some people are participating in some of the transportation implementation that we're doing one person got

020involved with our um our forestry management plan process uh so so the the influence started spreading a little bit as we were going through this process we also talked about land use planning this is so key as a as a planner I think this but I um you know we really needed to examine our history about where we are now in the history of segregation and and the government's role in that so we talked about that and Brett Leonard from the planning department came and spoke on that affordable housing so Jennifer Hall came and talked about that we also looked a lot at City hiring practices so at the time the committee started an article came out that talked about how the city's um upper level staff members for mostly white men and so people

021really wanted to talk about that um so we dug into that quite a batch quite a bit and we had a number of um people from HR that came and talked about that we looked at sustainability efforts and then of course we looked at the building blocks of meaningful engagement we also did some field trips so this is one of the field trips to the water treatment plant that we did uh this was something that the group came up with we actually didn't end up putting this in the report but I really like it so I wanted to show it to you it's this visual that we have of a paw um which brings together these topics that people really wanted to focus on so housing and accessibility um City hiring and Leadership practices and

022how engagement if Done Right really can influence the toes so if you're really grounded in the and the main pad of the foot you know you'll set the direction of of where the Paw is walking and and kind of um you know put put it on good ground so that really brings me up to the recommendations that the group came up with um which I want to read to you and I do encourage you and Kristen you'll have to let me know if we have not actually sent you a draft of the report yet I'll make sure that you get it because the report gives a much much Fuller detail about the story of how we got to these recommendations um and then it also and some of the recommendations there's some strategies or sorry

023not just strategies but some action steps involved so I do encourage you to go look at more of the detail but the first recommendation is to demonstrate that the city is committed to advancing equity and the reason behind this is is that people who have been minoritized and marginalized will not engage with the city if the city's not representative or clearly committed to sporting Equity so under that we have that the city intentionally hires minoritized individuals especially in higher level positions um the next one is to create transparent and meaningful Pathways for promotion of minoritized individual levels after that we have a point racially and ethnically minoritized candidates representing impacted Community perspectives to boards and commissions and then after that city council adapts and enforces policies that help ensure decision making is Equitable and in

024the report there are actually some possible policy statements ultimately we do want to take this to city council and have them consider adopting those policy statements as well as thinking about how we can advance these recommendations um and put budget behind it the next strategy is to be authentic and I know that seems really General but this goes back to the idea of that we need to come to the table and be really sincere so ask the questions that we need to ask don't use complicated language um share information just be really direct about everything and then finally build trust and transparency through continuous Outreach and relationship building so it's not necessarily enough that we have meetings in response to projects that are going on but we need to have a continuous relationship building effort

025so the next recommendation is um to provide both ample and targeted invitations to engagement opportunities and the purpose behind this is that people need to be made aware of opportunities in addition to feeling welcome and valued at engagement events so this is really important so it's not enough for us just to Make a Better Effort of getting notices out but once people get there we need to really make it uh worthwhile for them to be there so make their input really mean something and to of course avoid having Arenas where things feel hostile and meaningless so under this we have the strategy to translate and transcrate and translate create means adapting a message from one language to another while maintaining its intense style tone and context on meeting notices and content and Our intention is

026to work with the most commonly spoken languages first but then expand from there the next strategy is in addition to social media and email use non-digital ways to get the word out such as Flyers as I mentioned before we're seeing that that's more effective um word of mouth so again that's another really effective way because it's coming from people who are trustworthy typically door hangers and other methods like that including posting at Community hubs such as community centers libraries and schools the next strategy is to get the word out through places like religious institutions barbershops bus stops and informal Networks and then after that if actively recruit black indigenous and people of color to participate in engagement events and then finally create an online engagement Hub that is easy to find and use and I'll

027talk a little bit more about that in a moment because that's something that's already moving forward recommendation three is to develop Community engagement plans with care and the purpose behind this is that engagement plans are the blueprint for ensuring quality Equitable engagement so with this we have one main strategy which is to provide the resources necessary for staff to conduct meaningful engagement so that involves ensuring a budget is available for in community engagement events often time in the past Community engagement was tapped onto a project and what we're calling for is to make it central to a project and to really have some robust resources behind it such as being able to pay for food you know for expecting people to come between work um and other things that they need to be doing in

028life so provide food or even pay people to attend really honor people's time um and also to continue to increase staff training and conduct quality engagement continue to use and evolve the City's community engagement toolkit and then create suitable measurements and milestones for our successful engagement engagement so that's us always checking back in on ourselves like what's working um and recognizing that this is always evolving and that we need to keep up with it we can't stay static and then finally the last recommendation is to make engagement events more accessible and attractive and the purpose behind this is that engagement events that are not easy to access seem unimportant or feel hostile deter people from engagement from engaging um so with that we want to offer hybrid meeting options what we did find during the

029pandemic is that we were getting a broader some to some extent a broader scope of people coming to meetings because online really offers some opportunities for people who um are not interested or not able to come to City Hall all the time or the other locations that we typically have meetings you can be at home and have your kids running around you you can be in your pajamas or you can eat your dinner so we want to continue to offer these online opportunities and also have in-person opportunities so looking for ways to have effective hybrid meeting options we also want to provide various ways for people to provide their input we ways avoid ways that allow for dominant people and narratives for taking over the meetings hold meetings at various times so in the past

030we typically have them in the evening which is useful for people that have a traditional work schedule but many people do not so looking at various times and again over the pandemic we found that if you're doing something online these a variety of times such as lunch time or even early in the morning it can really bring more people out record meetings this is another thing that we've learned about online life with engagement is that people really appreciate recordings of the meetings that allows people to go back and actually hear things verbatim instead of relying on notes um so I I personally like them too holding people to the Golden Rule standard I know this seems you know maybe kind of basic but really just you know hold people to treating other people like how

031we want to be treated so with that we are working uh we try to enforce ground rules now at every meeting so listing out ground rules and enforcing those and and just really really trying to encourage and enforce people to be respectful to others um this is the same recommendation continued we also want to recognize that the community's timing energies and value is valuable especially for people with limited resources so again trying to find ways to compensate people such as with food stipends gift certificates um the next one is to hire trained and continue to train meeting facilitators and moderators in fields such as Social Work psychology diversity Equity inclusion public practice participation so we can really have skilled people out there um the next one is to create space to listen and heal Old

032Wounds using highly trained engagement facilitators so not ignoring kind of the ills of the past but really acknowledging um you know that things haven't always been perfect um also creating uh sorry and the next one is taking time to celebrate and experience joy as a community so we don't really do that enough you know we often have meetings where people are responding in Anger to something but we also have a lot of successes and you know we need to come together and Bond as a community more not just with complaining about things but actually experiencing joy and and looking at things that have gone well and then finally when a decision is being made clearly communicate what that decision is the decision-making process who ultimately makes the decision and the level of influence that the

033community can have over the decision so that's not some that is something that needs to be spoken at the beginning of a process and then also we need to make sure that we Circle back at the end of the process which we haven't always been good about and and saying okay this was the decision that was made and this is why it was made and and this is what your input did to influence that decision so going back to promising practices this is something that I mentioned that staff had researched earlier um here are some highlights of that that we seem to be moving forward with that are based on the recommendations too so creating um a system of community liaison so these are people that will probably pay or we're hoping to get the

034budget to pay for Community Liaisons this will likely be an extension of the Equitable engagement steering committee and the networks that have come out of that steering committee so what we're hoping is to get people that are involved in our projects um going forward we also want to measure participant satisfaction so we've developed some some polls and surveys just to continuously check in where we're at how we're doing continuing to do a mix of meeting styles again we've been confined by Zoom for a number of years but we're starting to get back more in person of what we want to avoid is the typical Town Hall meetings where it is just one person you know going up to the podium one at a time where people can really dominate a situation and set the tone

035for a situation but doing things more like shreds and open houses and having things more interesting um one of the things that has been rattling around my brain is having storytelling sessions and and doing games like tabletop games and doing solution you know problem solving that way so those are just things that are seedlings um but we hope to evolve those we've also talked about information kiosks so the less one of the lessons that we learn over and over again is that we can't expect people to come to us we really need to get out to people and this might be a way to do it as having kiosks set throughout the city not just in the downtown but really throughout the entire city on the outskirts and with these kioski we can share information

036um we can also probably do digital polls things like that so we're looking into that technology um continue to do more surveys on polls um I worry about us kind of over saturating that but right now people seem to really like taking our surveys I think because it's fairly easy you can do it on your phone you can find it online and do a survey from your home so we'll continue to do that and then the engagement hub so this is an example of an engagement Hub that this is from Pittsburgh what we have right now is just kind of a listing of ways to engage with the city um so our our page isn't very Dynamic um and we want to move towards something more like this uh this uh the research behind this

037came about from a group of U of M students that we worked with during the process from the school of information so they looked at our current website who was using it um and then looked at these best practices from other communities and this is just one of the examples but you can see it's you know it's more visual than what we have right now um what's up here is what they call cards so it gives an image of what the project is or what the topic is and then a description and then you can click to learn more and this will be continuously updated you can also do searches on here there's a particular topic that you're interested in but we really want to have something that's Soup To Nuts basically with all engagement

038opportunities instead of trying to hunt through the entire city website to look for the topic or if you just want to be an Engaged citizen you can go to This One Stop Shop and say okay what's happening now what what what do I want to get engaged in and just kind of look around and then finally this is um going back to the idea that we need to celebrate more so we've closed out meeting regularly as a steering committee and our final event was getting together to do this potluck and I think you'll recognize one of your own commission members Dan Dan is part of the committee um who made the best dumplings I've ever had in my life and I'm still dreaming about them so this was a really nice event because most of

039our actually all of our meetings were online so this is the first time we had come together physically so it was nice to talk to each other and actually Bond a little bit more so I went through that very quickly I'm happy to give more detail or answer any questions you can also go to this website right here um and oh I'm sorry this is an email if you do have any comments that you want to provide if you have a chance to read through the report and just want to give more thought to it it's still in draft form we're we'll be finalizing it in the next couple of months though and then you can read more about the Equitable engagement initiative on this page so I'm going to start sharing so I can

040see all of you and see if there's any questions or thoughts Heather I just want to thank you I My overall impression of that was it was positive in in a world where there's so little any media that is positive that was positive and hopeful and I appreciated the effort uh and presentation thank you so much thank you Jamie go ahead thank you uh yeah thank you so much Heather that was awesome um I had a couple questions I was wondering is the toolkit something that is like ready for public consumption is that something that we could access it is just on our internal website right now so it's meant for staff but that doesn't mean that we can't send you the pieces and parts of it I'm happy to do that I mean there's

041nothing to really hide about it and really like eventually we do want to put it out there especially for Consultants that we're looking to hire because we we we do want to require Consultants to go through our toolkits so we can have thoughtful engagement you know with a Consulting team that's hired to do that um so I I'm happy to share that with you what's involved in it uh just to give you a little bit more detail of the parts and pieces so we do have an ever-growing stakeholder list so one of our hopes is to make sure that we're not leave inadvertently leaving people out so we have a stakeholder list that we talk through like who needs to be at the table you know some of it is like the standard organizations that

042the city like does the ride need to be here does it you know but then we've we just keep growing it we've recently added churches to it in the past there was this um idea to the you know that we wanted to separate church and state but we realize we can't really you know like we're missing out on a lot of people and we gotta get to those um more informal networks and communities um and church was our huge part of that so they've been added to the list um so that's one part of it and the other part is a is a questionnaire basically that we're continuing to change all the time trying to get more at Equity questions um but it's basically thinking through um what is the decision that's trying you know

043that we're trying to mean that we're trying to make and what is the question that we're asking the community because one of the big mistakes that we've made in the past is just coming out and saying what do you want you know when really people don't have influence over anything and everything in a project it might be something specific so like a road design for example there can be some tweaking of the way a bike lane is designed but um it's not a question of whether you know whether the bike lane is going in or not at that point but that's what people want to talk about or they want to just read us on the entire road so we just kind of need to be clear about what we're actually asking and then to

044think through that level of influence so are we going out to just to inform to tell people about something or are we trying to um you know have input over certain topics so having consultation basically with the community and getting advisement or do we actually want to go as far as empowering people and so putting the decision making in their hands so thinking through that yeah that's awesome um and then my other question was just about the community Liaisons I was wondering um if the plan for that is to have people like within specific like would you have a community liaison related to housing or like how would that be set up yeah we haven't specifically detailed it yet aside from just the concept of not the usual people you know like being representative of

045of groups and people that have not traditionally had a voice um in bringing them more Central to the decision-making process so and I think probably the first test case of this is going to be our comprehensive plan I'm not positive about that but I think that is going to be a component of that is setting up a team of ambassadors or Liaisons or you know whatever we call them and going through a process of identifying who those people are and bringing them into that effort awesome thank you so much again yeah thank you heather um and just to clarify are those Liaisons to the steering committee um for the comprehensive plan it'll be um to the to that effort itself the steering committee is basically kind of done right now not that it's really done

046because there were brands that were formed and some of us pledged to you know stay in touch and do things together but we're we are not meeting any further um um my kind my kind of Hope was that um that some of the steering committee members would want to come back once we have some sort of Ambassador or liaison program set up that they would want to come back and and be those Liaisons or ambassadors but um if not you know we'll be opening it up to other people being able to participate in that that makes sense thank you and I have another question well first of all I want to say that some of the recommendations in the presentation I think are applicable to our Outreach to tenants in the city so thank you

047for that I would like to see some of those um uh what do they call the the toolbox yeah yeah okay I'm interested to see those um and I have one question one last question for you which is how did you gather information on how your applicants found out about the ability to serve on the um the steering committee we did ask that question not everybody answered that um but I I can go back and see yeah and gather that data for you I don't really remember what the most common um point of contact was with that but I'll go back and see if we can identify them sure yeah I think that since tenants are spread out over the whole city it would be interesting and we're not looking for you know to honing

048on a super Niche group um we want to cast a wide net and it would be interesting to see how you were able to do that with your steering committee yeah yeah yeah there any other questions for Heather okay thank you so much we really appreciate um the presentation um and you know where to find us uh so please stop by anytime communicate with the renters commission about any events we'd definitely like to help in any way we can increasing engagement with all parts of the city yeah absolutely and I encourage you to reach out to me as well again I'm over at the Housing Commission now I've been there for about a month so I'm really thinking about the experience of renters and um housing conditions it's heavy on my mind um so please

049do feel you know feel free to reach out to me if we can uh join forces on anything and again if you have any thoughts that come to you later if you do have time to read the report or if you just have a question that comes up please do reach out I'm happy to talk about this at any point thank you very much Heather yeah thank you all right wonderful now we've just finished 6-a I believe Kristen we can move on to 6-b sound good okay so we do have a public we should have a public comment session for this and action item since we might be voting on it so um Kristen do you mind leading that or not I mean anyone would like to address the rentress nutrition on this topic you

050can call 877-853-5247-488-788-0099 and enter a meeting ID 935-8080-1941 or you can attend um using the zoom link and that is a2gov.org renters commission meaning if you are attending with the zoom link please use the raise hand feature or if you are calling you can press star nine again this is an opportunity to address the renter's commission for up to three minutes there are any um callers or attendees would like to do so go ahead and raise your hand now you have one hand raise go ahead and state your name at the beginning of your comment Luke uh can you hear me great uh hi my name is Rich fine I am in Ann Arbor um and I just uh like to just um review with the commission a study uh that I've done relating to

051utility rates on um all electric Apartments uh versus mixed fuel Apartments uh it's my understanding uh that one of the issues that you're addressing is is the fact uh that some people have claimed uh that uh the utility costs uh for an all-electric apartment uh are um higher than that for mixed fuel where natural gas is used for heating and underwater um I had forwarded a uh an analysis of this I don't know if you can show it right now if you're able to view it or not I I cannot yeah we do have that Kristen would that be okay if I share that I think it's in the communications sure okay uh while you're calling that up I was wondering this myself so I decided to uh do an analysis of this uh the

052uh the analysis was energy analysis was performed uh with the same tool with the Rocky Mountain Institute uh uses uh for the study that you quote in your resolution um and uh what what you'll see this is uh this is an analysis of a 1500 square foot uh unit uh in the new 320 unit apartment complex recently approved uh by the city uh using natural gas uh for heat and hot water according to this analysis of utility costs uh for an all-electric apartment are indeed uh more uh than for a mixed fuel apartment uh you'll see it on on the uh first set of green lines the first and the second set of um the difference of cost is between 240 and 335 dollars per year uh this equates to twenty one dollars to twenty

053eight dollars per month depending on the unit I will mention that if the developer were to spend a portion of their savings uh from Building without a and a a gas hookup towards improving the efficiency of the building the cost difference actually drops to between six dollars and fourteen dollars per month um there's another line on here the third Green Line shows the CO2 savings uh and by going with all electric uh the Savings in the first year per unit is 3600 to 4 500 pounds of CO2 uh per year if you multiply that by the 320 units in this apartment complex that's about 1.7 million miles of driving a gasoline car per year and as we improve our fuel mix on electricity over time switching to you um switching to Fossil free Renewables uh

054the difference will become millions and millions of gasoline miles per year and that is for this one single apartment complex no one wants to see expenses go up every dollar counts for low-income households but must we sacrifice our climate for utility costs of this size I hope you see that the continuation of apartment construction using natural gas is too steep of a price to pay for the amount of dollar savings I encourage you to vote for the resolution thank you I have color ending in one three four um thank you Kristen and chair Farah my name is Ken Garber and I'm a renter at 28 Haverhill Court um I'm intrigued by the previous caller Mr fines analysis I think finally we're hearing some actual actual data being brought to this question of utility costs which

055I think has been subject to a lot of um speculation exaggeration um in you know previous meetings I think we have to actually refer to actual um data and documented information before making uh claims that um this uh gas ban ordinance would um be bad for tenants um sounds like the difference in utility costs over the course of a year would be slight and if um landlords took some common sense measures to improve Energy Efficiency of their buildings and as a renter in Ann Arbor I know there's plenty of room to do that um I think that basically it could be a wash or close to it um so uh but I want to raise a few other issues you may have heard that uh three judge panel from the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

056ruled last week against the Berkeley gas ban ordinance this is obviously not good news but it's important not to overstate its implications for Ann Arbor first Berkeley has signaled that it does plan to appeal either to the full appeals court or the supreme or to the Supreme Court and second I spoke today with a University of Michigan environmental law professor he had not yet read the appeals court decision um but um Berkeley's ordinance amended that City's building code Ann Arbor on the other hand is proposing to amend its zoning code and um this professor did point out that courts give much greater uh leeway to localities in general when it comes to zoning um which is considered strictly a local matter um very difficult to preempt at the state or federal level than it does

057for building codes until Ann Arbor situation is different than Berkeley and so I don't think this um sport decision uh as disheartening as it is really uh shuts off Ann Arbor's opportunity to pass an ordinance to ban gas connections and new construction to Major Renovations the subject of um the resolution tonight and the resolution does allow for interim measures to be implemented urgently to incentivize electrification or penalize gas in new construction other cities and are doing this I just got off the Ann Arbor for Public Power Roundtable uh discussion um one of the panelists was Darren Springer general manager of Burlington Electric uh he mentioned that Burlington has implemented a carbon pollution impact fee starting at 150 per metric ton for new construction um that is buildings that install fossil fuel thermal energy systems um

058and for existing commercial and industrial buildings 50 000 square feet or larger when that building is installing fossil fuel space heating as well so um I think Ann Arbor has a lot of different options here as it works through the legal process towards a full gas ban and so I the bottom line is that your resolution tonight is very much relevant to our short-term prospects especially as every two weeks or a month uh the city is approving another gas burning project some of them quite large and this is just making it absolutely impossible to achieve our a20 carbon neutrality goals we're falling farther and farther behind frankly the city is failing in this effort in real time um and so I in my opinion uh this resolution is a no-brainer and between Mr fines um

059utility cost analysis and um the overall urgency of the situation when it comes to Ann Arbor's building boom um I commend you for considering this and I urge you to pass it tonight um and send it on to city council thank you so now we can move on to see we can move on to discussion of uh 6-b resolution in support of an ordinance to ban natural gas connections and new construction and major renovations uh I'd like to just walk through a few small changes that have been made to the resolution very quickly it's more or less the same resolution but what I've changed um was uh I removed a paragraph regarding the health concern implications of natural gas combustion in apartment units and just added in something very similar there were some slight inaccuracies

060in what I had written and after discussion with um an energy commissioner um I I changed it to make sure that it was correct moving on there was another slight inaccuracy which was corrected through the discussion of an energy commissioner um and I included a small sentence about the fact that the energy commission has already passed a very similar resolution they did that on April 11th and I hope that we will join them and uh then there were some awarding changes at the end here to make sure that we're delivering this to city council um and our recommendations are for city council and the administrator rather than any other part of the city government since our role is to give advice to the city council and administrator finally I know we were concerned there was

061there was concern about the increasing potential increase in utility costs as a result of this and so um you know whether or not this gas ban goes forward I think it's a good idea that the city council considers uh any sort of policy that or policies that would decrease the monthly cost of utilities for tenants like the electric bill and name them so um I think the see the examples I wrote down here were implementing the proposed green rental housing efficiency checklist that was proposed by the green mental housing task force which was created by OSI I don't think that those recommendations have been implemented but the city council members can pipe in and correct me if I'm correct about that rebates for Efficient Electric appliances like heat pumps induction stoves uh and programmable thermostats

062as well are some another option um and finally we had this in here that the resolution be communicated to the Planning Commission I'm not sure if that's totally necessary but we put that in there recommendation isn't for the Planning Commission but we wanted the resolution to be um if it's passed you see madam all right so with that I think we can open up for quick q a and then open up for discussion afterwards are there any questions okay go ahead uh oh I saw Bob's hand first and then you put it down sorry it's up uh just uh double clicked too quickly okay we'll go ahead then what is the definition of uh major construction is that of is there a standard definition of that yeah I believe that the planning I believe that

063the definition is any renovation that costs more than 50 percent of the evaluated evaluated cost of the property got it okay that's my understanding and um [Music] the market value I think it's the assessed value okay I understand it interesting okay yeah just to point out there's that's not that's not that much um uh uh fairly modest kitchen renovation could exceed the value of the uh half the value of an assessed of value um like 80 000 I know it's terrible amounts of money but is not unheard of for a kitchen renovation and assessed values are around 50 of uh market value for single family homes so um that it's uh it sounds much it sounds like a lot but it's not that much thanks Jordan thanks for the changes I'm I'm glad to see

064that we are encouraging the city to think carefully about the impact on renters and in general I I'm I'm supportive of this I'm really struggling with that 50 though I'm I I mean even like we called contractors I talked to them I said if we were doing this here like is it even possible and for these old buildings if we were to do a renovation that's 50 of the value retrofitting it would literally cost far more than the 50 of the value just for the systems so I guess I I feel like if I didn't speak up for that perspective I wouldn't be really serving our landlord perspective very well um you know in general I'm pretty supportive of these things but I I guess I see that the potential for that 50 of value

065unless you are doing a huge demolishing project with ton of money behind it for people like Robert and I this this it would not be possible like you'd put us in a position where it just really wouldn't be possible um for example to Electrify one of our big older buildings um cost wise so I'm I'm struggling with that piece but in general I support it I'm thankful for the changes and considerations and for the people who spoke tonight but I feel like I have to have to bring that part up I appreciate that Jordan thank you Jamie yeah just a quick question and you might not know the answer to this um just wondering would this also apply to would like would the university be included in this or are they exempt do they have

066exemptions from he does not include the university there are separate entities so I think that the zoning uh they're not affected by his opening okay okay thank you and thanks to the the caller who mentioned the distinction between zoning and Zoning code in the building code the difference really is important um okay um I see Nick who's next thanks I have a question for anybody who has an opinion on it what is the Pro what are the pros and cons of doing what we can to incentivize uh alternative energy sources and cheaper sources um rather than ban gas you understand the way I'm putting it is is there what you know have there been communities that have succeeded in this regard um I was really impressed with our speakers they're both obviously very knowledgeable about

067this probably far more than I'll ever be um so I take everything they say is true I accept that there are many many benefits for natural gas not being used and Alternative forms of energy being used um but can it be done in a way that as I said incentivizes Alternatives rather than banned gas Jordan did you raise your hand to answer to respond to that okay and Jeff were you responding to that um kind of yes uh in the same vein I was I don't know if we can actually get a response from um Mr fine I was curious about his carbon offset numbers as if those were were that specifically the building or does that Trace all the way back to um you know the generation of the power itself and and tied

068into to what Mr Ramel said you know um maybe adding something or or having something about incentivizing Renewables maybe along with this because of course um you know if if the the carbon offset is just going to the power plant versus burning in houses you know what is the advantage to that and you know I I did some number of research myself and from dte's own numbers almost 60 of their electricity Supply is still from coal um it's it's like 57 from their own release numbers which is I think 20 higher than the regional average um so kind of tying into that you know a multi-pronged approach I guess to this idea yeah well I'd like to respond to that thank you Jeff um so I when uh Mr fine contacted me asking to include

069the communicate the um his analysis on our agenda today I think he got me yesterday we did speak about that um question of you know is this really going to be decreasing emissions if we're just switching from natural gas in the home to Coal natural gas somewhere else and um the he did it uh consider that in his in his analysis he did consider the fuel mix and uh it still resulted in reduction in emissions and I think the reason why is because in your home um you were using natural gas on a much smaller scale which is much less efficient um than it is in a large power plant even though there is a difference between natural gas and coal so overall it still would result in emissions reductions and those emissions reductions would

070likely get only larger as DTE shifts away from the coal towards natural gas and slightly towards maybe more Renewables I'm not crazy about where they are right now or where they're going to be in the next 10 years however it is going to get a bit cleaner um and my understanding from one of our commenters I think it was Mr Ken Garber um this would likely be challenged in the courts and would a natural gas ban for new constructions wouldn't be implemented for some time so I think the idea was the city council would have time to implement some kind of incentive-based system in the short term while this is being potentially implemented uh after some kind of court case that was my understanding but again you know the city council members who know this

071better can chime in thank you any other questions okay well uh comments I also we can open up for any sort of discussion here okay Kristen I just wanted to quickly um kind of recap last month at the meeting this was moved and seconded and then postponed to this meeting so this amended version hasn't been um you're kind of learning about these amendments and then you could move in second to approve the amendments and then after those are approved you'll go on the main resolution as amended so you'll need to move in a second and a vote and then a vote after that question um so I do share the concern from Jordan and Bob oh I I guess I'm not sure that you expressly said this Bob but about the major Renovations part and

072about how that may not be practical I'm not really prepared to say that it definitely would be practical so I if you all have any comments on that and what if you think that there should be amendments regarding that I'd be open to discussing those but I see Nick yeah I just again real quick please remind me procedurally is this a recommendation to city council or is this a standalone resolution on our part that is mainly symbolic in value I guess it is a resolution that is the that concludes the recommendations of city council it is symbolic it doesn't have um teeth to it you know we're not Banning gas capsule and they're gonna do if they were to consider this at the council level there would be public comment from anybody you know well

073let me ask if I may uh council members uh radeen and Harrison to what extent do you think Council might it might make a difference in consideration of this issue should we pass the resolution I'm going to give you a very unsatisfactory answer but it's very similar to to my uh I abstained from this conversation at the energy commission um and so I am I am not going to be able to give you an answer to that here either uh we're in the middle of ongoing conversations with City staff and legal staff and exploring multiple paths forward um so I can't really say much more than that at this point okay uh Miss Harrison same that's okay you know that's fair Bob just to be clear I I am uh supportive of this I I

074just want to be careful to point out uh unintended consequences because as as Jordan says you know if these costs kind of go in a direction that is uneconomic then it's it's just not a you know I appreciate the cost analysis for a new construction and I think that that makes a lot of sense and I think the you know the the the the new construction techniques that are required that are effectively very different make this feasible and uh a good idea on an old building um it can certainly be done um I'm certainly working on that on our own house uh which is an old building acknowledging that um you know it doesn't have the envelope and so it may be uneconomic I'm still gonna do it but it's going to be uneconomic so

075that's just you know the renovation thing might have unintended consequences uh I'll let others who maybe have better better information than me speak on that sure thank you anyone else can I go quickly I just wanted to if if they're still here say thanks to the people who called in it's really useful and informative especially to see some data on the utility stuff because we had talked about that last week I thought that was really useful strongly in support of this I think it's great um really appreciate the people who put it together and I think um working on more projects that connect climate policy with affordable housing policy I think this is great thanks Lucy Jeff uh I also want to thank our speakers they answered quite a few of the questions that I

076myself had at the last meeting um and um I do support I mean I've supported in general but I feel much more comfortable with um having some of this analysis uh going forward uh thank you Jeff I actually made a mistake earlier I said 50 of the appraised value and there was uh that's not actually correct I was just looking it up from uh the the draft ordinance opposed by um Planning Commission staff uh includes uh let me see they mentioned any renovation where the cost of renovation exceeds 75 of the appraised value of the entire building or structure so that does sort of change it um especially if you have uh a multi-unit structure um and then they also say any addition or cumulative Edition in any five-year period the result in an increase

077in floor area of 50 or more so it's a very major change Bob that's a lot more reasonable that makes a lot more sense I agree thank you very great thanks yeah and I apologize for that mistake I must have mixed up the numbers um I know that there was a lot of thought put into exactly what the recommendations were and even if you still are unsure about that and if we do vote on this tonight and I um hope that we will um and you disagree with certain aspects of it you can always advocate for a different position to city council directly if this is seen by city council okay anything else before we move forward okay I will motion to make the amendments to amend the resolution uh in the ways that I

078I showed um do we have a second for making those amendments second thank you Jeff all those in favor of amending the resolution say aye hi hi hi all those opposed say name okay the resolution is amended unanimously and do we automatically move on to voting Kristen um yeah you can hold um some discussion so now you are voting on The Resolution if you want to do any discussion about that before holding up all you can right so now that we're discussing the officially amended proposed resolution is there any other discussion foreign to approve the um resolution is amended and a second before we discuss I think because I thought the previous motion was to just amend the reservation so now now we have the amended draft resolution in front of us and we can

079discuss it um the entire resolution is a we were kind of Blended the two discussion sections so apologies but um if there's anything else to be added about the resolution now would be the chance before we actually vote on it okay going once all right now we can move into voting right Kristen yeah great okay all those in favor of passing the resolution uh before us say I uh and all those opposed say name okay so I uh the eyes have it um one no vote right so this resolution is passed and will be sent to city council the administrator and Planning Commission thank you everyone for the debate I know this is probably outside what was outside of the conference area for a lot of people but I really do appreciate everyone who thought

080about it carefully okay so now we move on to 6-c discussion of Remedies relating to the apartment wait list issue uh informed by waitlist report right um so let me open this up the draft report of the um about wait lists for rental units in Ann Arbor was finished by our working group uh my understanding is it was sent to City attorneys um Kristen has that happened yet I did send it but I haven't received any um like memo or comments on it okay um reuse looking specifically for like a response from the attorney's office on like just like General comments or like is what we're suggesting legal right yeah I suppose I think that that had come up earlier um because we want to make sure that we're not misspeaking saying anything that's untrue

081and if they do have any thoughts about the legality of the proposed remedies that would be helpful before it's sent off to um city council okay so I would encourage you all to read through the report if you haven't already it's the same report we've seen a few times but it's finished we think um it has more information um in the let's see in the background regarding um we implemented some survey data from Central student government that does just pertain to student tenants but I think it's useful unless we included more information about let's see there was a I think an improved discussion of [Music] um of waitlist fees versus application fees which is pretty confusing since there's not a strict definition of the two in the state of Michigan and then there was um

082some discussion of relevant policies in other cities and other Jewish jurisdictions so actually we probably should change that to make sure it's not just cities states and cities uh thank you to Lucy for doing a lot of the research and then recommendations these are the two recommendations that we came up with and I can read them here the first recommendation is the city council should prohibit landlords from charging any pre-tenancy fees besides the security deposit that would include application fees move-in fees um no hassle fees option fees Etc we don't have exact language that would be before an ordinance for that but we think that this is the the goal that we want to suggest to the city council and then the second recommendation is that city council should consider amending their early leasing ordinance

083to more clearly provide that a landlord shall not offer at least to attendant before the appropriate date what that means is um landlords the way that it currently works is with early leasing ordinance 8 5 30 in the housing code uh landlords aren't supposed to require uh tenants tubes okay all right I'm sorry I don't have a language right in front of me they're not allowed to so what they're currently doing what some landlords are currently doing is they're having tenants sign a contract but the landlords aren't counter signing it to try to circumvent the law and we think that the language around 8 5 30 should be amended to make sure that that practice is clearly prohibited we read through it a few times and we think that they're it's not totally clear we

084think it might still currently be illegal but we're not sure so maybe the language should be clarified okay Jordan um yeah good good thoughts there and I'm really grateful that this report is out um as you know and as you and I have talked about Zechariah we really don't charge any fees ahead other than security deposit we tried to be as transparent as we can and what um a total lease is going to cost our attendance for the year I think that feels really important so um thanks for this report and that and I yeah I think I think that is really important so there's lots of different situations that are happening right there's the wait list option in which you might have a chance at that apartment there is um the situation where landlords

085are having tenants sign and they think they have a signed lease but it was never counter signed and so then the landlord backs out and says oh we didn't actually have a signed lease and the tenants are stuck in March without a lease um that has happened almost 10 times to my knowledge that I've heard from parents in the last couple of weeks um so clarifying that but I think also Claire find that um just the idea that that Elise um yeah I guess I I wonder if this bullet point is enough um so for example we're staying foreign not that I want to put the blame on the tenant that's it's surely not their fault that this is happening but no no party May sign a lease um and that at least like almost

086I'm trying to think of a way to specify for tenants like um that no lease that is not signed by like a lease must be signed by both parties to how do we kind of is there a way to incorporate a little bit of a tenant education piece in this blurb um I guess as maybe the impetus for my question does that make sense like is there a way to say that the idea that a countersigned lease isn't legally but or not counter signed lease isn't legally binding seem to be a lot of the the unclearness both on terms of tenants parents like all of that so wondering if there's a way to be even more specific about what this situation looks like I don't know maybe somebody else reads it and gets an idea

087from what I'm I'm saying thank you Jordan I I think I do understand um that no partition sign Elise is fair um and maybe clear Gail well I think the issue too that you're trying to get at here is um what the early leasing ordinance talks about is that a landlord may not enter into an agreement to rent the lease premises you know before until 150 days before the end of the lease and what that means exactly you know does that mean what does it mean to enter into an agreement is it just assigned lease is it offering a lease to somebody else so a little more clarity and understanding about um about the language within the ELO I think is is maybe what what Jordan's talking about too so and and I'm you know

088as you know fully supportive of eliminating what you call the the junk fees I mean I've been seeing over the last I don't know however many years just a continual increase in additional fees that are that are really meaningless and um you know like you you mentioned administrative fees move-in fees no hassle fees you know all sorts of additional fees that have made it really hard for tenants to have a true sense of what their actual cost will be in the lease and so um simply eliminating those fees would be would be incredible and and you know save it make it more clear for for tenants and and save money as well so um I you know as you know fully support that thanks Kim and I'm guessing that some landlords will likely say that

089uh If you eliminate these fees then the cost of event will increase and they may choose to increase the cost of rent uh which of course is not good and maybe they'll even increase it more than the fees cost uh there's nothing stopping them from doing that unfortunately but at the very least tenants would know what they're going to be paying and I think that's getting to your point there Gail I agreed I mean I think it's a run around to increasing the rent so it makes it seem slightly more affordable for tenants than it really is because if you're if you're paying you know a thousand dollars or more in fees you're you're paying it a higher rent than you're realizing so um I think it would be helpful to just if you want

090someone to pay more rent you know be clear about what that is I realize that's not an ideal solution and and the rental costs in Ann Arbor getting pretty out of control so um we'll see thank you young Jeff I just wanted to clarify um what Jordan though Jordan said um so is my understanding correct that landlords are circumventing the ELO by inviting people inviting or what or suggesting that people sign before the 150 days and and then using this technicality uh well since we haven't signed it it's not violating the ELO is that yeah both in from see John got his hand up too so we can today right now looking for housing for fall of next school year 2024 2025. um and that's because there are other landlords who are allowing people to

091put their names on wait lists or pay a holding fee but what the biggest problem and this is what the report speaks to um so you know give that a gander if you haven't is the biggest problem with that is there's no guarantee right these students could pay say for a group of house a five thousand dollar holding fee and they have no guarantee that they're going to get that house a it's now totally illegal to even be asking current tenants if they plan to renew right we have right to Renown new now too so it's not even legal for a landlord to be bugging current tenants about renewal and I mean let's face it these tenants haven't even moved in in most cases so they're signing wait lists they're doing this holding fee but

092it's unclear to the tenants if you signed a wait list most tenants aren't told if they're going to be guaranteed a house or if there's a chance that people could renew or where they are on wait list I mean in theory a landlord could have 10 people on a wait list for one house knowing full well that nine or ten are not going to get it but then the other thing is that uncounter signed lease so I would think I mean Gail can share her experiences in housing the report but I'm seeing both of those situations um both of those situations and yeah thank you John so so so Jeff current tenants can sign as early as they want and sometimes that's part of the problem because landlords will send out that renew letter in

093week one to say hey re-up now to to lock in next year's rates early so that's not against the rules and the um the ordinance and the ordinance was created with allowing existing tenants to lock in early to renew early so that's not a problem it's to other tenants prospective tenants and then the wait list come in so so early renewals for existing tenants is fine and I know that might not have been the context of your question but that's something it's the other things what landlords do to get around I can't rent to somebody or enter into an agreement to rent to somebody until the magic number will say it's 150 days or um in the end of the lease is what do they do to get around uh around that through a wait

094list to a reservation through some other artifice that's not entering into an agreement to lease that it has been the disappointment we're going to see what the right to renew does now that uh tenants will have that right to renew and whether that impacts it for leases entered in to or negotiated after October 16th just to build off of that John thank you um I think it will be up to the tenants to try to challenge that practice if they see fit of the sort of rent increases the longer you wait to renew so yeah you still have priority as a tenant if your current tenant with right to renew but the cost is going to steadily increase a tenant made choose to to challenge that in court uh claiming that that's not good faith

095negotiation that's up to them and you know we'll see what happens when now that the law is in place Nick yeah I totally agree with what you just said uh Zachariah um it's um trying to close the loophole with additional amendments to me it's analogous to the game of whack-a-mole you know you high up on loophole and another one pops up and um they skirt the language of the ordinance already as you point out it may not be a good faith offer if you're charging a fee to get around it or something so um I think that's what's going to have to happen I agree with Jordan the vast majority of landlords are totally cool but there are some and we know who they are who are really trying hard to get around us too

096and uh in an education is a great concept but there's way too many people shopping for units when they're not even in town when they're not you know on checking the right websites yet they're just desperate to find a place you're not necessarily going to be reached by 10 education efforts so um you know I think that until they're stopped in court um the bad landlords are going to be I won't say bad that's maybe too pejorative but the landlords who want to get around this are going to push it thanks Nick Jordan yeah I guess I I really I I think more people are getting around this than not I want to be very clear that I think this is a huge problem I don't I don't think it's a handful of landlords that

097are jumping the gun I think it's the vast majority and the fact that I'm getting 20 emails a day begging for housing I guess also confirms to me that there are enough people that are at least giving some semblance of you'll have a chance at a house whether via fee or not I haven't I haven't heard this year um how students are securing houses but obviously some are or we wouldn't be getting emails I mean that that is a pretty confirmatory um situation so I think we have to be clear that this is this is a lot of landlords we're talking large numbers of people who are taking these kind of waitlist deposits and who are working around and I mean I remember John when I talked to you two years ago you said oh

098we have it covered we can't do wait lists it says any agreement to lease and then somehow you know that seemed to kind of morph into well uh a waitlist or a holding fee isn't an agreement to lease and I somehow we've gotten away from that and so I I don't necessarily I hear your point Nick about it being whack-a-mole um I guess I'm I'm too much of an optimist that there is something that we can do to make this better for students and that we we have to try that is our our duty and charge as the renter's commission and I say students just for those who are non-students and not in that world on the call I think it is important to make some distinctions I say students because largely um you know

099the average person is not looking for a place to live for fall of 2024. um so this is kind of unique to the student Market here it's not something that is so sure couldn't be exclusively students but I think most of us would probably agree that it is so um I guess just to say that this is a really big problem and it's affecting students and it's it's creating even more um inequity because the students that can't afford to pay these huge fees and that can afford to lose four thousand dollars because they don't get a house um or plentiful here in Ann Arbor um and so are the students that have zero dollars to pay until they absolutely have to pay a deposit at the last point at the last minute those those are

100also plentiful and so somehow we have to try and and you're right it might be a game of whack-a-mole but I think we owe it to students to keep playing it's a nice way to put it um I wish this game were more fun I have to say but I I just wanted to um I wanted to say there's a I think two slight changes that I'd like to make number one I think that we might want to say that this is a report on pretent and waitlists and pre-tenancy fees for rental units in Ann Arbor and I also there's a slight change where I mentioned relevant policies in other cities it probably should be in other jurisdictions are the two changes that I I know should be made other than that I think the

101report is pretty solid um and I think that it does although the wait list problem affects predominantly students the application fee problem affects everybody and there have been a couple really great reports that came out um one from HUD one from um uh I I can't remember I think they're listed in the report some of them but there's actually more than that we met with Washington housing Alliance actually to discuss this and they they pointed out some really great memos and reports about how damaging these application fees are and how the harm is concentrated on certain demographics people who don't have good credit people who have a criminal background I know they're not supposed to be doing criminal background checks in the city of Ann Arbor for rental units but there's ways around that and

102they don't always follow that rule so that's problematic and so if you're if you have a bit more applications if you're one if you're belong to a demographic where you have this in more applications um you're out of you pay a lot more money so that harm the burden is placed on small smaller groups of small demographics within the city it's not just in students um so I'm interested to hear what you all think about you know what the next step should be with this report do you think that we should wait to get um feedback from attorneys or from our city attorneys or should we make those slight changes um and then provide it to city council um I'm open to any suggestions but uh I see Lucy's hand up yeah I think the

103recommendations are good they make sense to me I think I somewhat disagree with Nick's analysis about that there's always going to be loopholes to my mind the the real issue that has emerged from this process ELO right to renew and um the the failure of these ordinances to make a difference is a function of the city's failure to enforce rental rights and so it may be in that sense I agree with part of what Nick said which is that we have to litigate this somewhere else come up with some stronger rulings and we really need the city to make moves on rental enforcement so I think part of our report should be to say that we've we've been trying to raise this issue on the commission level uh in multiple forums we're not seeing a

104lot of I'm not seeing a path for in terms of enforcement of rental rights by the city and and so I think if we pass these um amendments I I think they're good I think they make sense I think we can expect the city not to enforce them that's what we've seen so far so I think we should add something like that that to the report whether we should give it to the city for I think we should give it to the city for review we should let the city councils um see it just to let more of that the whole Council has an idea of what's going on but do I think making the Amendments is going to solve the problem no I think the problem is much deeper than that we have a

105we have a big problem in this city with rental rights and enforcing them I do think that um especially with the discussion with rental Housing Services the lack of a clear enforcement mechanism for some of the rental laws um is a clear problem so I think that that is a larger issue definitely I am leaning towards just providing this report to city council as soon as possible um if so long as there's no objections um well I suppose if there's any if there's any specific amendments that you all want to make to the report uh we should discuss those first but hopefully I'd like to just see if we can agree on the report and send it on to city council so they can start reading it there may be some slight issues with it

106I don't think that there are any but I think they need to see this this information I think we've been sitting on the report for a little too long Jamie yeah um I think Lucy brings up a really good point um and I don't know if this would be like outside the scope of the the report um but I'm wondering if a potential tweak and like this would likely be a long shot um but like a rent stabilization suggestion um to kind of offset maybe where we were saying landlords might be trying to hike up prices you know if they had to lose out on some of these junk fees um and again have no idea if that would be even in the realm of possibility but I just thought I'd throw that out there

107as an idea I know there's increasing talks about some sort of rent stabilization rules but unfortunately um the state government preempts that for City for municipal governments so the city of Ann Arbor couldn't pass any any law like that um however I know that uh the city's lobbyist was uh tasked with uh promoting the idea of repealing that preemption which would allow this the local governments to have control over regulating rent if they wanted to is it because I know rent control is a no-go from the state but is because rat stabilization is different is that also not it's considered yeah so the law just says a city no City can regulate the cost of rent and that would include rent stabilization okay gotcha Lucy I just wanted to add on really quickly to that

108that there are many tenants activists in the city and the state working on getting that law repealed and secondly as the renters commission something that we could consider doing is passing a resolution saying that we encourage the city of Ann Arbor to immediately pass rent control as soon as that ban is repealed I would encourage us doing to do that yes oh Jeff I see your hands up oh yes thank you um and on top of that um it's great this city is is lobbying for that um you know would it be uh appropriate for us as a commission to um uh uh send a resolution to the state as well um good question I think that since our scope is to provide suggestions directly to city council and the administrator I think that that

109would be outside of the scope however any recommendations to city council you know could be shared with the state government the state legislators and I think that they would be interested in it yeah okay Travis and and I was going to just follow up on Jeff's uh comment there that that the repeal of the the rent control language at the state level is part of the city's official policy agenda and you know you as a body are a part of the city and so um in in that respect it already kind of is your policy uh as well through us um and and we definitely added it to our list of um when Cynthia and I and other council members met with our legislative delegation at the beginning of this year um it was one

110of the topics that we pulled directly from that to highlight that that it was a priority for us thanks Travis okay so I made those two changes to the report that I mentioned um we listen pre-tenancy fees for rental units at Ann Arbor report produced by the way this Workman group that and then the other change was on um relevant policies in other jurisdictions I know there was discussion Jordan um about this recommendation here did you end up thinking of uh the concrete way to change the the wording here no not nothing really um I don't know I mean I just I feel like we still need something that I don't want to delay us sending this off so I guess I'd rather get it off than try to um oh shoot now you came

111off screen check um oh did you want me to put the screen share back no that's fine I don't know I mean I guess it just to me the whole idea of counter signing like I guess okay maybe sorry I'm not thinking clear the kids are noisy and I'm solo with them tonight so maybe maybe something about um maybe the way around the idea of like a hanging out counter signed lease is that there has to be like I mean okay for example our right to renew says has stipulations for like when I as a landlord have to get a lease out and when it has to be returned by the tenant right like why is there a way that we can address that counter signing issue with a a tenant also has to complete

112a lease within 10 I guess that's the kind of thing that I'm thinking about like is there a way to address the counter signing issue more specifically so if right to renew says that if the landlord gives you the the lease and I can't remember what we ended up wordsmithing I didn't have to look back but that there's a certain X number of days 10 days 14 days whatever it is um I think it's 10. um is there is there reason to put something like that in general out into the universe so that like a hanging out lease must be countersigned by the landlord within X number of days um or something like that it doesn't have a lot of value because if they just don't they just don't and the lease isn't valid but

113I'm just trying to think of another way that like if I as a tenant could know that my lease must be countersigned within 10 days or it's invalid and then what like and maybe that's the question I don't know I guess I'm speaking more to the lawyery folks like is there is there any reason to specify that we've specified by which a tenant has to return it with rate to renew um do lawyer refocus feel like this paragraph is um you know sufficient to kind of cover that counter signing issue so Nick or Gail I'm just looking at 8 5 30 and it talks about um uh notice I just I just had it um the notice must specify the date by which the tenants must notify his head right here oh yeah thanks no

114worries um yeah okay let's see here it is so landlord may now enter into an agreement to rent the lease premises to another 10 of her subsequent lease period until 150 days before the end of the current news period uh uh yeah I believe that's right so so isn't the question then whether offering a lease but not signing it whether that's entering into an agreement to run the premises right yeah I I mean I guess we all thought that it was and then this practice started happening and I'm not aware of any time that's been challenged in the courts Jeff I saw your hand go up but uh wait Nick will you first I'm sorry doesn't matter um Jeff if you want to go that's okay thank you um I have some concern about the

115wording of the second one as well um would having a rule that says that just a lease cannot be offered before the the 150 days um take away tenants abilities to plan as well in terms of current tenants um would it be better to change it to say they can't require a tenant to sign a lease for 450 days but it could be offered if that makes sense uh yeah so I see what you're saying um well I think the issue is that no one's requiring tenants to sign now but tenants think they are signing because they think that they're getting this unit and they're not I guess I mean um for um current tenants like for example if my lease isn't up until December and I I know I'm going to stay here um

116though it seems like the wording of the second um Amendment would mean that I couldn't approach my landlord now and say you know what I I've still got six months left of my lease but I plan on staying can I just have a lease now I don't believe that's prohibited correct me if I'm wrong I mean the land like you said I believe the language is that the landlord can't require a current tenant to make a decision sooner than 150 days before the end of the lease but I don't believe there's anything from preventing anything that's prevent anything sorry that prevents a current tenant and a landlord from entering into an agreement if the Cur if the tenant so chooses yeah I'm just bringing that first bolted line and it it kind of seems to

117imply any tenant even a current one maybe if that was specified yeah the the second uh suggestion yeah right here oh yeah in the reports it counseling it it doesn't at least in the bolded part it doesn't seem to say new tenant um that's a good point I think I think is the kind of the the head up right yeah so new tenants are replacement tenants or something like that perhaps ask a question are are landlords sending out these offers the tenants signing them and then getting them back and they're just kind of sitting on them is that what's happening they're just like put them in their back pocket they get them back unsigned by the landlord like they will be given a lease they will think that they have assigned lease and then the

118landlord will have never signed it and so then seven eight nine months later when the landlord's like oh hey we never actually had a lease you don't have a house they or an apartment um in some cases that I heard then there's no recourse for the tenant who thought they had a lease and money has been exchanged without an agreement signed by both parties which I think is a separate you know a related situation but yeah I mean they'll they'll they'll have the tenant sign give the tenants the lease back unsigned by them and the tenants are walking around thinking that they actually have like an executed lease some of the landlords some landlords are a little provide a little bit more clarity and say we will you know we're giving you the lease sign

119the lease you know if on March 15th um the current tenant lets us know that they're not renewing then we will countersign your lease um but it still puts tenants in a precarious situation because uh new potentially new tenants in a precarious situation because then they're on the hook for that lease if the new if a tenant doesn't renew so if something else comes up they can't you know find another housing option there's they're they're bound to the least but the landlord is not but but Gail how is it not under eight five thirty per round one C the notice must specify the date by which the tenant must notify the landlord of the tenant's acceptance of a successive lease where where are you reading under 8531c this is new John this would be new

120that's a current tenant I'm sorry I'm sorry is the provision again John okay okay I'm thinking of eight five thirty one I'm thinking of I'm thinking of current tenants not on other tenants oh yeah right right so it's the new to I think we're talking about the prospective tenants that are then on the hook um even though landlords really aren't Nick oh I guess my hands still up um there's just a few things that strike me is curious about this first of all I've always regarded one thing about this sort of loophole that's being exploited I it is true that tenants are going to think they have a side lease but I believe under the law until that is accepted and not just accepted by the landlord but a signed copy delivered to the contract

121of the contract to the tenants that they don't have a binding lease I remember seeing a case a long time ago that a contract has not affected the delivery is an essential part of a contract in other words one party can't just sit on a written contract without delivering a copy to the other side be there as it may that highlighted language um and 2B which is a few paragraphs down almost implies that it almost gives um approval for a landlord receiving these signed leads from a tenant and sitting on because it says hey you've accepted the terms and conditions of the lease you gave me a signed lease it doesn't say I have to sign it and give it back to you so I'm I'm wondering if that the way that's worded and it's

122not tightened up almost encourages um that practice I don't know if anybody agrees disagrees but I I'm one of my concerns when we worked on 8.531 was that it didn't necessarily correspond in lockstep with 8.530 and it would be nice maybe to uh tighten up the language those are just some of my off the top bad thoughts well thank you Nick I don't think we need to provide an ultra-specific amendment 2 8 5 30 um to the city council and say this is exactly what you should do um I do think that lagging this as a problem is good and saying you need to work on the language um sorry oh yeah I was just going to say I even if um there are other aspects to fixing this problem I think that we should

123still move forward tonight and get providing this report to members of City Council and continuing to work with them to figure out exactly what this the wording of the solution will be so that's what how I feel uh John what what I will say about 8 5 30 the early leasing in the early entry in 8 5 31 is that they were meant to protect existing tenants not really they're not really designed to ex to protect uh prospective tenants or new tenants they're trying to how do we keep people in their apartments in their in their housing and how do we keep them from being hassled by landlords traipsing people through to pressure them to lease and that so so maybe tweaks are needed if if protection is a prospective tenants and the terms are

124going to be uh regulated uh that just kind of my thought given you know it's the right to renew rather than a right to get an apartment that's currently rented yeah thank you John for that perspective Jeff uh John would you suggest perhaps that like um a whole separate uh sub paragraph or addition that IT addresses um you know new tenants or prospective tenants would be um more appropriate maybe you'd have to see if a Michigan law doesn't already do that for us um if there's you know housing law or landlord tenant law things like that so I mean that'd be is like and maybe it needs an amendment to to deal with those it kind of some thought about it rather than just doing it on the fly at 9 30 on a Thursday

125night but potentially yeah you'd have to give some thoughts to what are the what are the concerns of prospective tenants and obviously a wait list is a prospective tenant concern rather than existing tenant concern you know an existing tenant doesn't care about wait lists because he's or she's good to go they've got it they've got that right to renew um and that's where the prospective tenants the wait lists and the returning a lease you know if you're going to make an offer to a tenant you got to sign it so it's clear that it's an offer so that they can sign it and and and bind the parties thank you John uh Jamie yeah just a quick question I'm wondering if anyone has knowledge of um I guess exactly what we're talking about so an

126existing tenant is offered a lease renewal they sign it they don't receive a counter signed lease and then they don't end up like the landlord takes it back and they don't end up with the least that they thought they had is anyone aware of that happening just out of curiosity are you speaking just about existing tenants or yeah yeah you want to renew mm-hmm we're offered um I haven't heard of an existing renewal lease not being counter signed right it's like they're trying to lock you guys in on day one you know before Halloween you're you're re-upping so that it just flies in the face of how they behave with respect to getting it renewals as quickly as they can with the current tenants okay yeah I you know I think that I personally have

127some other ideas for how to make sure that people are aware of what's been signed and what has been signed including requiring landlords to inform perspective tenants about what's what's going on you know um I've seen that with other laws where they um landlords need to explain this is not a this is not a contract and you know like a signed contract by me or something like that anyway there's other ways to go about solving this problem but I feel that the recommendation number two would be positive and I think that we should have ongoing conversations with city council members uh and for that reason I think that if everyone does feel comfortable passing this report on to city council I think that we should do that however if anyone feels that we should wait

128longer and or remove the recommendations for example and pass then separate resolutions uh we can do that uh but I personally support taking a vote on this as a commission and providing it hopefully to city council okay Nick if you need emotion also move okay is that that's a motion to um send this on to city council correct okay this excellent report thank you and thank you to everyone who has worked on it okay do we have a second second about Lucy okay all those in favor of adopting this report and sending on to city council say aye aye aye all those opposed say name wonderful thank you very much um we will send this on to Chris I guess you Chris and you already have that but I did make some tweaks so I

129will send on the news version on to you and I'm excited to continue conversations the city council about this this has got to be a dynamic process so um look forward to it and anyone who's interested in talking with city council members I think uh just maybe message Kristen um and then we can get a group together to maybe start having those conversations wonderful so now we can move on to [Music] um see six Dash D discussion of establishing a liaison to the housing and Human Services Advisory Board and Human Rights Commission um Kristen do you know who uh who would like to introduce this I have some information on then I'll share with you thank you um so there isn't currently no um appointed liaison to the housing and Human Services Advisory Board staff

130there was having a little bit of trouble with um or I guess it just was a tough commitment for um a member of that group to commit to attending a renter's commit renters Commission meeting every month they are a week after their meetings um so it's kind of two two weeks in a row of night meetings so they're kind of brainstorming if there is a like a shared or a like a hybrid like liaison role and if anyone on this group would be willing to um kind of share the like attending meeting attending the meeting and Reporting back um role with someone on the hhsad and that could be that could be flexible it could look like attending maybe attending every other meeting or scheduling like a phone call with someone on the hhsab and

131then reporting here or um something kind of like that so we don't have to decide today especially since there's a few a few members absent but um if there's any ideas or interest in um kind of sharing that role rather than having um the full commitment Beyond an hhseb member um I welcome that discussion any thoughts on this idea I believe that meeting is also on a Thursday is it I just remember reading of the second Thursday of each other so the Thursday right before us yeah um I I would be depending on the time commitment what we what we decided would be an appropriate level um I would be interested in possibly playing that role foreign thank you Jeff I'm hoping that when we get more members of the commission that you can have

132new people take up that task as well right this is something we can make a little bit more official in a couple of months hopefully after there have been more appointments too um and then kind of part oh go ahead I'm sorry I will also just add Jeff for for you that commission being a little bit more I would say staff driven in terms of kind of some of the reporting out and and them kind of providing more advice to uh oced staff and stuff like that it tends to be a shorter meeting so um it might be a lesser lift for you than for their member to come over to our meeting um but generally probably like an hour and a half meeting over there awesome um and then sort of related the Human

133Rights Commission I spoke with the chair of that group last week and they will be joining the renters commission at your June meeting to do a presentation on some of their work um and during that discussion they um expressed looking for that they were looking for some just like a like a connection with the renters commission and a little bit more renter perspective in their process and they one of the ideas they had was kind of doing like a like a monthly phone call or maybe being available to like consult if there was a like renter related issue that they were taking up um and if anyone on this group was particularly interested in that you can also bring it up I don't know might be more interesting after we hear from the HRC in

134June to to know a little bit more about their work I expect that time commitment to be [Music] um not not very significant monthly probably about no one was going to think about oh great that's all I have for that item [Music] um we can move to uh planning for the main meeting foreign thank you Kristen I think those are good ideas of establishing liaison to both those bodies uh so planning for our next meeting which will take place on May 18th um let's open the floor if anyone has any suggestions for what we should discuss on uh during our next meeting oh Jeff I saw your end goal yeah um I figured I should just say now um I I have a conflict with that that date um the rehearsal address rehearsal so um

135I will not be able to attend if it is on that date um but that will be the last one for quite a while no worries good to know thanks Jeff I hope it goes well um great uh any ideas for what to discuss ion and Jamie is there is there any point in um kind of having more discussion about what we what our goal from like listening sessions is and that kind of thing I know the three of us had a little bit of text chat after the um I don't know I guess just throwing that out there for looking for content so definitely report on that today during the report from committee's item or if you'd like to put together like a more formal presentation I think that would be fine too maybe

136schedule that for the next meeting yeah I think that's a good idea I would like to put together um maybe some thoughts and suggestions for future listening sessions too and so we are going a bit long to tonight again um I would encourage you to do it to um present uh your I guess a summary of of that event at the next meeting you can mention a few takeaways during the report back so if you'd like and uh I would like I think we should discuss this issue I've heard actually from a number of people suddenly about um tenants not being notified about the demolition about proposed uh Redevelopment of their building and so until it's very late in the process so tenants think that they're going to be able to renew for the next

137year but then suddenly find out very late in the leasing cycle that their building's actually just been approved to be demolished and then rebuilt and I've heard this from two separate people um I think at least you know at least two actually three um and it's I had never really thought about the issue I think that we should discuss that at our next meeting Jeff I think um yeah I hate to make a suggestion for a meeting I'm not going to be at but I do remember receiving those two Communications one was about the the issue that you would mention um and then there was one that came through just in the last day or so um might have been today um that I you know might be something to address as well or at

138least look at thanks Jeff Kristin I can work with staff to put together some more information on the city's role in that process um Heather mentioned it briefly earlier the developers role in engagement so I'll put together some or maybe get some um some input from some other staff on kind of list City's rules on it and how it's taking place at some recent um developments thank you Kristen Jordan we consider for a future meeting a little bit of Education about who does what in the city um in terms of I think I mentioned it in an email I just forgot to bring it up right now but um who does what like as far as what Housing Commission does versus Avalon and how those types of subsidies help because I feel like these are

139really vulnerable populations and even I being in this world don't have a whole lot of understanding about how referrals to that work how funding Works how who can whose contract trumps whose contract those kind of things maybe for May or June even not if May is looking full I think that would be a great opportunity for the Run Source commission and also part of the work plan was to get some education on that process so um I'll reach out to Steph anyone else well other ideas can be submitted to Kristen um and uh you know if you think of something we should discuss as they come up just email them okay then we will move on to item seven reports let's try to go through this fairly quickly so our city council members we can

140start with Cynthia you have a report I don't have anything to report on at this moment thank you uh Travis um just that we are um in the throes of budget season and so uh everything is all budget for the next couple of weeks here um Cynthia and I have uh I'm digging through the budget myself but I've also just submitted a question directly to the administrator about um whether or not his proposed budget um resolves the the Staffing Enforcement issue that we have we have discussed before um and if not about approximately how much he feels he would need to fill that role so um once I get an answer on that it's something that I'll be looking at in our budget negotiations as well um and then um I attended the listening session

141and just wanted kudos to everyone who was involved in that I know it was a really great session I will allow them to actually report out on it um but I know uh Jamie and Jordan were on the ground there and we had pretty considerable turnout and they handled it really well so um just want to applaud all the work that went into that thank you uh okay we can go down to seven SD report from staff liaison I don't have a ton to report um I will send out um some links to some of the information that Heather mentioned earlier like the opportunity index and um some of the other Equitable engagement um items it'll also send information on the budget the City Council meetings that have to do with budget to this group

142so you know when those that's fine great thank you um and then we can open up to reports from commissioners um so if you are commissioner and you'd like to give a report just raise your hand and we'll do it that way uh I think there's a recent Workshop I think it was organized by Washington housing Alliance I have to look back but it was recorded um about being a tenant Advocate I'll send it out to everybody I think everyone should watch if you have the time same yeah I'll keep it brief um but just wanted to say um I also thought The Listening session was a success um we had a lot of really great conversations met some awesome folks a lot of folks from the courthouse uh Senior Living apartment complex and um

143yeah we learned a lot about what's been going on there and I was interested to hear about the liaison for the Human Rights Commission um because I was kind of wondering if that might be a situation that we should um kind of fill them in on as it sounds like there's a multitude of issues going on there with those residents so yeah more information to come hopefully at the next meeting about that yeah and if you if there are people members of the commission who do want to like meet about that issue what's going on with with Courtyard it's called Courtyard right Mr Courthouse house thank you foreign I think just um maybe send an email to Jordan Jamie and me and we can organize a meeting if you if everyone does want to meet

144and talk about that um we have to be careful of Quorum unless unless we do make it a posted meeting which is possible but okay Lucy yeah I just wanted to respond to Jamie I mean first of all thank you so much for the the write-up on what's happening there while we're all in the meeting I wanted to ask whoever knows maybe John maybe someone else so I don't know if you saw the memo John but the situation part of the situation there's a lot of bad things that are happening in this apartment complex is that the landlords are serving eviction notices over things that are not by any stretch of the imagination evictable offenses so I don't know um if there's what what's the legality of that is or what the resource would be

145for those tenants so are we talking at the courthouse or just generally yeah Courthouse okay so if they're getting eviction notices then obviously uh I assume obviously uh given what someone just said it's not student housing so it's unlikely that Gail would be helping out but there's uh there's legal services and there's also a clinic at U of M um that might be able to help them Nick and Gail might have some other uh suggestions for resources that could help tenants who are facing eviction um oh sorry go ahead Travis John I can also jump in there too so um we have connected uh so I reached out to uh Libby Benton who um was with legal services of South Central Michigan last time issues came up at this exact same property um so she

146is uh I connected her with Jordan um and and I believe uh she's helping to reconnect legal services this time around um and and fill in on the history there on this site one of the challenges it sounded like from our uh conversations with several of the tenants was that the claim is that a number of these uh these eviction notices are coming for violations uh of the lease but when asked for the lease um they are not actually being provided an actual copy of their lease they're being provided a one-page document that says here's what your rent is and here here is the length of your lease it doesn't actually show the terms so that they can dispute whether or not they're violating them um so um there are a number of there were

147a number of issues um with this site and so I know we are engaging with legal services to get them engaged as well I think that um oh I think that we should discuss the details uh maybe in a separate group yeah yeah okay um Lucy do you have anything else to add on there because I I think that we should meet a subgroup should meet on this um I just think that now is not the time to get into the nitty-gritty of of all of it I'm extremely concerned about the situation though okay I understand okay um so yeah I think that we should email and figure out time then okay rate then we can move uh Jordan was there anything else you want to add oh sorry no I was just proposing that

148I yeah I gotta go soon so okay great yeah so let's move on um and so item eight the second general public comment right um anyone who'd like to address commission without any topic for up to three minutes and call 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID 935-8080-1941 you are um joining with the web link that link is a2gov.org renters commission meeting and if you are calling in you can press star 9 to raise your hand or if you are in the zoom meeting you can use the raise hands feature so if you would like to address the renders commission go ahead and raise your hand now or call in it or join with the link we do have an attendee so we'll give them a moment in case they'd like to raise their hand

149all right I think we're good to move on thank you Kristen so we move on to um last second last item which is communication we had I think it was three communications um so I can show them very briefly here um one was from parent of a tenant regarding uh poor conditions a bad upkeep of rental units and high cost these are things we've been aware of if it's a specific issue person's child is a student you can refer them to our office yeah Kristen have um have you sent that have you referred them to SLS I didn't buy well thank you very much [Music] and then the second communication is regarding that demolition issue I think we're going to have to have a longer conversation about rules that need to change the prevent this

150from happening again and I can give you some updates next time okay from my experience thank you okay and then the last communication which was already shown was regarding the um analysis of costs for all electric versus mixed okay any comments on those Communications before I move on to adjournment all right if you have any insights you can always email [Music] um email to Kristen and then that moves on to moves us on to item 10 which is adjournment we have a motion to adjourn tonight so moved thank you Jeff second thinking about Lucy thank you all is in favor of adjourning say I all right I was supposed to name okay with that where you're adjourned thank you so much for tonight's meeting I really enjoyed the discussion thank you very much have a

151good night good night everyone bye