001uh wonderful uh before I call the meeting to order I think I know that for all the meeting to order so welcome to the February 16th meeting of the Ann Arbor renters Commission uh the purpose of the renters commission is to advise the city council and the city administrator and matters affecting renters in the city of Ann Arbor the renters commission is made up of voting members who are appointed by the mayor and approved by city council two non-voting city council Liaisons one non-voting liaison to housing and Human Services Advisory Board two non-voting members representing different landlord perspectives and a non-voting representative from the University of Michigan Student Legal Services uh to speak during any one of the uh public common opportunities you will be able to speak through the webinar link or if you're
002calling by phone um for the phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter a meeting ID 935-8080-1941 uh to be called on to speak callers must press star nine if they're listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if they're viewing it through the zoom web link you will then be called upon by City staff one by one using the last digit the last three digits of your phone number or by your username on Zoom uh you'll appear an automatic announcement uh that the host is allowing you to speak so please state your name after that and you can begin speaking City staff will indicate when you have only about 30 seconds left of your three minute comment period after three minutes you'll be placed on mute and we'll go to the next speaker okay
003so wonderful now we'll move on to roll call uh because this is an electronic meeting please include the city and state you're attending the meeting from um I think if you're in Ann Arbor we know what state you're in but uh we'll go we'll start through the roll call so I am here I'm calling in from Ann Arbor commissioner Chen yes I'm here I'm calling from an annaber all right welcome commissioner Peterson hi everybody calling from Ann Arbor welcome commissioner mckergie hi I'm calling in Sherman Abu commissioner Kelly commissioner Cohen Smith here calling in from Ann Arbor commissioner rumel here and calling in from beautiful downtown Ann Arbor welcome um I knew I recognized your law office [Music] commissioner droppleman here and calling from Ann Arbor wonderful and if I mispronounce anyone's name please let
004me know I don't want to keep mispronouncing it commissioner else here in Ann Arbor commissioner Lowe's here in Ann Arbor commissioner Tibbetts you're in Ann Arbor commissioner Rosen I'm here in Ann Arbor council member radino here in Ann Arbor welcome council member Harrison here in Ann Arbor wonderful and I know we also have um Jen Cornell here with us so welcome um thank you for having me I'm here in Ann Arbor right wonderful um and our city staff present Kristen great welcome and John Reiser all right City attorney's office uh attorney so great uh yeah so I I know we have two uh is it just one new person who's never introduced themselves so I guess we should all introduce ourselves briefly that's all right so um right uh I guess commissioner Lowe's uh I
005did I call on you during uh during the roll call I'm sorry if I skipped your name yes yes you did okay wonderful so I'd like to give you the opportunity and give everyone the opportunity to introduce themselves so go ahead Jeff hello everyone um my name is Jeff Lowe's um uh this is my first meeting I apologize I was not able to uh make my actual first meeting which was the January one I had a commitment uh that was made far prior to me being appointed to the commission so I I appreciate uh your Indulgence in that um I live in the South America area in an apartment near uh stone school in Ellsworth and I'm just really glad to be here to be part of this commission I think it's really important especially
006in a city like ours and I I want to I look forward to working with all of you welcome Jeff and you go by Jeff or Jeffrey either one is fine okay wonderful um I can start and we'll go down the list uh my name is Zachariah I'm the current chair of the commission I work for Michigan medicine and research and I'm also a renter and have rented in the city from a few different landlords um and I'm very grateful to be here so I will pass it off to Dun Dun I am also a renter in the downtown uh officer animal housing community members and I'm extremely extremely lucky one to be here in the city and in the um and especially a member of the Avalon housing community that really really makes me
007my life so so so much better I enjoyed it to the post so I'm very happy and thank you everybody I'm the one that I should learn a lot lot so please excuse me pardon me if I'm a little bit slow thank you not at all not at all thank you um uh Lucy hey Jeff welcome to the commission really glad to have you here I'm Lucy I'm a PhD student at the University of Michigan Vice chair of this Commission wonderful and um Richa hi Jeff it's nice to meet you um I work at the school of Public Health at the University and Hannah hi nice to meet you I'm Hannah is she her pronouns I am a law student I'm in my second out of three years and I'm a renter here thanks Nick
008hi Jeff and everybody else I'm Nick Rimmel I'm a civil rights attorney I practice housing law extensively in Detroit for Legal Services at the beginning of my legal career and then at Student Legal Services for many years I'm practicing a lot of housing law in Ann Arbor and I'm pleased to meet you and be a member of the commission with you and everybody else awesome robber hi I am uh one of the uh two uh uh landlord advisors I am a small landlord I was also a renter for I think seven or eight years uh in Ann Arbor and um I also uh worked for Michigan medicine so pleased to meet all of you oh very interesting which department information assurance that's right I think you did mention that last time actually okay uh Jordan
009hi I'm Jordan I'm the other landlord position I've rented as recently as 2015 in Ann Arbor and moved here in grad school um I am nurse practitioner by degree but haven't worked in that field for a little while because it wasn't family friendly and we just couldn't make it work so I'm home with my husband um I do a little bit of work for our business a lot of volunteering in the schools with racial Equity um and doing a lot of work with ptos and I'm really glad to meet you Jeff so I'm glad to be here thank you wonderful Jamie hi Jeff I am also a new Rutgers Commission commissioner I'm a MSW student master of Social Work and uh new to the Ann Arbor area nice to meet you Gail hi nice to
010meet you um I am an attorney with Student Legal Services I'm a housing attorney there and I am the liaison between the U of M and here wonderful and our council members Travis would you like to start sure and Jeff and I know each other already but um I am Travis verdina council member from Ward three uh former renter and uh happily uh liaison here on that Commission great Cynthia hi I'm Cynthia Harrison I am council member in Ward one uh former renter some years ago but happy to be here with you all tonight [Music] and Jen go ahead if you'd like to introduce yourself as well I'm an interloper this evening and I represent Ward five and I'm here to talk about um an agenda item this evening but I appreciate you hosting and
011allowing me to join the group for this evening thank you thank you very much for being here okay did I did we get everybody for the roll call and introductions okay nobody oh I guess John you didn't if you'd like to introduce yourself of course you can have the opportunity so hey folks my name is John Reiser I'm one of the assistant City attorneys that have the pleasure of working for Adeline Carr wonderful and Kristen too I'm sorry that's all right I'll say hi to hi to um can't attend a meeting or anything like that uh definitely reach out thank you thank you Kristen okay now we can move on to uh the approval of uh the agenda is there a motion to prove the agenda our current agenda discussion quotient by Lucy okay is
012there a second second okay seconded by uh increasing do you prefer if I announce it with the last names is that easier for you either is fine okay I'll just disbursement a segment by Hannah thank you um okay all those in favor say yay yeah yeah okay all those opposed say name okay is that the agenda is approved unanimously and then we'll move on to the approval of the last meetings minutes so we have uh the minutes from our last meeting which is on January 19th 2023 um is there a motion to approve the minutes from last time I couldn't also move thank you Nick okay moved by Nick we have a second for that motion seconded second by Jeff thanks all right all those in favor say yay yay all those opposed say name
013with that it is approved unanimously so I'm last meetings minutes are approved okay now this brings us to our first general public comments I'll let Kristen if you'd like to lead this I'll uh pass it over to you so um there will be another public comment um at the end of the meeting so after this one um uh public comment will be three minutes per speaker and can be made by phone like Zachariah read earlier at uh by calling 877-853-5247 and entering meeting ID 935-8080-1941 or by joining the web link and that is at a2gov.org renters commission meeting um attendees who have called in should press star nine to raise their hand and if you're attending through the web link you can use the raise hand feature so if anyone would like to address the
014renters commission you can go ahead and raise your hand now we'll wait just a moment in case anyone's calling in all right so we have no callers and no attendees have indicated um again there will be another opportunity to address the renters commission near the end of this meeting thank you very much Kristen so with that we move on to point uh I guess point of business number six so 6-a is the presentation of a proposed amendment related to carbon monoxide detection detectors so uh on the agenda there's an attachment uh which is a I think a draft Amendment to the housing code to specifically section 8.527 and I'd like to invite council member Cornell to present that Amendment if you'd like to yeah thank you so much um I apologize for the tardiness and
015getting it to you um I'll just hit the high notes for anyone who hasn't had a chance to I'll give a little bit of background and then hit the high notes um for anyone who hasn't had a chance to review it yet but um the state of in John Mr Eiser please correct me if I Mis characterize anything but the state of Michigan does have a law that requires any new rental multi-family units to have new construction to have carbon monoxide detectors however that law does not cover existing units and so the goal and purpose of this is to fill that Gap here in Ann Arbor we know that our housing inventory is not new um you know predominantly not new and so um requiring carbon monoxide detectors in those units is just a basic
016safety feature in my mind and so um if you haven't had a chance to look at it this would amend chapter 101 of the housing code Mr Eiser did work to make sure that the rental housing supervisor at the city and the fire marshal both had input and you know we could gain their support for moving forward with this as written the big thing is that carbon monoxide monoxide detectors and dwelling units that contain a fuel fired Appliance so only certain appliances would generate Co or have an attached garage with a common door that is shared between the dwelling unit um would be required and that the type of carbon monoxide detector as well as the location of it would be determined by the international fire code so falling in line with you know standards
017that are already existing and then I think the other big thing that we talked about and had questions around was that the owner of the unit would have responsibility for assuring the detectors and devices are in good operating conditions this is in line with the same as what they would have to do building owners would have to do or unit owners would have to do with again the smoke and fire detection devices within the unit but that resonance would be responsible for informing the landlord outside of a transition of lease and whatnot if the device becomes inoperative so starts beeping call your landlord they can provide batteries or service or whatever to make sure that it is in good working order and again that that response responsibility does lie with the owner this would cause
018a civil infraction punishable by a fine of that more than 500 but I think that that's significant to um to point out and that this is not just something that we're throwing out there but something that would have a little bit of teeth to it so um I I don't feel as I'm mischaracterizing what the legal City's legal team um sort of relayed to me but this is definitely in keeping with what we do with smoke detectors right now and how the city code and how we operate now so I'm happy to answer any questions although I'm sure Mr Riser would be probably more comfortable answering himself um but I'm happy to answer anything and the impetus was that renters did reach out to me after there was an incident with um a carbon monoxide
019death and just asked what the provisions and safety um our laws were and what were the rules around safety regarding Co unit a CO2 CO detectors excuse me and um I did a little bit of digging to figure out that we didn't have a provision here locally regarding existing units so happy to answer any questions and again grateful for your time to to receive input from this group tonight that was perfect thank you yeah thank you very much I'm gonna go ahead and display the amendment on the screen and we'll go through the questions if that's all right sure okay here we go and just let me know if you want me to like zoom out or whatever okay I saw Dan's hand first so go ahead my question that is there any time frames
020for the uh equipment to be uh installed and except this one is there any possible that poisonous air or something like that not healthy air that could be give enough from the buildings or different kind of tools so how to monitor those kind of things to to control like the the equipment like we just talked about so at the very end the ordinance we this is a number that could be changed it could be 60 days but we have 91st day after publication so the ordinance will be published and then we need to set an effective date it could be 10 days it could be 60 days it could be 90 days the problem is we have 52 000 residents in rental housing and when we rolled out these sanitation supplies people couldn't get the
021uh the the dispensers to put up in the bathroom so there there could be some supply chain issues and that's kind of why we're we're saying uh these things aren't that expensive but we're going to need a lot of them because a big house with three floors could have a lot of these I don't know a lot is maybe an exaggeration I don't know three to six whoever the fire code requires so there's going to be a pretty big run on these devices so um that's why after talking to rental housing uh that day was put in there could be moved up could be moved back but that's a starting place for it thank you Jordan hi Jenna thank you for doing this work to Jen and whoever else has been working on it um
022we so just kind of a couple of thoughts that my husband had had as as we've read through this um so we proactively did this um a few months ago just so that we kind of had an idea of how things would go um you know looking at the international code it looks like our personal placement um kind of matches that but there are some things that are unclear so um I have four bullet points of feedback um the first one is regarding a little bit regarding responsibility um and so I just kind of want to throw out there that something to think about um when we say so detectors detectors are our number one biggest thing that we deal with as landlords like they are almost every time we go in a house our
023maintenance staff is supposed to check um just doing a visual walkthrough I mean they don't they don't check everywhere unless somebody reports an issue with one of them um but almost always at move out we will find a large number of detectors gone either completely um thrown away or just disappeared um and this has been consistent for all of the years we've been running our business so um we tell them in our I mean just to kind of give you guys background we tell them in our addendum um that there's a penalty for any missing we tell the minor addendum that they um you know if it beeps they should replace the batteries but that we are happy to do if it is too high or they can't get it down for some reason um
024we tell them in our uh check-in document which is just kind of a document about safety and workings in the house and they frequently disappear so I guess when I think about this I kind of looked and it doesn't look like we currently have um like there's not language looking at this ordinance it doesn't look like they're specifically language about penalties and I guess I'm just wondering um is there a mechanism and part of this is you know I see I see the feedback already and I know landlords are going to push back so I'm trying to help us come with with some some good things to kind of think about that so is there a way so for example tenants when they move in um they're supposed to fill out a condition an inventory
025sheet is there a way to kind of require that it's documented on there that they're in place and then the second question is you know tenants may not even know the requirements um so kind of some things to think about surrounding that is is there some I guess I'm mostly thinking landlords might push back on this so they're saying I'm going to get a fee but usually it's the renters that take these things down if they're there at moving so just kind of putting that out there that maybe there's a way that we can kind of collaborate with our heads together tonight to think about some ways to kind of deal with that uh possible barrier um maybe something including something like must notify landlord within X days of one not working that kind of
026thing and then I did hear you say you know the landlord providing batteries and in general if it's regular ceiling Heights and somebody just has a chair in general so that it can stop beeping that night and they can sleep those are fairly easy to replace nine volt batteries but you know I was curious as to Jen with you saying um landlord replacing batteries if we are are thinking about something like that in the specifics because they didn't see that so that's kind of idea number one idea number two um I just think that we have a lot of different building styles in Ann Arbor and that we really need to maybe this is now we have developed a question for our March meeting I think that we really need to have Clarity from the
027building department both in terms of we as landlords and renters as well about exactly like where they need to be because even reading that code I had some questions so our decisions that we made around boilers are that they go you know around the boiler but of course with a boiler there's no airflow in that house right so it made sense to put them in the rooms around the boiler that were sleeping rooms but some of that with boiler systems isn't really clear to me in that international code so I just thought that making sure that we are all on the same page so that landlords know what to expect might help some pushback and um you know a lot of this I guess in kind of doing research a lot of the really the
028older houses that are just draftier and have bigger gaps of course the the risk is less and so it feels important to kind of make sure that we've kind of covered all the different building designs and the what-ifs um that there are a little bit more than this international code because I I still have a little bit of on Clarity um lack of clarity about that and then the third bullet point um compliance and the timeline I just kind of have some questions and thoughts about that so uh we found we did a lot of shopping at cheapest they were 16 a piece buying in bulk um you know if you manage 400 units you could have to buy a fair amount of them it's still a fairly small amount of money but that may
029be something for pushback so um you know I want tenants safe as soon as possible clearly we already put them in everywhere but um I guess I'm just kind of wondering like there's there's really no um I'm just wondering if we're going to get pushed back about the 90 days because this could be like a five six seven thousand dollar expense for larger companies so just kind of thinking about that and then the other piece to that is of course these things only last 10 years um and so if we're saying you have to be compliant within 90 days we're saying you spend that if you say you have a large number of units three to four hundred units you may be spending six or seven thousand you have to spend that now and then
030it's a guarantee that you have to spend that plus inflation in 10 years so I wonder if there's a way to kind of tier it um you know there is a provision in housing code where variances can be sought for kind of undue cost burden to changing something so just kind of wondering um about that if we could you know just kind of think about that I guess I'm just kind of throwing that out there um and I'm also open to you guys saying no it just needs to happen people just need to to do the cost but I do think that that may be something that is gets pushed back on and that we may want to think a little bit about um and then the other thing that kind of came up like
031is there any if if we decide that we are going to stick with the 90 days um is there any money in the city or fire budget to kind of help cushion the expense or where you know a landlord could come get one for a handful of their units something like that just throwing that out there um and then number four being you know how are we going to communicate this to both parties um and so yeah any clarifying questions on kind of what I've thrown out there or anything from anybody I know sorry that's a lot of information as you guys know I come with um often but um anybody have anything I think the only thing that I would I would offer in any of your feedback was that I especially your I
032think you're 1.24 point was about the battery the the one thing that I was concerned about was that putting the cost of batteries um and that sort of Maintenance into the hands of tenants and so when he said yeah absolutely could you push a button and get rid of it or could you like go to Target on State Street and get a nine volt and come back like that I think serves one population but for people for whom um I think could potentially put them at a disadvantage financially um but looking at it from just an I guess an equality standpoint assuming that like a 10 battery or whatever is not much to anyone is not I I want to make sure that people are safe regardless and so that was I wanted to point
033that out that that was something that I had asked Mr Riser about specifically um but ultimately the responsibility for the maintenance should go with the person who owns that unit into for however long so yeah quick point of clarification that that was something that was discussed and I don't know if Mr Riser may have other things to add to that but that was so I think that that to me too is like it's a bigger you know if a smoke detector is beeping in the middle of the night like starts beeping like that's not something that's really and maybe I mean I'm open to renters telling me I'm totally wrong about this that's not something that we're gonna like go pay an on-call person to do usually in the middle I mean just telling you
034kind of how things work right now so usually what happens is we kind of tell them to have them on hand in case that happens of course we have houses that they can't change them because the ceilings are big but I think just kind of to make sure that we're um you know kind of going over how the real world things work too like we people tend to change them or take them down because they they can't get to them and so that that is a tough I guess I just want to mention that whole thing that process wise that that happens um so yeah thanks for listening yeah of course thank you for the feedback but Jen to answer your question yes um currently it's the uh the owner is responsible for assuring that
035the detectors and devices are maintained in good operating conditions and obviously a smoke detector or carbon monoxide detector without a battery isn't in good condition but owners can't go into Apartments so it's up to the tenant to you know you know so it's up to the tenant to let them know that they need the battery or that it isn't working you know I talked to the rental housing and I I'm a little surprised they take smoke detectors on the way out uh because they don't take them they just take them and they disappear so I don't think they take them they just they're beeping one night and they don't that's why we tell them to have a battery on hand and I I'm I'm curious to hear what you said John and I'll take that
036um kind of into consideration so maybe leaving a couple batteries in units we'll think about that but I mean I think what happens is they start going off at 1am somebody needs to sleep they just take them down take the battery out and then they go in a drawer and they just disappear but I mean it happens way more than you would think um Even in our like working young professional houses um you know we we see it in all of our housing that that they are often um misplaced um so yeah just kind of things to think about but maybe maybe the better process for us as landlords then is too to make sure that we leave a couple batteries for folks so there's like there's like kind of four different kinds of these
037the you know you can have a hardwired the AC works right goes right to your panel right your box and you know like you know they can't take that I guess you can take anything but uh those those are hardwired in and then there's the kind they had like the 10-year lithium batteries you know and then there's the kind that have the uh kind that have uh just other you know nine volt batteries with respect to carbon monoxide those they don't go up high uh like uh those are in different places and you can buy those that plug in but have a battery backup right now the problem is what do you do when you got a lot of when you need to plug in a vacuum cleaner or stereo system a lava lamp and
038whatever else you might need to plug in um and and then throw the thing in a drawer and not replug in the carbon monoxide that those are that's what you really got to worry about is carbon monoxide because that's the silent killer man that's invisible you're not going to smell it like you might smoke or whatever but um yeah so that's why I give some thought to the what the enforcement should be um uh whether it's too light too strict or whatever um anyways I see a lot of hands mm-hmm okay was that uh did everyone respond to uh Jordan's comments there too okay and we will move on to Robert hi uh I just wanted to kind of reiterate that uh clear guidance on where these things need to go would be very very
039helpful um not all you know I don't have access to the uh international code um I suppose I could get access but you know that it would just be very very helpful to know where they should go uh turns out uh hours were installed by a by an electrician and so presumably they meet code but uh Clarity on that would be real helpful for those who are going to have to install them in the future um then I have a question in section four one and two are sibil infractions and section three is a misdemeanor is there a reason for that it seems like that's um harsh punishment for tossing the carbon monoxide detector in the drawer because people died and that somebody died in a hotel because that happened because somebody sorted a system
040it could be a civil infraction okay it doesn't have to be but you know people die when these things are thwarted intentionally so you you it could be a civil infraction it could be a higher cylinder but yeah okay no that just makes a lot of sense to clarify though a lot of this is not um the clarification I think is important this is very much in line with what we have in place right now for fire detection as well so it's not as though this is a new standard that is being either more partially enforced or penalized um however you want to say that it's it's in line with what is already code around a similar safety device okay thank you I I just you know from what uh Jordan says and you know
041I think many others experience this uh is common just thank you Lucy yeah I wanted to First just say thanks to Jen I'm really um so uplifted that you took on this story took the initiative to make this legislation in my experience um working with City councilors on renters issues in the city things move a lot more slowly it's really hard to get people to listen so it's really like I'm just so happy that you're on the city council and it's really amazing that you've put this together uh I wanted to ask a question of process and procedure so now that I I haven't read the legislation until tonight that when Zechariah showed the screen it's the first time I've seen it so I don't have a lot of thoughts about the content immediately but
042from here it seems like it's in a pretty good place so what are the next steps from here is it that it has to be voted on in Council or what's the process for getting it passed is one question the second thing I wanted to say is just in response to Jordan and um uh Robert I'm so sorry it's like looking for you on the screen uh the reason why people take down their buyer smoke detectors is because they go off randomly all the time I mean I've talked to a lot of renters about this smoke who knows what triggers these things but whatever it is that ends up getting put up constantly beeping if you put something in the microwave or you know this that and the other so that's why people are taking
043them down and forgetting about it it's not like they're trying to steal the smoke it's a very very common issue you probably know that as landlords but it's because they don't really they don't function in the way that they're supposed to they go off all the time I can't cook bacon in my house without my smoke detector going off but that's another that's probably has more to do with me than the smoke detector um I I I'll let Mr Riser elaborate but um one of the purposes in terms of you know coming here this evening was to collect feedback and input and answer questions and sort of get a gut check um so I think our next step immediate next step is to take back um especially around the placement question anything that needs to
044be clarified and strengthened like we my goal to bringing this to my colleagues on Council is for it to be um thoroughly vetted and that's that's why I'm here so I do you have anything to add John um the the placement um they're where you think they should be like in bedrooms in hallways and maybe we could work with Lisa wandrash and Communications to kind of come up with an ordinance we did it when we rolled out the sanitation supplies for soap uh toilet paper you know tampons pads when we passed that so maybe we could do something that we could send to landlords and to tenants uh that requires where these where these go I will say that uh we have a two and a half year uh inspection cycle and this is something
045that our rental housing inspectors are going to look for are going to test they carry a stick so that they can push the button on the ceiling to test the the the alarm to see if the uh batteries are working so the this is something that they're going to check for um you know once it goes into effect they'll just add it to the checklist of mold and windows locks and whatever else they look for so and I think just to give a little bit of clarification on the location so yeah they they go in bedrooms but like for example in our two biggest houses they are um they're boilers and so there's no vents so we could have 20 bedrooms that they wouldn't be going in so I guess what I'm saying is that
046there are so many different configurations that don't know yeah go ahead sorry you're talking carbon monoxide right yeah right so they wouldn't they wouldn't follow the same pattern as smoke because it's just a different thing and a lot of us have these different building styles in Ann Arbor so what I'm saying we need help as landlords we need a if this is your situation this is where they go more specific because all of our buildings are so different we have some that have forced air so we put them everywhere we have some that are boilers so we wouldn't put them everywhere do you get what I'm saying are you home I get the nuances on all these things right and if you have a you know if you have a gas fireplace or if you
047have a uh you know let's say having a a new apartment that's all electric but um yeah so we'd have to really work with the fire marshal to develop an education piece that incorporates and we we import we have the 2015 fire code which isn't the latest fire code which is the 2018 fire code uh so so because that's just what we the city of Ann Arbor has so what I would suggest is that if it passes and I suspect that this will pass in some form and uh I think the next step are the council member Cornell and I to say okay how do we want to change this based on feedback that we've gotten from this commission and anything from uh the you know the uh landlords if anything and then how do
048we want to change it and then it'll be set for a public Hearing in a first or may I don't know if it's a first reading in a public hearing or first reading then a second reading in a public hearing and then there'll be an effective Aid after that but working with the fire marshal to come up with in examples like a a piece that we can put on the website and piece we could hand out I think would be really it's a really good suggestion uh Robert and Jordan okay yeah I have a few questions clarifying questions um so I know it was mentioned that there might be a large volume of these detectors that would have to be purchased well there will be yeah so it will be um but uh I was
049thinking about it and you know I I think that I'm fairly certain that uh what state law requires is um uh let me think about this if you renovate a rental unit don't you need to uh yep if you go to rehab or new construction yes yes so there are a lot of the a lot of the running units already have these so I I if your point is we don't have to buy that many Riser because a lot of them have them already and and that could be true I just don't know that there's a inventory or a survey out there okay that's what I was going to ask if if there was any data that had been collected about this or any research done about what number of units would potentially be applicable
050or what would be subject no no I just no okay that's all right um but something to keep in mind that it might not it's almost certainly not going to be you know not even all of the units that have uh that use natural gas I guess um okay and uh on that note I think that you know in the past when uh requirements like this have been instituted uh there was a um a list of trusted vendors that was provided um so that I and by the way I think my internet connection is a little spotty so please stop me if I if you can't understand what I'm saying but um but I'm wondering if the same thing could be done uh for you know affordable affordable carbon carbon monoxide detectors and ones that
051are well rated uh but I have a quick question to for Robert I know you said you didn't have you didn't have the international access to the international fire code is that I didn't quite understand your point there only that uh some of these code books uh are are expensive um and and not typically available uh you know publicly oh so so yeah that's that's that's the issue there I see I honestly assume that it was just free access online thank you for clarifying yeah so that I guess that stresses the point for clarification on the placement especially if it's being if the international fire code is being referenced um right I think that hits most of my points the last point I guess I'd like to make is I know that there was some
052discussion uh councilmember Cornell uh I know you mentioned may be into requiring this for all units period And I I did a lot of thinking about that some research and it didn't seem to make sense that I couldn't find other examples where it was required every single unit regardless of uh a natural gas hookup or appliances or garages or whatever so I really agree with what uh with the uh the scope of this particular amendment I appreciate you asking and coming here today no problem and I'm glad that you asked for that point of clarification email because it beforehand because it did make me go back to realize when I say all units I was thinking in my head all applicable units in to be more specific so that was very helpful of course thank
053you okay Jeff um the I had kind of two thoughts one of them was um I've noticed that um the uh the the amendment is written doesn't include any kind of um uh request a requirement that how tenants are informed that this is now a new policy um would it be reasonable to to add uh something that just said you know tenants must be informed by their landlord that this is this is a requirement that this is something that is going to be happening um so that they're aware that this is something they should be expecting um to you know increase compliance with that if this is something that the the council decided to do it could um or maybe that could be done through a resolution we could put it on our website um
054uh there are other groups that work with tenants um we are we'll have to update our constantly being changing uh Runners you know the tenants guide and so this will have to be printed out thank you Zach for the prop um so it'll have to be printed out and put in that and that'll need to be uh amended to incorporate this so I mean that's one way and so when a new tenant comes in they they get those and that's on our website and those are in you know the clerk's office so it'll be in there okay um I guess I was more also just to make it so like like I've been where I'm at for for many years and you know I I I keep up on this stuff obviously that's why um
055I was interested in joining the commission to begin with but you know I know a lot of people don't necessarily have the resources or even the knowledge that this is something that they are you know these are resources that they might have so whether it be a mailing or something that that might make it more obvious to folks that are a mailing or an email I you know there's pros and cons of each way notification that's something that I I guess Jen and I can talk about how how we want to accomplish that oh it's the best way to get it to tenants and frankly I want to get it to landlords because they're the ones they have to put them in you know um I want to make sure that those folks know to
056do it I mean as much as I want to get it to tenants I if it was the other way around it's an interesting to have this then that removes I thought of it as removing the burden from a renter to have to ensure that it was there that we were putting some um some guardrails around what their expectations were by just making it um part of the routine inspection process we're going to look for these Jeffrey you know when we get to that when we get to that dwelling you know that rental unit we're going to look for them and uh we're gonna we're for sure we're gonna do Outreach to the to the landlords because they're the ones that need to buy them and install them in the right places and I'm going
057to talk to the Fire Marshall and probably a good idea maybe even before it goes forward Jen to council to kind of have that attachment as to where they would go um just so the public has a better sense and as do landlord tenants everyone does I agree that's it's good feedback thank you um thank you um I the other question I had was um um is there any has there been any kind of research done um or can there be some research done to kind of a reasonable uh estimation of the supply availability of these things to make a reasonable deadline so that you know any any landlord that is in good faith actually trying to follow this is not going to be penalized just because they're not available within a 90-day or a
05860-day time frame is there been any or is there possible to be any kind of research as to the acquisition of 10 000 or whatever units to um make this feasible no Mr eisner's office has done that no no I would suggest that that's probably not the best use of steady we're not going to research it we're just gonna make them do it yeah yeah and not to be flip about it but it's it is something that is readily available and it is something that um there is it it doesn't in order like the idea of extending in order to put in safety equipment that could save somebody's life doesn't feel like too yeah I mean there's got to be a sweet spot as to what's reasonable and I guess I'd defer to Jordan she's
059the most she's the most knowledgeable uh having bought a bunch recently yeah I mean I don't think we should I don't think anyone should tell you supply chain issue and and then we try to shop local when we can but a huge purchase yes I'm not going to spend 500 extra just to buy them little you know locally so I mean it they're they're easily available I don't think we should accept that as like a barrier for why landlords can't do it I do think that the sheer amount I think like I said looking at the sheer amount that a landlord is having to purchase their financial burden that they're taking on at the outset is the bigger issue to me than whether or not they can get them um so particularly large landlords I
060mean we we assume most of the times that they're you know High profit commercial places but I don't know for sure that that's true and I don't know if they are operating on a margin that they would come and say we actually literally can't you know this is not in our budget to spend seven thousand dollars right now I don't know I hope they have that in reserves but just kind of throwing out their things for us to think about to anticipate if I made one last comment on location and then I'll I'll be quiet about it um we proactively installed them and uh the thing about that is if you do that they are hardwired and so the location of uh of our of our carbon monoxide detectors uh are not easily movable and
061so um uh I don't I don't know you know building codes change uh and I appreciate that but but um that's just another consideration for uh proactive uh installations Bob what did you I mean I'm just curious um what you you know ours are just the plug-in ones with the battery backup but like what did you pay per because well the hardwired is nice and then you don't have to worry about a battery if you're talking 60 to 70 dollars in it quadruples the price we're gonna get I mean that's then you're talking 24 000 investment thirty thousand dollar investment so I'm curious as to if you have an idea how much well it's it's it's hard to say the prices have come down a lot over the over the over the past couple years
062I think the the actual unit itself was like between 30 and 50 bucks but you know the the the the labor to hardwire it uh a bit more and because it's rental units uh you should know that you can't do the work yourself you have to contract it out so you're going to have to get a licensed electrician pull a permit get an inspection that that could take some time uh if suddenly all the electricians are being requested to to hardwire these I don't think that's going to happen but that that's just another Factor there are some code things that are required that require that so just just to be uh forewarned we certainly had all of ours done by by a contractor and it was permitted and inspected but uh and it wasn't really
063our option um you know what wasn't a problem but uh under some circumstances that may be required thanks Robert Richa and keep the shot I know we're we have other things on the agenda as well but yeah I think I kind of agree with Jordan's point on just or just that subject of being clear about who replaces so I guess when the tenant moves in like at that stage the batteries should be installed by the landlord for sure and just specifying in section section two who is responsible for the maintenance during the leasing period would just be helpful so that later there's no confusion uh a general uh concern I just have with some ordinances when we mention when they take effect is that we noticed with right to renew that um it was I
064think so say a month roughly I took two weeks after the ordinance came into was passed by city council it came into effect but it just wasn't clear which leases it applied to and um so yeah so if say a tenant has already renewed their lease for the next leasing period like 23 24 say they renewed in November because of you know what landlords do in an apple which is pressure tenants early like maybe this will not apply to them so will they eventually get a carbon monoxide detector in there this will apply this will apply now the tricky part is going to be that the landlord's going to have to schedule uh a time for him or her to put it in or his or her contractor if that they're going to hardwire them
065or do to do that so it's just not going to be a pertinent to a lease it's going to be if there's a structure that has a certain type of heat or gas or whatever then they're going to have to follow this ordinance so um we would expect that on the 91st date or 61st date or whatever uh the the city council ends up uh implementing um that that they're going to be there now if if there are complaints because they don't have it and they can't get them or it's scheduled that's another thing but it would go into effect on that 91st date or whatever the date is and they'd have to be there thank you dun dun or you're muted is there any standards for the products that is going to be installed
066the whatever you could it doesn't matter is that I could buy it at 35.50 or maybe even 50 15 cheaper so as long as could get it the landlord get it it could be installed there's any standards for this yeah it's probably going to have to be like an under UL listed or there are there are minimum standards that it's going to have to be yeah and again I think that's an important an important point of clarification that this is really we're trying to stay very closely aligned with established precedent around um smoke and fire detection those safety devices because they they've been around and on the books forever so um sort of following that lead felt that's that's probably a good best practice but it's probably Underwriters Laboratory UL list you're all listed but
067I this is incredibly helpful feedback and I know I've taken up way too much of your agenda but I appreciate it and I I think um John do you have any other additional clarification or things that you no no other than I I don't know if I can share my screen or not uh uh but the city of Ann Arbor planning and development services has a three-page handout I don't need to share it but if you go there so it's a it's a smoke alarms uh where they are where their location it's got a schematic of where you put them so we've done that for we've done that for um smoke alarms we can certainly do that for carbon monoxide detectors uh maybe I guess I'll drop it in the chat if I I'll able
068to do that I think the the big thing for me that came out of this was the um one obviously you know some points of clarification but um the communication piece of it because I always tend to think I'm bias in that direction given my background in Communications um but I do think that you know Mr Eiser saying that you know we could work with City staff around that in terms of um you know leveraging their expertise which there's in we have an incredible team at the city um you know to sort of lead that part of this charge I think is is a point well taken and heard here with um open arms so thank you thank you all so much this was a really thoughtful conversation and I appreciate you having me here
069thank you very much for presenting this we're very appreciative of your work on this issue um I think we I certainly read the news of um the accident the carbon monoxide accident was very shocking so I'm glad that there's action um and if any of the Commissioners have specific feedback that they think of later should they reach out to you personally at your city email do you yes you may and I will most likely forward it to John but please yes I would love to see it too so that's the easy thing is Jay Cornell etukov.org so great thank you so much of course thanks for being along for the ride and I hope you all have a really nice rest of your meeting and I hope it's productive for you thank you thank you
070very much yes that was a great discussion thank you everyone for participating in that um okay Let's see we can move on to our next piece of business which is 6-b which is the report we've been talking a lot about on wait lists for rental units uh in the city of Ann Arbor so uh on the agenda you can also find that document um now this is just a draft and it is not finished um I'm wondering would Gail or Richa or Hannah would any of you like to present this just give some updates on what we've changed and give some background as well for for our new members I can start a little bit if that's okay thank you so we the the start of the draft is giving a little bit of history
071about what's been happening with early leasing in um Ann Arbor and historically uh landlords were prevented from leasing the units within the first 70 days after Elise has started so police started on September 1st a landlord would have to wait till November 10th Yes somewhere about there before they could show the apartment to new tenants or or lease the apartment so in 2021 that was changed the timeline for that was changed so that landlords um have to wait until 150 days before the end of a lease before they can lease the unit or show the apartment so we gave a little bit of history of that in this document and then what we were noticing after 2021 when the date of the early leasing ordinance changed is that landlords were beginning to um create wait
072list agreements weightless fees and other ways for tenants to hold apartments or several an apartment or several apartments that they were interested in while kind of waiting for that 150 days timeline to roll around and so we tried to report on what we've seen what we've heard about um you know including holding fees that tenants prospective tenants can pay for multiple units you know it could be a couple hundred dollars it could be two thousand dollars some of the fees are refundable some of the fees aren't refundable some of the fees convert to a security deposit if a tenant or a group of tenants and getting the property if you know if the current tenants aren't going to stay so we tried to get I I we still have more information that we can collect
073that we are trying to collect but we had some you know feedback from some of the local landlords and I you know I I think I speak for for everybody in our group that you know we have some concerns about these um fees and how they're impacting and creating another hurdle for tenants to overcome if they want housing for the for the following year we're still looking into and working on recommendations but this which is why this is a draft so any comments or questions we'd appreciate Zach Lucy anybody anybody wanna um add to that that'd be great Richard Hannah or Lucy would you like to add anything Richard yeah I sorry if I missed or if I repeat something that gate is already said but uh firstly we've talked about the equity issue here
074before that uh tenants signing like multiple if there's a case where tenants are getting on multiple wait lists and having to pay for each uh it this system just favors more well-off tenants over others so like that's like for that reason I think when we discussed it in a smaller group we were we felt like a paid wait list system is just it's unacceptable because it puts a lot of low-income tenants at a disadvantage we talked about just wait lists at all being there and even that I think at the last meeting I wasn't there but I watched it later but one a commissioner had mentioned that it still creates it still puts pressure on tenants to make a decision early and the whole point of the early leasing ordinance uh conversation was that that
075fall time period just doesn't work for tenants and the pressure we are worried comes from the landlords it just creates a lot of just stress for current and prospective tenants we don't know of tenants like personally I don't know maybe others do of a tenant who really wants to find a unit is like 10 months ahead of time it's just the fear of just not finding anything else we've seen discussions on like Reddit and other social media platforms but the question is more like if I don't look now will I get anything next year and it's not because like they really want something right now because they just can't wait to you know book and like solidify their plans that early because people simply don't know I'll just quickly add that we heard from another
076like specific tenant group in the last month and that was students who want to move from say off-campus housing to fraternity housing and uh I think it's in the winter like early winter months Jan Feb is when even they get more clarity on whether they can move so a group of tenants contacted us saying they were forced to sign leases early um and are stuck now and are very concerned that all they can do is find a sub tenant when despite ELO Etc existing so my point here is that the waitlist system is still putting some pressure on tenants I think when we had the right to do new conversation also we discussed that we're not adding or removing units from the market so this whole con Narrative of like there had been some inflationary
077pressure on prices like rental rates Etc also just doesn't make sense to us but I'll stop here and pass it on to Hannah or Lucy or any anyone else who has questions or comments well I have a little a few things to add on I see but Lucy you raised your hand first so I can pass it on to you okay thank you um right so I I just want to build off of what you said there Rich about the um [Music] the pressure to commit to signing a renewal or actually signing a renewal early on and I'd like to point out that uh in the previous years that has the that pressure for some has actually been applied actually much earlier like around October or November um or December somewhere around there uh it's
078still happening but for many people it is happening a little bit later not for everyone um I just need to keep in mind uh no I there's a lot of uh pieces of data in here you know uh some course redacted correspondence there's a few other thing things that we'd like to include there's one more correspondence that I'm I'm going to get the permission of a renter hopefully to include after redacting it um regarding application fees and how they are similar in some instances to wait list fees um but if any of the the members of the commission feel that there's something missing a perspective that's missing questions that you still have that are answered um please mention that during the meeting tonight or if you notice it later on while reading through it uh
079please send us an email send um I I suppose to to Kristen um and some of the members of this uh subgroup we have like a working group writing this report um and that would be very helpful for us to fill in the holes uh one other thing I'd like to to mention as well here is that um Central Student Government at the University of Michigan they have been conducting a survey um they were planning in closing at the end of December uh I requested that they keep it open for a little bit longer because of the somewhat low response rate they've since doubled their the response the number of responses uh from like I think around 600 700 to I think one thousand around 1 300 somewhere around there so they have gotten more
080responses and there are questions on there that that ask about waitlists so I'm very excited to see that data and that might be able to be included in this report the trajectory for this report I know that once uh the subgroup finishes it we're going to send it on to City staff and they're going to take a look at it maybe provide feedback there and assuming that we can want to continue with this project I think it would then come to the renters commission and we would vote on releasing it passing it on to the council members that's all I have right now if you'd like to get involved in writing the report you're more than welcome to you can say that now or send us an email afterward um but I'll pass it on
081to Lucy yeah the report is is really clarifying it's nice to see um though people keep saying my name I had nothing to do with this scale I think did all the work and it's uh really really useful I was one my my question is for attorney Riser um council member Regina council member Harrison in the state is this uh does the city council know about this problem are there any ideas that you all have in terms of how to address this issue are there any examples from other cities where we can address this the city council did pass this legislation this is a massive loophole so I'm just wondering like um what's the solution here who's who's going to step up and try to come up with a way of saying the problem the
082solution you mean well Travis has got his hands up I mean traps thanks yeah I can uh take a shot at this um and I apologize everyone I'm oh I'm coming down with a cold or something right now so um uh but I uh I know that we are absolutely aware of this this is this is one of the things that we've been hearing about quite consistently from from tenants um it's it's very much been on kind of our radar as as hopefully uh a next at bat in terms of um reforms as we continue to move through some of these these uh renters rights expansions and um I know that we've we've started individually looking at um uh at potential Solutions we've had conversations but I know we have wanted to wait for exactly
083this type of draft and some recommendations to come from the renters Commission because we wanted to make sure that we were allowing renters to kind of lead on making some of those those recommendations and so I think this will be really informative to council as well um and and I know Gail mentioned potentially getting some recommendations in here um before the final draft and I think those will be will be helpful in informing what the next steps are as well thank you uh Cynthia we'd like to add on to that if not that's totally fine nothing to add at this point or it was pretty thorough thanks Travis great uh so I'll open up the floor for discussion of the report uh or questions comments questions I think would be great if not um we
084can always move on to our next point of business I have a question it has to do with weightless do we anticipate what the impact of the right to renew is going to have on wait lists in other words if you have a right to renew already then why do you have to get on a wait list because you can renew it automatically without doing the wait list and I'm just asking that do we know how that might impact it Gail and I know you did a lot of the work on this and others it seems to me that the um what can renew would apply to students that are tenants that are currently living in the union but but the wait lists are for people who are looking for other housing and trying to
085get in so the weight loss are being the weightless fees and the wait lists are being maintained for renters that don't currently live in the property that they want to lease so I mean it's it's happening now where you know a landlord may need to wait until mid-march to find out if the current tenants are going to renew and so um they're for for other tenants that have a potential interest in that property they're requiring um wait lists deposits holding fees whatever and then you know the prospective tenant has to wait to see if the current tenant decides to renew or not so you know that I mean I'm seeing it in the student population students are having to expend a lot of money for these you know wait lists there's you know there's one
086um landlord that's requiring about two thousand dollars total you know that's a that's a lot of money for a group of of students to put down and then have to wait six months before they know if they'll get it back they can't and they can't change their mind you know if they they're being told that if they um change their mind and say you know we don't want to be on the wait list anymore the the landlords are going to keep that money so it's it's a lot of money to lose and it's a big commitment for for people so no I don't think the right to be new ordinance okay is changing that and then one of the things I always worry about is what are they going to do next that's not a
087wait list or not a holding fee but something else like what's the next I don't want to say shenanigan the next artifice that is employed that that defeats the intent of this yeah I I think that we are already seeing some of that um or seeing I've seen a policy that could all maybe be a workaround already which is that um application fees sometimes take the place of waitlist fees um so you may not be explicitly placed on a waitlist uh but you you still are on a list of applications um and and the application fees can can be quite expensive 500 is what I saw the other day for an individual tenant um so I think it might we might have to also think about fees generally because any kind of fee system could
088be adapted to make to potentially be a wait list um it's kind of complicated and I will also point out that there we did find one uh landlord who was charging almost ten thousand dollars for to to enter into a waitlist agreement I think that that was intended for a group of four or five people so I think that that may be what you are referencing Gail and um first of all John do you have any more questions no no okay thank you Jordan was doing anything that John was saying uh no mine were well more General but okay then go okay um I don't know if it's my internet that's bad or Zacharias but hopefully you guys can hear me thumbs up um okay so I think a couple things are just kind of
089important to understand about this whole situation as we're making this legislation so Richard I I the r experience is very much different like as far as students do want a specific house because a lot of our stuff is central campus it's right on Tappan and Hill and so there there A lot of times are we want a specific house the other thing that comes into play here is the size of houses right so if you for those of you who don't really know and this this may be too big but I'll try to cut it down a lot of Ann Arbor units mostly are at like six people but there are other ways around that being that there are multiple units in one house that they are rooming houses so if you have a house
090that can fit 10 people or a unit that can fit 10 people the demand for it is incredibly high but you only have a handful of them because they're just not all that common and so I think um you know I think about like who I was as an undergrad and a grad student and there's zero chance I ever would have wanted to live in that type of situation that's just not not who I was um but there is kind of a different level of competitiveness and that's where this Equity discussion comes in right because a lot of these you know I heard the highest I've heard is actually 14 000 which was two thousand a person for a seven bedroom house um and that money was actually lost and that was two years ago
091I will say the stories and the amounts that I heard this year weren't quite as significant as the first year because I do think that landlords kind of got that we were looking into it and that it was um you know that people were questioning it so I do think that it is kind of important to understand that there is that demand now I I don't think that those are the voices that we should Center in our work because we're we're looking for Equity we're looking to do work for people who aren't in that situation and so I just want to note that it exists because it's kind of important to understand some of the the um you know the privilege that comes with these decisions and why why these situations kind of happen because
092they can and because there is that student population that's looking for that um and so I just kind of want to name that it's not really all that helpful but I do I do think that um we don't know we don't know what's going to come and I know that that John you always bring up we can't legislate everything and yes maybe that's true but um I do think that us continuing to push back on landlords that are doing these things that are unfair and that disproportionately harm the population of students that come from um more marginalized communities from lower socio economic backgrounds like we have to keep fighting for those students we have to prioritize them in our discussions um some of them are here with us tonight so I say them but some
093of us that are here on this call um so I just want to keep keep us reminded that those situations exist and our Focus needs to be on um the most disproportionately impacted foreign thank you Jordan Nick Nick hi sorry about the um I'm having some video issues I've had my hopefully it's not jumping around thank you every for the excellent report on the wait lists and uh the thoughtful comments and what I'd like to ask is some of the information that's not in the report one of the things that troubled me was when I looked at the landlord rationale none of them were economic and I'm wondering if the how much of the wait lists are being returned what percentage what um what amount of Inc what kind of economic impact this has on
094landlords is it just a cash cow is it something that is [Music] um you know compensating for a financial loss because what I'm hearing time and time again year in and year out is that vacancy rates are near zero um to me this can be analogized as charging people to wait in line at a store this is just to me something I have trouble accepting from a policy standpoint but I also understand the free market and I understand supply and demand and I'd love to hear from landlords a how much of this money you know as we survey all landlords not just about the amount of the fee but what percentage of the fees are being kept from people who didn't live there or didn't sign up and um what kind of economic losses or
095concerns that they have that cause them to charge these these fees I'd love to hear more about that rationale I'm always open to hearing from the other side being a tenant Advocate myself because I remember when I was at Student Legal Services there was a huge problem in fact I did a class action lawsuit with International students whose security deposits were being routinely kept by landlords because they knew that they were moving out of the country when they graduated and so I'm really concerned about these wait lists and I asked those questions and I'd love to hear the rationale Nick I mean I can give you our perspective which is you know we we had very little pandemic loss we did actually give discounts I think we were the only landlord in town that did
096um when things were shut down we were able to cover those with our PPP I think we took a little loss but um so I mean I think that you know that is notable there was a tremendous amount of support available every tenant that we need that we could hook up with um Washington housing access and those kind of things everyone got taken care of um eventually it was all it was all a wash for us so I can speak to us I mean our expenses are more but one thing that I note about this whole scenario is they dropped the lawsuit without any fight the landlord dropped the lawsuit without any fight and to me that says they realized that this was actually going well for them that with all the fight and now
097I can't I can't say that I'm you know that people have verbalized that to me um because you know we've been removed from a lot of those spaces so we don't hear much about that but I think that's a notable thing to for us to kind of just keep in the back of our heads thank you Jordan and I just want to add real quick um I really appreciated our Communications during the time I've been on commission I'm really glad you're on the commission you have such thoughtful things to add and thank you so much for that perspective thanks Nick you too and thanks for always listening to those who have I appreciate it thank you very much yeah and my question might be because uh I've heard we are talking about the uh everybody
098was talking different people so I have questions that first off I always say that applications uh so I'm just confused when this landlord maybe only have one or two vacancies and is there any limits the number that he could charge the students a waitlist fee or it's just because you only have two rooms available and he could just to have like 10 people's witness fees that's that means he could make that means we should have also have to limit the numbers that maybe if only he has two vacancies that does that mean he only could have two wait list fees could be charged to the students that could limit the number of students to lose and then that Jordan was saying that the students lost one thousand four hundred dollars and what's the reason for
099the students to lose it 100 four thousand uh one thousand four hundred dollars because the student gave up or just because of the landlord that cannot afford that's a good that's a good question it was fourteen thousand so not fourteen hundred was fourteen yeah they hadn't gotten the lease so there was no written agreement no nothing to protect them the money was just exchanged with a verbal agreement and when they got the lease it didn't work at all the dates were not right the price for the house was not right um so that's the other thing is that a lot of these are happening in the absence of any sort of written agreement or accountability at all and that's a really scary thing because no no other facet of our society would that be okay
100like we would never exchange 14 000 without some sort of protection for the person handing in the money that was that was in writing and so you you really have highlighted that point exactly right you're exactly right thank you so and and one more question is that when Zach said that there's the policies of 500 application fees so here is comes a number again so how many applications one landlord or the landlord could accept for those his vacancies or he could just accept forever as many as he wants is that the fair so is there any ways to limit them doing the thing so that we could prevent the things to happen too much like that thank you okay thank you very much these are really good points I've uh you may have noticed that
101I'm coming in and out of the meeting because of my unstable internet connection I don't know what to do about that um so if I do get kicked out for a little while Lucia is about the vice chair you can take over please and thank you yeah I also share those concerns about uh landlords taking many deposits um well application as well we're almost never refundable uh maybe in some instances but if you don't get accepted the money's gone generally uh waitlist fees uh often I've seen that they will be there's a promise that they will be returned that promise is not always fulfilled I've talked and directly to tenants who were promised the money back if they weren't offered a unit if they didn't take the unit and they it was very difficult to
102get it back but a lot of them at least had the promise of being returned but not always any other discussion on this report comments or questions Richard yeah I think we've so we have discussed recommendations so as a Next Step I personally feel like some more legal analysis would actually be helpful uh we've done some research uh it was really helpful to have Hannah also join uh and look into some literature out there are some statutes from other places uh but if there's any suggestions around you know solidifying those recommendations because we do have like within the commission already like Gail has weighed in uh you know Nick is here like there's a lot of expertise in the group some wondering how everyone feels like what we need to just make those concrete and
103send them over because we have had a discussion and we started to jot down some points so like What's missing foreign and adding off of that or any onto that rather in terms of the recommendations I do want to thank John Reiser for uh giving some [Music] very you know early explanation of the questions that need to be researched regarding potentially potentially prohibiting or capping fees or regulating wait lists I know there's more legal work to be done but I'm appreciative of um some of the feedback there foreign move on wonderful well I'm extremely grateful to everyone who's worked on the report if you'd like to get involved we'd love to have you because it's a it's a good amount of work on just a few people this is obviously just part-time and volunteer okay
104with that we will move on to the uh next point of business which is six six dash c um an update from the tenant education committee which met I believe it was was it two weeks ago um that's Tuesday February 7th I see thank you Kristen for writing that down so would anyone from the tenant education committee meeting the last one like to give a little explanation some um report back uh on what was talked about at that meeting I can start though I joined late and then I'll pass it on to someone else who's at the meeting I thought it was a really good uh meeting at least a portion that I attended this was our second meeting where we just focus specifically on looking into materials that already exist and thinking about how
105we can build on those uh like either amplify what's already out there and say create anything new where there are gaps so broadly we uh like there's a working folder on Google Drive that everyone in the subcommittee has access to that contains like a master document uh yes so there is this like Master document over there on the extreme left uh yeah and this just is like a working a space where you're going to just work on make different parts of uh just tenant education or tenants rights materials out there so as an example I just read re-read the housing code uh in the last two months and highlighted a few uh points that stood out to me is things that I don't think about on a regular basis but could be helpful for me
106to know as a tenant and it's somewhere in here so that's just one piece another example is the rights of Duties booklet that we have but oftentimes like don't read very thoroughly so there's space in here for uh just making notes on various documents that like the universe of material out there potentially for Ann Arbor tenants the stuff that Zach uh we're looking at right now is this list of uh like we created a short list during the meeting during the last meeting of some pertinent issues that we think um tenants like we could direct tenants attention towards so I think we made a list of five five to eight uh topics such as if there's a maintenance request and we don't hear back early enough from our landlord so how do you navigate that
107um what does withholding rent look like if like when is that uh merited how does that work uh also ELO right to renew when are when can you get out of your lease there are some specific cases where you can how do you find out if your building is not up to code so we made a list of a few issues that we think could be uh summarized in some form on and the purpose of this is to put it on the renters commission website or potentially the uh another electricity website where there's like centralized information around tenants uh just services for tenants uh and as a I think we liked we looked at what Gail and I think Nick had worked together to submit to Christian and it's already on the website which is
108like a table with various organizations and how to reach them for legal support we thought maybe modeling uh this like know your rights type uh like repository on that format where you make a table with various like common issues and what like resources the tenants could access which where there's like how to's might be helpful and it seems like my observation is that there is already a lot of work that's been done for example when I read the housing code I saw winterization mentioned in a few places like what adequate heating should look like and so on and I noticed later that Gail I think is already authored uh nice very informative piece on that uh so the good thing is that if we just do a little more digging we can find something specific
109to Ann Arbor that's already on the internet so we don't have to start from scratch so I think as a next step we just divided labor a little bit uh we know as I mentioned a gale already through Student Legal Services has contributed a lot so maybe running some of these issues past scale would be helpful so because I'm sure there's a lot of insight and feedback on what's there what can be built what more can be added we also discussed reviewing the rights and duties booklets specifically in case there's anything in there that could be useful we haven't I don't think we talked yet about creating new content but I think we'll be careful to not uh duplicate efforts or you know do something that someone's already done maybe in a better way so
110there's uh we want to be careful about how much time we all have in general but I'll pass it on to others who are at the meeting how will I say that I really appreciated that meeting I learned a lot and all the informations you just uh listed there it's extremely helpful and it's logical it helps a lot thank you and thank you very much Richard I know you put in a lot of prep work and you made the drive um and Kristen I know that uh I guess let us know if you have any concerns about the uh putting things in a drive I know that's maybe not uh that might not be traditionally how commissions store their data but we just needed something to put notes in uh and it's been very useful
111just let us know any uh discussion comments concern yeah Lucy go ahead yes I just wanted so one thing that we talked about too was um the tenants rights and Judy's handbook and we talked to the last meeting about the kind of long process it takes to update that but one thing that we talked about in this meeting was putting a form on our renters commission website where people could submit that they didn't get it that way we can get a sense of who has access to their rights and who doesn't and I just wanted to see if Christian had an update about the possibility of that for us foreign as of right now but I'm still looking into it thanks thank you any other comments okay well I know um I think we already
112scheduled our next tenant Ed uh or wait yeah our tenant education committee meeting uh I can't remember when that is let me take a look and then calendar does anyone happen to have that yeah Richard I think we just tentatively discussed that we had the last meeting on a Tuesday so that I think March 7th is a Tuesday around doing that yeah that's great so if anyone is interested uh even if that time doesn't work for you uh just email Kristen please and then we'll be sure to include you in the future great okay well then let's move on to our next piece of business uh which is um let me see our plan for March 16th the next renters Commission meeting so I think I'd just like to open the floor here and hear
113from all of you what you'd like to discuss at our next meeting Richard I wanted to check with Christian dude uh how do you think we have a good set of questions for the guests who will be joining the meeting from rental Housing Services like I just put in several thoughts but if you think they could be organized a little differently it's possible that some information need not be addressed at the meeting itself uh if someone else you know like they're it might be like a link to a website that I could read later so everything need not be addressed but yeah I just want to check in about how that document is looking to you I thought it looked like there were some really thoughtful questions in there I thought it was really helpful
114where you referenced um like specific code questions so I think that I don't think rental housing should have any issue with their responses for those um and I can tell them when I share the information that if it is something like just sharing where that information is stored they can provide that in a link um so they'll have to spend time uh kind of going over it at the meeting if that time would be better used doing like a like a back and forth conversation I just wanted to clarify maybe for our newer members who are having a mem a member of the rental Housing Services Department come to our next commission meeting and they requested that uh that we write out the questions in advance so that they can research and have time to
115to answer them or have the answers ready and uh today was the last date is the last day I guess there's still time to include questions for rental Housing Services so if you do have any questions there's this document here and Christian do you know if this has been shared with everybody I believe it has I can send it around again this evening we'll extend that to um like the end of the day tomorrow and I'll send it to rental housing early next week so that they have a good amount of time um you'll still be able to ask them questions also at the meeting um but this just provides them with the opportunity to do some research or maybe do anything to prepare so it's definitely your conversation with that is not limited to
116this I'll send out the link now thank you very much Kristen thank you for clarifying well I think there will be further discussion of the report the waitlist report I'm expecting that we'll make some progress and bring it to a more finished state so that's one thing that we could have on our next agenda another potential uh although this is very tentative and I don't think it should be included yet and the next agenda is um it really depends on what happens with the carbon monoxide discussion but I think we'll have to check in with councilmember Cornell and John Riser and if it looks like it's to a more it's brought to a more finished State then we could also maybe write resolution on our thoughts about that but I think we'll play that one
117by year good job I was thinking since we're still winter but kind of like spring is near if we have to revisit the town hall conversation uh if that does that Merit a little like planning subcommittee for now I think it's okay to discuss within tenant education but maybe if we have a few high level ideas to share and get some feedback that might be good and then we set some like a date and how we we already have notes from our first town hall planning meeting so maybe you revisit that and check in with everyone because we have new members also so maybe maybe like Town Hall can view the agenda foreign just to clarify richum are you thinking about having a discussion about the town hall at our next renter's commission meeting yeah
118sorry little more context so I think we want to do a public this is a context for everyone else that we were hoping to do a public facing event I think this was last fall around where we meet tenants just hear from them a little bit about their challenges just experiences living in Ann Arbor and staying in touch like just generating some awareness that the commission exists and there's Avenues to like learn about rights and things like that so yeah I think just like re resuming thinking about that so that we have some bigger potential like Town Hall in April or May April is too soon like maybe May June something like that great thank you Rich for clarifying any other ideas about what should be on our next agenda for March okay give it
119another moment but otherwise we will move on and if you have ideas you can email them to Kristin and that will get to um to I guess the chair and the city council Liaisons we'll uh consider putting that on there wonderful let's move on to uh 0.6 Dash e which is a discussion of the vacancies the current vacancies on the renter renters Commission and just to preface this I um you know I I we've had a few vacancies in the past couple months um I've heard from members of the commission that we want to have more applicants so we can more easily recommend to the mayor like a representative pool of of potential appointees and I've also heard that um we want to make sure that the commission is staffed fully by Commissioners as best
120we can to distribute the work load and also make sure that we have more voices at the table so I'll open discussion for anybody I'd like to raise your hand Nick thanks hopefully my video doesn't jump I just want to make sure that we're on the same page about what the process is which is uh as I best can tell that we all sort of confer and um it's like the advise and consent analogy that the Senate has when it's you know approving a judge we don't have veto power we we can't make selections but we can help the mayor um make a decision or we can pass on names to our Council Liaisons to help them make a decision and they don't know if that's just in consultation with our chair Zachariah or with
121the entire commission so that's what I'd like the discussion to take place around what is the process yeah if I could just respond so I uh and the council members can jump in here I Know Travis you you've explained some of this to me but I think for the other commissions um usually it's either just a chair or the chair and one or two other members of the commission so it's a pretty small group I know in uh we discussed uh having the this commission just uh rely on the chair and the city council members but I think that to make that recommendation to the mayor and you're right that it's the mayor's role but I think that we came to the conclusion as a commission that we wanted to allow the process to be
122a little more open and have volunteers uh to have like a smaller group of I think like four or five people uh Max to take a look at the applications so we were able to open it up democratize it a bit but not make it uh too too large of a discussion since it should be a somewhat Private Matter I hope that makes sense yeah and and just to clarify that for this commission and it does vary by commission there are some commissions where the council Liaisons to that commission have the power to make appointments um in most of the cases it is the mayor who makes appointments um and then Council um confirms those appointments um because we uh want to make sure that we are hearing from the commissions with which these individuals
123will work um in almost all of the cases and all the commissions that I work with um we also consult with some subset of the Commission in reviewing the applications before making those recommendations and so in some places it's the chair and the vice chair um in some places it's just a chair with this group it's it's a smaller committee um and so that varies by commission But ultimately it is it is a recommendation um and the mayor often uses those they they heavily kind of will help to influence his his decision but ultimately in this case it is his decision to look at the applications and to make an appointment um it is I would say rare that he would um he would appoint someone that is actively opposed by a commission um I
124don't know that that has happened in my timeline Council um but um but it is ultimately within his authority to to make appointments and for Council to confirm yeah thank you very much Travis uh does that answer your question Nick I I feel a lot more edified thank you so much great Hannah yeah this is just a small comment about to get more applications but I think the temp the town hall would be a good place for that and especially like tick access maybe different um representative voices than the ones that the regular channels would I'm also just this might all already be true I'm just not on my social media that much but like as much as the city of Ann Arbor and our Council people can push out the openings I know the
125city of Ann Arbor itself has a lot of followers but Kristen I don't know if that's like a process or maybe they already do it but when I used to work in local government we always included it in our newsletters any openings on commissions and Twitter as well yeah I see Travis's hand went up and said that so go ahead yeah um so there there are certainly opportunities for um for the city to promote uh vacancies and I would say that the city as a whole probably does it more broadly um at certain times of the year because there are periods where a lot of vacancies occur because terms are up um in this case we have a couple of vacancies because of early resignations um some of our commissions and I don't know Kristen
126this is maybe where where you can help I don't know that our list has grown that substantially yet a lot of commissions because they've been exist in existence for a number of years have much larger list serves that follow the work of those commissions and so it's easier to send out a message to the folks who are following the work of that commission to solicit applications um and then I know that you know I personally will push out um push out a message every once in a while saying that we have vacancies and trying to to push people but I know that particularly if we are looking for and this is important to me particularly really if we were looking to make sure that we have kind of diverse perspectives on our bodies I think
127we need to work really actively to reach out to those communities and not just expect them to find us because often the most marginalized or the most um uh challenged renters in our community may not necessarily always be the ones who are interfacing with their government or their elected officials regularly so so I know that Cynthia and I are actively doing some Outreach right now into some of those communities to try to get people and invite people to the table thank you Jamie yeah um related to what Travis was just saying sorry I have a cold too um so I'm a little froggy sounding but um so in terms of community outreach and I think this came up a little bit in our education meeting like as the writers commission are we is community outreach
128something that falls under our umbrella or is that more like um council members to do community outreach and extend and like and inform people about the renters Commission I don't know who that's a question for exactly go ahead go ahead Chris and I was just going to refer them to the uh the bylaws article three your purpose objectives and duties 3.1 and there are a through H that kind of talks about what you folks are about and what you're doing Monitor and evaluate Trends pose evaluate recommend respond to policies practice or laws that impact Runners monitor the enforcement solicit inputs from stakeholders such as land um communicate regularly and work with other City boards and commissions and staff consult with City attorney's office consult the city General housing unit um oh thanks and then are
129you guys down three folks because you're you've got like six team right three 11 voting five non-voting and I counted 13 not counting you and me and you and me the website says two two vacancies I don't know if Christian can co-sign if that's yeah I can double check I think it's two I think we're down in hhsab liaison also right now that position is found voting um I'll add to what John said our um for this purpose for recruiting people to apply you could certainly share this opportunity with people um in your network to refer them to the city's website to fill out an application is totally fine and appropriate um that you definitely did that was that the was that the whole question yeah pretty much I was just thinking in terms of
130like connecting with you know maybe somebody that's not in my immediate Network to try and expand um applicants to different communities like just in terms of even saying you know going into a neighborhood and oh you know um with the renters commission we have our meetings you know even just like making the meetings more like not even not even to the extent of like do you have any you know are you a tenant do you have any issues but like this is when our meetings occur you can come to us with public comment like just general like information about the commission are we is that something that's in terms of like getting the word out um I think it's definitely something worth exploring I'm I'm picturing that as kind of like uh like maybe like
131a flyer on a mail room bulletin board kind of thing um I don't know about like a door-to-door situation but I think that um I can look into it and ask I I think that uh with the purpose of reaching some folks who maybe aren't plugged in um it had 9 26 p.m um you know to our meetings I think is worth looking into good question thank you and and if folks have ideas um I'll also just add like feel free to share them even if you don't have the time or or um or if you're introverted or whatever it is and you don't want to do that Outreach to somebody you might not know um I think you know Cynthia and I are happy to to do some of that um I know I
132have a an upcoming meeting with um the Bryant Community Center and I'm going to chat with them about you know if there's anyone within their Network that this might be a good opportunity for and ask them to make recommendations to us as well that's actually my suggestion check in with Bryant Arrowwood High cone you know all of those people know good good folks in their Network that was all my hand was up for too really good suggestions thanks um I see the next on the list is Richa yeah I have a question for council members or Kristen I think it would be really helpful if we have like a very specific blurb because I know of organizations who would just would put in their newsletters like they send out bi-weekly monthly newsletters and the more
133specific we can be the better we can Target our Outreach because we have a general unique we can see a notification on the website and we have gotten applications it's the applications are coming in uh so I think if it's a matter of better targeting we need to like write that out and then I can send it to organizations uh I had another thought um yeah I think we've I liked Jamie's idea of just getting the word out I think there was a mayor's green Fair where there was a renters commission table and Zach uh Hannah Kristen were there and talk to tenants and did that awareness thing I think in a couple of tenant Outreach events that I have done on behalf of other groups we've talked about the renters commissioner and courage people
134to apply and I have another event coming up next week so I will be talking to some tenants and I will again ask people to apply so that's something we do um yeah I I'll pause I see others have raised their hands and then come back if we have time for more okay thanks Richard Jeff uh hi um I'm wondering if um you know having be new here not knowing everybody yet if there's like a particular area of the city or a award that might be um underrepresented here as well that might be worth specifically targeting I am going to ask Travis do you know if we we can pull someone when folks fill out their applications they they do Mark uh it does tell us which Ward they're in and so we could actually
135pull to see if there's a geographic um region of the ward um I know Cynthia and I in our conversations are really focused on some of the perspectives that are missing from this body um I know for example both of the recent resignations were our black Commissioners um and so making sure that we have some racial diversity on the commission um making sure that we have some folks who might have experienced homelessness because one of the folks that we that we lost was was somebody who had experience working with homeless populations and so there are some some marginal populations that are not currently represented at the table and I think that's where our Focus has been go ahead Lucy hear me yes okay I wanted to say a few things which is that I I
136had done some Outreach to people and a few of them said that they had already applied so I don't know if they're in the first round so I don't know if those applications if I should ask them to resubmit them or what the deal is there but they weren't in the list of applications that were sent to us as the ones that we have gotten and that was about three people the other thing is is that I asked a handful and I just think people should know this I asked a handful of tenant organizers that I know if they would be interested in applying for the commission and they said no because they haven't seen the city of Ann Arbor take seriously tenants rights issues and so they would prefer to keep doing their tenant
137organizing so I've stopped asking tenants organizers because I can in good conscience ask them to come to this committee Commission thank you Lucy Cynthia I saw your hand up before mine actually I don't know how I ended up in front of you so I'll let you go can I just pop in to say I have to leave so I'm sorry I don't want to talk about that no worries thank you very much I appreciate your presence yeah um I just kind of wanted to jump in here I I had seen the emails um regarding the uh openings and I didn't get a chance to kind of weigh in and so I want to just piggyback I've been speaking with Travis this week um and as I was kind of preparing for this meeting I was
138actually uh looking over something that occurred yesterday that I'm really excited about the Washington County Board of Commissioners actually passed a resolution to establish uh Washtenaw County advisory Council on reparations for the purpose of studying and developing reparation proposals for black uh Washington County residents and if I just wanted to share the various um as it pertains to um you know how black people are uh basically disproportionately um effective when it comes to when it comes to housing so I'm going to read a few um a few of the whereas clauses whereas black people have disproportionately been forced to reside in adjacent to or near toxic sites that negative negatively impact their health and property and whereas black people have been denied housing through racist practices in the private Realty Market including redlining steering blockbusting
139denial of mortgages racially restricted covenants and gentrification and black people have dis and whereas black people have disproportionately experienced substandard housing by government housing policies that include discriminatory VA FHA practices urban renewal and a variety of local and federal affordable housing programs that constant trait uh poverty and and I'm going to jump up to a different whereas Clause because in addition to um the importance of having somebody black on this commission it is to me very important that we also have somebody that's been um impacted by the criminal legal system um those individuals uh when we were discussing the wait lists earlier um circling back to that before I read this last whereas Clause the folks that are um really uh largely being hurt by these wait list um fees and and these uh predatory
140practices that landlords are are practicing right now um oftentimes largely largely is the black community they're they're applying more often and being denied um therefore they're paying more in fees uh oftentimes um in these wait list fees so um you know I work in these spaces I'm a Rancher manager for the organization we work with returning citizens for the organization that I that I work for so amend these spaces a lot I hear what's happening um and uh it's black and brown marginalized people of color and folks that live with who have been impacted by the criminal legal system that largely are really suffering when it comes to housing here in Washington County uh the last Warehouse Clause I'm going to read is that black people have been unjustly targeted by law enforcement and criminal
141justice procedures incarcerated at disproportionate rates and subsequently excluded from Full participation and the benefits of citizenship that include voting employment housing and health care so that's just what I wanted to add tonight I'm sorry I didn't get to weigh in um earlier in um the emails that were going um back and forth but I figured I'd save it till this evening so that's all I have for now thank you very much Cynthia um I think those points are definitely received here um and uh they're also somewhat reflected in the report uh because we're trying to come reference exactly the the Fig the facts that you're mentioning there um I know that they're uh frustrations about uh how much work is falling upon the Commissioners we we currently have and I know that there are some
142really good applicants um who have applied but I I'm also hearing what what um but you've said Cynthia I Know Travis you've mentioned as well about trying to get um diversity I so I think that um trying to increase the number of applications needs to happen I know that um we had discussed this I believe in December um and I don't know if it's Travis you mentioned that you were going to ask the other city council members to include that in their newsletters the application and I was wondering if that had occurred if that they had done that I have mentioned it to them to them as I've talked to them but I don't know if they've all included it yet but I can follow back up with them again okay and if there's anything
143we can do to help with that if you'd like us to write out and a request um someone on the commission I can get if we weren't happy to do that um so let us know how we can help that I think that would help I think that some of the other suggestions would also help when it comes to people who've experienced homelessness I I think that would be I think it's a really good idea um to to try to get applicants from that Community um the friends that I have who have experienced homelessness I don't think unfortunately would be interested in serving on the commission because of their experiences with government generally so that's going to be difficult um just putting from my personal experience out there um I will certainly um and and
144to add on to that I know there is also some discussion about graphics and um thank you for bringing that up about a blurb which I think a description would be really really helpful that's all from me thank you Richard yeah I just wanted to ask again to point out that we have two vacancies and that puts a lot of the work on a few Commissioners and that is we for example we got a really good Memo from the city about enforcement and we are not going to get to it until five weeks from now because we're on multiple subcommittees uh and we have meetings come we have a tenant Ed meeting next in a few weeks and we do not want to neglect that for enforcement but these are all urgent issues so I
145really I want to hear from like others on the commission about how we navigate this when there's so many urgent tenant issues and but we're not fully staffed uh and I completely agree with what zakira like I've had a similar experience and we do go to tenants where they are we do and I am in multiple tenant rights groups um which include marginalized tenants and they do not they organize in other ways Lucy's also mentioned in the email so while I'm happy to again the blur would be really helpful can continue Outreach and I'm because I'm already engaged we've talked about separate I cannot just step down and have more people so there's more vacancies later but we don't have like we have applications we have vacancies and we're not filling them uh but yeah
146as in if my proposal that's why in a separate email thread was to fill the seats and as we continue to ramp up Outreach and more applications come in I don't think applications need to or interest needs to only come in when vacancies happen a pipeline is great so that as in when a commissioner feels like you know they're feeling a little overwhelmed with work we know that hey we actually have some really good applicants someone can step down on others can take on like I'm I can easily step down by May June and use like public comments and other spaces to engage with their renters commission so just wanted to say that that's the intention here to fill seats and then you know those of us who have other ways of engaging can step
147down and then like as more applications come in so Richard just to clarify what you're saying that you're saying that you would you're proposing that you would step down so that we could start filling some of the seeds but still leave some open for the kinds of applicants I would say that we fill seeds but when we have applicants right now and while we do Outreach because the Outreach process is a longer term process and if the concern is that with the full commission there's not going to be room for more diversity there's room for like I know for myself to continue to engage with the renters Commission in other capacities rather than being here like you can step aside and have the spots taken so I would say like I would I'd rather see
148a full commission at all times is my point I see thank you for clarifying I hope you don't step down I really appreciate your presence and your work here Lucy yeah I was going to say many of the same things Richard said I will also I'll gladly step down if a full commission comes together meanwhile some of us are doing a lot of work meanwhile some of us have done a lot of Outreach and people have expressed to us this is not the space that they don't that they would like to do their tenant organizing work there are many Community organizations which are doing incredible tenant organizing work the renters commission has just has just started and we have not so far done very inspiring work uh and it it's hard to get a commission
149off the ground so that's just part of it but meanwhile some of us are doing a lot of work and I would say uh commissioner Harrison I would really appreciate you reaching out to us individually I really appreciated what you said you're new to the commission there's there's much more background that we could give you some of us have been doing tenants rights work in the city for a while and there's there's just a lot to know but you know we're really tired we're really overworked it's a working class commission so I I'm fully in support of making our city commissions more diverse for example I would really love a renter or a low-income tenant on the Planning Commission where people do development work I mean we need working class voices all across the city
150this is a primarily working class commission so you know we're tired we don't have a lot of money we're doing free labor for the city and there are vacant seats we need to fill them okay Rich oh Richie did you put your hand back up no okay Nick uh yes um boy there's so much I want to say uh first of all I want to thank um council member Harrison uh for her advocacy and her presence on the commission um re-entry for the incarcerated um or those those who have contact with the criminal justice system trying to get security deposits past economic checks Etc is a nearly insurmountable um thing and sometimes we focus a lot on student Runners and we have to remember that is a percentage of the folks that we're trying to
151help we also of course have to remember that landlords are big and small and small landlords you know depend on um rental income for a living and it you know that even as a tenant Advocate you know I I get that I mean you're trying to put food on the table for your people too but as far as what you need to bring to the table to Be an Effective commissioner what we're seeing is you need to support you need you know maybe you're connected with an organization and that's why you've been selected to the commission maybe you have support from your organization so that you can do your research and study and bring preparation to the meeting and that's not easy for a lot of people no matter what your Walk of Life is
152no matter what uh position you're in and it's um it does make it a challenge to try to recruit people when the people we most want to serve have the limitations that make it most difficult for them to be have their voices heard so it's not an easy process the Outreach things we're talking about I think are really important and um ah you know in my original question when we opened this topic is making sure that we all can be heard even though that we're not the decision makers about who's being chosen but to make sure all these voices can be heard about who is selected to the commission I just want to Echo that Nick I think you put it very well that uh expressing The Challenge and trying to get people who are
153more disadvantaged in the rental market to serve in the commission because they're the ones who are at least able to do that um I'd like to ask both of our council members how can we help as a commit as Commissioners and um um informing potential applicants especially the ones from the backgrounds that you mentioned um like that there are two vacancies and know how to apply how can we help I guess um besides the ways that um were mentioned we're just you know reaching out in our own circles because I'm not sure that our own circles are gonna find the applicants that uh are needed I mean even if you have ideas outside of your own circles like I said before you know we're happy to do some of that groundwork um I know that
154um councilmember Harrison has been has been in contact with the brighter way um where she is I believe also a board member um I actually just heard back today from the Housing Commission that they have EXT um shared the information with three of their residents that they think would be strong at uh applicants um and as I mentioned I'm reaching out to Bryant Center um in the next couple of days in in a meeting that I have about some other topics with them and so we're doing that Outreach um and so if if there are other ideas that maybe we're not thinking of we are happy to to put in the work of reaching out to those Community organizations or leaders so just let us know okay and just to follow up on that um
155are we going to uh is there a date by which we want to re you know re-commence this discussion uh automatically or are we just going to wait until uh oh my gosh what's going on with Nick out here this was nice enough to text me to let me know that my video screen was was going crazy it's like a horror movie that's why I keep cutting out um on the on the uh video okay um and again this is a question I think specifically to the council members is there uh do we want to visit revisit this in a month or do we want to just play you know what how ideally would we proceed in your eyes yeah I mean I think this should be a standing conversation um so if there are
156vacancies we should be talking about them um and so I I don't think um that that's a concern at all I think we should have absolutely revisit um we can give you an update at the next meeting if if our group hasn't already met and and made recommendations um so I think that um uh absolutely just kind of keep it going and I agree with Rita that this should we should absolutely be developing a pipeline and that's part of why we're wanting to establish some of the relationships with some of these organizations that can help to continue to build that pipeline for us of applicants okay thank you I'm moving on to Hannah so I kind of forgot my hand was still up because I don't think I have anything new to say but um
157thank you councilmember Harrison and then also council member radina uh for the information and the thoughts that you shared I I was gonna just ask what Zechariah said about like how we can help I feel like I've been talking about this with like close friends like I feel very aware that I'm like a white graduate student on this commission where I think like there's like great advocacy around students already and so I like very aware that like I don't know like what if my voice is needed here and then that being said like I want to help push the word out too my people are law students who like sure some of them need help but I'm not worried about them finding housing in a crisis I think they are people who know where to
158go when something happens and so I would just like to help with that too the only thing I'm really thinking of is um our law school clinics because those people are like pretty long-term community members I also know that Nick knows those people a lot better than me so maybe I'll just reach out to him over email and see if I can connect with these clinics um about like their former clients the ones who worked with like work with housing people in particular because I'm sure current clients probably wouldn't have the capacity but maybe former clients and people they work with would um but that's my only idea if other people have law school adjacent ideas I'd love to hear them and I look forward to hearing from you on that Hannah awesome that's a
159terrific idea all right so Lucy did you you had your hand up no forget it okay all right um any other comments on this discussion point Richard yeah I think this was helpful just to have on the agenda because some good ideas have come in uh but I will again say that we we're understaffed and that's that's very difficult as as I said take we're postponing an enforcement meeting that could have happened much sooner it could have happened in the second week of March but we're not doing it because most of us on the enforcement commit on the enforcement committee or in the tenant Ed committee and so work slows down and the waitlist report has also taken months because all of us in the waitlist committee are an enforcement committees and tenants so there's
160a lot of work that very few people are doing and that will continue for another month at least that's all thank you uh Cynthia I saw your hand up I know it's getting late and I don't wanna I know it's like can I just ask just I'm new I'm still learning can I ask a little bit about the the Committees and how you know how many folks are on what committees or like do you mind just kind of of course I hear I hear all this work that you know the I'm just kind of curious about I know I'm I serve as a liaison and an ipoc and and we um we limit the number of committees that our commissioners can be on it's the work is it's a lot of work so can you
161just can someone like share with me a little bit about of course and I think that um well maybe we have something to learn we I think we do have something to learn from you and your experience on ikpok because most of the people here I don't think have served on commissions and we just created these committees since uh because we thought they were needed um and we didn't limit membership for example but I think that if we did we would probably have not be able to do so many so we have a uh I'm not actually sure if it's officially a committee but we have a group working on uh the waitlist report um we also have this we have a tenant education committee we have a committee that's talking about uh that's discussing
162uh the enforcement policy for right to renew and early leasing ordinance there's three and then we have kind of an um an ad hoc committee to make the uh recommendations to the mayor for appointments am I missing anything there did I get all of them Travis sorry this is not an addendum to what you're saying I think you did get all of them um I was also just gonna say I think this is an opportunity where um you know and this may not be a solution right this moment because we are talking about the need to to find additional people to come into to the work but the um the working groups and correct me if I'm wrong uh Kristen but that is also an opportunity where we can pull in um individuals in the
163community who may not serve as full Commissioners on this body but who want to participate in some of the work of the commission and and have their voices heard um and and I believe as long as you know a single commissioner is leading one of those we could have those more open to the public and I think that's the way that they've been done on the energy commission for example at times where they might open it up to some expertise or some tenants Advocates who have who have some um input and and expertise in an area and then the commissioner who is kind of leading that group can report back to the body as a whole that is my understanding as long as there's one uh at least one voting member that's really good to
164know thank you for putting that out Travis uh maybe in this way we could open up some of the working groups to especially to the people who've applied to the commission who seem like they would be really great workers and provide a lot of value um without actually having them as full Commissioners that might be a way to help with some of the frustrations that I've been hearing and also ensure that the full commission receipts are open for applicants um that come from marginalized backgrounds okay um and I'll move on to Jeff thank you um obviously as this is my first meeting I'm I'm just trying to there's a lot and I'm glad and um I guess my my question for me personally would be you know there's these four or so committees is there
165one in particular that this group feels needs the most help is there like a a group that really is under staff at the moment any thoughts anybody um perhaps the the waitlist reports excuse me I ask us like I I'm I'm new I want to be involved I just I want to be involved in a place where I can do the most you know provide the most assistance too so that's what I'm kind of asking and I would also say like if if there is an area that you are most interested in like volunteer that because I think you know I correct me if I'm wrong but I think like Richa is currently serving on almost all of them um and so so I I think you know that the work is needed everywhere um
166and so if there's an area where you are most interested it might free her or someone else up to be able to step back and and really focus on one of the other areas yeah thank you Travis and I think that the waitlist report probably should um since it might influence policies that are a bit time sensitive that might be a good idea if you have any writing experience or just want to be involved that would be wonderful okay it is getting late so I think we should continue on through the agenda um does anyone have but I'll open it up one last time does anyone have any other comments on that issue and we will move on um to reports uh so uh we're gonna go through a number of reports here if you
167don't have anything to add it that you haven't said already um uh then you you we can just continue through and that's totally fine so I guess we'll start with 7-a um report from City Council I'm looking at Cynthia to see if she wanted to go um the only thing that I would add beyond what we've already said um is just to draw attention in the communication section of the agenda to the memo from um City Administration about enforcement and and the implementation of the right to renew and um early leasing ordinance so I just want to make sure that everybody has visibility on that um I think that's probably the only update I'll add right now okay great no no no no uh other updates thanks that's fine thank you uh 7-b report from
168hhsap liaison we don't have one at the moment thank you Travis I think you we have been emailing uh thanks to try to get one I can I actually tried to get an update on that today I spoke with council member Watson um they are also currently suffering um with their the makeup of their body right now um I think they did not have Quorum at their last meeting um and so they are they are working to to try to get the group to be a little bit more active um but I think there's been a struggle in getting somebody to commit to you know two volunteer meetings a month um I think we took for granted the value it was of having ubilies onto both of them where I could kind of fill that
169role when we lost our our liaison um but it is something that they are aware of um and so in the meantime I think you know councilmember Watson and I or council member song or whomever we can just continue kind of liaising amongst the council members and try to provide that in Council updates until we get that position filled thank you Travis is that a verb liaise don't answer that let's keep going okay um 7--d reports from Commissioners I'll open it up to any Commissioners who'd like to give a quick a brief report Jordan I have the super briefest thing um but just to make a note that U of M did vote today to change the calendar um so graduation is actually being pushed back a weekend I'm trying to do some advocacy in
170the U of M parent groups just to kind of point out to parents that it would be good to have students um you know kind of give it a week and see if their landlord reaches out to change anything for the May leases um and we will probably proactively reach out to our attendants but just kind of something to be aware of if you are working in tenant spaces that's a pretty significant change and given that may lease is are already signed in December um there's a good portion of those that may be affected thank you Jordan I'll keep this brief as well um there's a situation that we've been noticing where tenants are being offered different rates different rental rates for the next leasing cycle based on when they sign their lease um I
171know that uh there's some discussion among lawyers about how how tenants should navigate this if you hear from a renter who's experiencing this kind of tiered renting system where the longer you wait the more expensive if it comes for the next year uh please direct them uh to uh Gail Rosen or Nick rumel who's on here uh I know that they'd like to to talk with them besides that um I know that there's some Outreach occurring from tenants advocates in Ann Arbor and from other parts of the state to the new state legislature uh that there's some exciting discussions occurring regarding a lot of different issues but I'm not going to get into them now I guess you can let me know or let Richard know if you'd like to be if you're interested in
172being involved in those conversations that's it for me great job I wanted to bring up this uh as part of the tenant education thing but could be a separate piece we have received at least like 12 unique complaints let's say 10 two are from landlords about tenant issues and maybe the city staff has responded to them but I don't know if at the commission we have spent enough time or looking at those most recently I think it's attached to the this agenda as the laundry fee issue and I know tonight we're not gonna get time to talk about it but we I think as a group can spend some time on it maybe asynchronously so I have created a spreadsheet which is which has a log of all the communication that we have access to
173it's this like 13 rows right now but that will grow so I've left a call in that this is commissioner's response uh I think it would be great for us to at least brainstorm something it might help from a research standpoint even for us to learn more about what protection standards have that we already may not be aware of uh so there's that piece this is entirely legrandos commission focused so I just wanted to ask maybe over an email or an extent meeting we can talk about how we start making sure we're addressing each of them one way or the other I don't know right now if we can directly talk to tenants I think my understanding is that we cannot we should at least have some thoughts on this that we can put down
174I think that's good for future Commissioners also uh so that if they hear from tenants facing similar issues they can look at our log and pull information from there so people don't you know have to reinvent the wheel we also had uh this is from Geo housing we received an issue about utility bills uh uh a tenant has been received has been charged upwards of like three thousand or three hundred dollars for like two months or so now for utilities and they're not able to figure out what's going on they've talked to DT they talk to their landlords and they're just going in circles so now I'm just saying that these issues exist and we as in other smaller tenant organizing groups don't have the capacity necessarily to address those uh in a time-bound manner
175and so tenants are struggling there are lots of challenges uh I think there's a role for the commission there I just don't know I think I'd leave it up maybe we can revisit this in a next meeting uh but yeah there's a lot of tenant issues out there uh just that are unaddressed thank you Rachel anyone else okay oh sorry I was just gonna it's just I've gotten more stuff about the increasing rent prices like Zechariah said mostly at the yard and I've directed them to Nick and Gail thank you very much Hannah I think that will be helpful okay anyone else any other Commissioners would like to give up reports Travis uh I'm sorry um the only other thing that I realized was relevant to this group and I'm sure you may have all
176seen the news um but that that could be something that's impactful in the rental market is the news that the university is planning to build some additional student housing um obviously that's not going to be immediate but it is something that might impact the market soon obviously there's some there's a bit of questions around uh how that's all going to come into effect but I think you know we have the shared goal of wanting to increase the housing Supply and so it's it's something to note as well for those who are following yeah I believe they asked Ron Weiser for help in procuring those properties which is okay anything else great if you have any updates you can always send them to Kristen to send it to the rest of the commission and you can
177do talk to you know with with individual Commissioners that's totally fine as long as you know break the open meetings act which if you don't know what that is um I think it'd be a good idea to send that document out to everybody okay wonderful so now we move on to point eight which is their second general public comment session um Kristen would you like to leave this or shall I um I could do it that's fine thank you public comment can be made by phone by calling 877-853-5247 and entering meeting ID 935-8080-1941 or through the zoom web link that is a2gov.org renters commission meetings attendees who have called to press star 9 to raise their hand to be called on attendees who are joining through the zoom web link should use the raise hand
178feature to be called on um and then you can state your name um at the beginning of your comment and address the renders commission for up to three minutes so if there is anyone who would like to address the renters commission please um press star nine or use the raise hand feature now we do have one attendee and then we'll just hold on for just a moment in case anyone is joining right now attendees have indicated so we can close our account I didn't hear that Christians you said that you're closing public comment yeah sorry about that no no um there have been no attendees to have indicated thank you very much with that we can move to point nine which is communication we've had I believe three we have three attachments here I know
179Kristen sent out the last one briefly before the meeting our first one uh I have to open this up sorry guys oh I guess we have four now okay oh no I think we already we only do have three I believe so the the first one is a communication from a tenant to the Ann Arbor renters Commission regarding um I think Washington and drying machines so washers and dryers um they were promised a washer and dryer it's my understanding but then the machine broke down and they asked for a refund but the landlord uh said that they were not able to to do that I'll open the floor for discussion on this it's all right if there is none but uh this is a question to Richard has the Geo has Geo's housing caucus been
180in touch with this individual no there's been no information that we've received from them I don't do they have a contact info I don't have theirs so no um I know that the commission does but I'm not so sure we would be allowed to pass that on to Geo's housing caucus um my understanding so I think Christian responded with a bunch of um with the list of resources there okay that's something to put on our radar to maybe think about this particular situation and we will we can move on to the next communication foreign which is the memorandum regarding enforcement processes for right to renew in the early leasing ordinance this is uh I'm very glad that this has been released by the city administrator thank you to Travis and Cynthia for speaking with the
181city administrator and communicating that we wanted some clarity about what the city's policy is on enforcing these both the existing law and you know the right to renew which is technically also existing but will be applicable to Future contracts um I think that in the interest of time we should all read through this on our own and this should be a discussion point for the next meeting and and just add some context that I think attorney Reiser had a hand in in drafting this uh so um if we have questions I imagine that um he might be available at nxpd to help answer them too so um perhaps if you have them maybe get them in advance to Kristen and or call me but if we submit them to Kristin then the entire body can
182benefit from the questions as well thank you very much and thank you John okay and then the last I see yeah the last communication which I haven't read yet actually is a communication from it appears the Washington area Apartment Association regarding the carbon monoxide detector the proposed amendment to the housing code to include the requirement for um applicable rental units to have um carbon monoxide detector so it looks like they're providing the perspective of the Washington area Apartment Association so I think this is also important to read um to add on to what Jordan and Robert were able to yeah and and I I received this I well actually I think all of council received this from uh the president of the Washington area Apartment Association um I don't know I don't remember if he
183says in it that he's speaking on behalf of the association I think he's he may be speaking as an individual and who happens to be um president of the apartment association I don't know if they've signed off on the entire thing um but it is he provides some perspective and concerns on the carbon monoxide detector ordinance thank you for that clarification I think that you're right from just a quick glance any comments questions indication I think we can also discuss this over hello I think everything will be addressed in our um you know figuring out of like where they go I feel like we've addressed most of this I mean in some ways some of this was the stuff that I shared in some ways it's said a little bit differently but I think before
184we have the specifics of where they need to go figured out um with uh both of the entities the the um sorry late brain networking um rental housing people the inspections and the fire you know those are the two things that we need to just make sure everyone holds the same page the person who's going to be citing people needs to be on the same page with the fire people and we all need to be informed as landlords like that's that's just um I feel like we've addressed most of most of this in our prior coverage personally so I've already emailed fire and Rental housing about putting together a summary of whether things go like we have already for carbon monoxide detectors it will also help their rental housing inspectors know what to look for
185so education internally externally has to be done it's a good point we're going to get that done great thank you very much uh that's I believe the last of our Communications correct me if I'm wrong Chris if there was an addition that I didn't include there but otherwise we will move on to the next point of business which is adjournment number 10. so um would anyone like to motion to adjourn um seconded by Jamie thank you all those in favor of adjourning for a long meeting say yay yeah yeah all those opposed cine okay so unanimously we vote to return good night everybody very much for the long meeting