Ann Arbor Renters Commission Meeting 11/17/22

001right uh welcome to the November 17th 2022 meeting of the Ann Arbor renters commission the purpose of this commission is to advise the city council and the city administrator in matters affecting renters in our city the commission is made up of voting members who are appointed by the mayor and approved by city council of City Council Members appointed by city council um and I think that we now have a vacancy for our city council member of non-voting Liaisons the housing and Human Services Advisory Board of non-voting members representing different landlord perspectives which will hopefully be filled shortly and of a non-voting representative to the United to the University of Michigan Student Legal Services SLS uh to speak during any of the public comment opportunities during the meeting you will have to speak to the webinar

002link or by phone for phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter the meeting ID 935-8080-1941 and you don't need to have signed up in advance to to give a comment uh callers if you're calling by the phone you have to press star nine to raise your hand and then we'll call on you uh and if you're viewing uh through the web link uh the a2.org forward slash renters commission meeting link just raise your hand you will then be called upon by City staff one by one using the last three digits of your phone number or by the your username through the web link um and then you will uh have three minutes to make your comment and we'll remind you when you have 30 seconds left so now we move on to um see yes

003we will go into a roll call agenda point two so uh since it's electronic we do still have to say the city and state we're attending from so I am here calling from Ann Arbor uh commissioner Chen did we lose down down oh dear okay the night in the uh attendees either okay well I'll keep going commissioner Welch commissioner Peterson I'm here calling in from Ann Arbor welcome commissioner Kelly here also calling in from Ann Arbor welcome commissioner mckergie hi I'm here calling in from Ann Arbor okay commissioner Cohen Smith here calling from Ann Arbor commissioner Redmond is absent uh commissioner Cato commissioner rumel here calling in from Ann Arbor Township wonderful and council member Regina here in Ann Arbor right uh our SLS liaison Gail Rosen I'm here calling in from Ann Arbor welcome

004uh Karen wanza who's our liaison for hhsib I don't see her here oh nice okay done is back I'll look back around hi Don Don we're just doing roll call right now uh so I'm caught in front end number okay thank you welcome um and our city staff present uh Sarah is Alanis Alanis Alanis excuse me um here from Ann Arbor great and I know that John Weiser will maybe be joining us later in the meeting if he's able to she's not here right now so let's see that makes Sarah Sarah I'm sorry I do see we have um attorney Frost over in the participants and I don't know if he's planning on joining the meeting or if he's just watching I think he's just watching because I asked him to make sure that I

005didn't mess up yeah that's that goes for me too thanks just raise your hand if we if someone makes a mistake um okay so we do have Quorum uh I count six Commissioners and one council member and our liaison um so that's great now we can move on to the uh approval of the agenda um so do we have an approval for this agenda or sorry excuse me do we have a motion to approve this agenda motion okay motion by Lucy we have a second I'll second by Nick okay um all those in favor say aye aye aye okay so uh the agenda is approved uh Now we move on to approval of the last meeting's minutes uh but we actually don't have minutes to approve another member because um uh the we didn't meet

006Quorum so we didn't officially hold our meeting we didn't make any decisions or anything so then we move on to the up uh let's see update from hhsap liaison I don't see that they're here and we didn't receive anything any Communications so then we go on to our public comment agenda 0.6 so this is an opportunity for members of the public uh to speak for up to three minutes actually it says uh Sarah would you like to leave this section does say that the staff member is supposed to lead it yeah I'll do it thank you okay this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak for up to three minutes for phone access please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 9 3 5 8 0 8 0 1 9 4 1. if

007you would like to address the renters commission please press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature in the viewing through the what if viewing through the web link I will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that way we may hear you clearly you can say something like please state your name at the beginning of your comment if you feel comfortable doing so if not that's okay do we have any callers um caller Elise you have three minutes to address the renters Commission hey guys it's Jordan

008Sarah in case you do another meeting um last name is else so uh landlord most of you know that um I just wanted to chime in that I'm already getting stories of parents um about you know things with um other landlords asking students to sign one side of a lease and then saying they will not sign their half until March and I just want to lift up this concern to the commission because it's really uncomfortable um and I don't think that any of us should be okay with that kind of thing happening but nothing is prohibiting it these parents call and try to make a complaint to Janet and they're told that it's you know as long as the student is doing it it's okay um so I just want to lift that up that

009like we still really need to get this figured out and students are still being put in Jeopardy um at this particular situation just bothers me so badly because we have now essentially five months when that student thinks they have housing but the other side hasn't been signed so it's still not guaranteed and of course it's still not really legal and they shouldn't be signing but they are and um I just wanted to lift that up I'm telling every parent to try to write you guys but I think everybody's hesitant to get involved and I've heard a lot of I'm worried about retaliation for my kid and my kids worried about retaliation and um trying to get you know the students themselves to write but of course my contact is mostly directly with the parents so

010just wanted to keep on pressing that we there are still things that even even with um right to renew we still have some some loopholes that are are being found I know right to renew isn't you know in effect yet but um I still think students and tenants deserve protection for this year so that's all I got for you thanks guys I just wanted to chime in and say that uh right to renew is now in effect uh I think what uh Jordan was referring to is that it probably doesn't apply to leases that had already been signed before it took effect but it is in effect uh currently would anyone else like to address the renters commission for three minutes please raise your hand okay seeing no additional speakers I will close this portion

011of the first public comment thank you very much Sarah um so with that we will move on to our business uh first point of business is 7-a which is the fee report um or the wait list report um this is just a draft of a report that we had talked about a little bit in this commission we said that we wanted to gather more information about what's going on with the waitlist because that's one of the main ways that um the intention of some of the you know the ELO and the at least the early leasing ordinance was not really taking effects because uh we have these wait lists around so people are not necessarily signing leases before the the date but they are being put onto weightless and in some cases those do have

012fees so I know Gail uh Richa and I had started working on this report anybody else is welcome to help out writing it like I said this is just a draft but I thought I'd share this with the whole commission um uh Gail or Richard would you like to talk a little bit about what we've been doing I can share on my screen as well the report uh well wish I don't know if you want to start as you've been sort of primarily heading this up at this point sure I can do that uh I will clarify this was a collaborative effort it I would say in effect started off sometime last year when organizations take the Ann Arbor Tenants Union and The Graduate employees organization also City staff started receiving complaints about uh various

013ways in which the early leasing ordinance was being interpreted by landlords and was being circumvented so just uh now that we have the report in front of us in our Zoom Windows the way we've structured it is that we wrote up a quick like rationale or purpose like why are we doing this uh just to refresh our memories uh this was part of our work plan quite high on our list of priorities and it's also come from a lot of interest among tenants a lot of concern among tenants around the this practice of wait list policies that came to our attention around last September so uh we've I'm just also reading because um just want to make sure I'm not I don't misspeak but yeah basically we were also getting the feeling that uh now

014that landlords like at least in the past year have been asking tenants to join wait lists in the fall uh we we feel like firstly it's kind of connected to the early leasing ordinance because and that's why we went into that in the background section uh We've written that in August last year the anniversity council passed ELO uh and this came from this widespread demand among tenants to move the leasing timeline from what was in place for several years before August 2021 that was that landlords could ask tenants if they were willing to renew their leases 70 days into the leasing period so there was a lot of demand to push that timeline and therefore ELO was passed and the intention of Elo was to prohibit landlords from showing apartments in person to or signing

015new lease agreements with prospective tenants before 150 days were remaining on the current on the current tenants lease um we've written a little example here a lot of Lisa started start at the end of August so for release that kind of or leases that start in September and end on August 31st of the next year a landlord should not show an apartment or prospective tenant in person or sign a lease with them until March of that year so we count backwards this is all in our housing code uh if people want to go back and take a look please do uh but yeah as as I mentioned a few like a minute ago or so we started hearing about uh these wait list policies around September or so last year which was also around the

016time when the Washington area Apartment Association had filed a lawsuit against the city of Ann Arbor trying to overturn the ordinance uh despite uh this you know kind of collective requests from tenants to move the leasing uh timeline we found that through this wait list policy tenants were effectively still being pressured to renew their leases early so in September or so tenants were receiving emails from landlords uh kind of asking them or reminding them that they would still have to share some kind of renewal decision with landlords by the huge as per the usual timeline that used to be followed even before ELO and if they didn't they would be added to a wait list for that apartment that's just the context of it uh but in this report we used a few sources to

017just dig a little deeper into what specific cases looked like these and these sources included complaints that Geo had received through email uh I would give a lot of credit to Lucy for compiling all of those complaints and responding to tenants about what to do in those cases which included reporting it to the city it is filling out the ELO Complaint Form we also know that Student Legal Services received some complaints that that's something that Gail can elaborate on and now we have access to the complaints that this city received uh so this is something that Kristen had shared with us I think a couple of months ago so we've also looked through those forms specifically to understand how the wait list policies uh were drafted by landlords and were being implemented so there's a

018lot of aspects to ELO enforcement but for now this report just focuses on the wait list policies I'm going to stop here and pass it on to Zach or Gail yeah you can go ahead if you have anything to add no I just want to say that that I mean we're seeing and have been seeing um or hearing from a bunch of students who are getting just a tremendous amount of pressure to either sign leases now to as um we should referred to um or actually and Jordan as well sign um leases that then aren't in effect until um until the landlord counter signs in March and we're also seeing um you know heat fees that are being charged for tenants who want to be on these wait lists so this is really concerning to

019us it's it it puts the tenants in a really tough spot because while they can file a complaint if they don't do anything and to secure their lease they're really going to be out of their out of the property for next year because the landlord's going to go ahead and sign to somebody else so it's really concerning um for us and we're trying to figure out best ways to address it so go ahead Zach um I just wanted to highlight that at the end of this report of course this is just a draft we did compile a lot of information well Gail compiled a lot of this information by just calling I I believe uh a lot of these landlords and trying to figure out what their policies are regarding um waitlist fees and whether

020or not they're refundable I think there was some information about whether or not uh false information out there about whether or not there were non-refundable fees there most definitely are um yeah I don't think I have anything else to add except for the that we're going to try to finish this report hopefully by the next meeting um presented to the uh the commission again but there was one thing I wanted to uh open up to the entire Commission on which is the purpose um I wanted to make sure that the commission feels comfortable with what we wrote here for the purpose of this report because that's pretty important as we continue along here and I just want to open up and see if any anybody has feedback on it criticisms or that disagrees with the

021purpose that we've written yeah Nick Zachariah is I would like to like have this and review it and sort of absorb it um and you know I'm happy to give feedback now just based upon what's up on the screen but um and we get sent copies of this of course now the draft is uh the draft is in our agenda that's as like oh yeah that's my bad for not seeing it I had a crazy no don't worry it was updated today I asked Sarah to do it uh but I can send you the the Google Doc link which is you know obviously we're going to be working on it actively and you can see the most updated version there and I can do that uh send that to anybody in the commission I guess

022I'll just send out to the entire commission I mean my first blush that purpose paragraph just looks factual and straightforward looks fine to me thanks we'll see yeah thanks thank you guys for putting this report together this is really useful and especially the chart at the end to see um the different ways that this is going about that's really useful to see like that I would if other people think it's a good idea not not us taking too much power or whatever I would I would like us to expand the purpose to be for specifically the purpose of recommending a remedy to the city council I'm not exactly sure what that would be or how long that would take for us to come up with but um I'm thinking you know we should we should

023recommend that this um this practice be um made it illegal in the housing code if we can do that and maybe some kind of punishment to stop it from happening because it is it is incredibly serious and I really like how you've um emphasized low-income tenants in the purpose that that's absolutely true I mean when we were going through all of the ELO stuff something that was commonly said but which was actually very misleading was that students were signing their leases early because they that's when they wanted to shop but it's really because of of the the pressure of the timeline nobody wants to go into a financial agreement eight months in advance especially if you're a low-income person or you don't have a parent who can back that so um this is is one

024particular way that that policy that we have in place is um weakened so if we can recommend to the city council that we add this onto the existing early leasing ordinance or make it some kind of separate thing I think that would be really an important recommendation for us to make thank you for those comments Lucy um I have asked John Reiser to to look into the legality of regulating these fees um and hopefully we'll have an answer soon I did confirm with him I think he understands um uh what you know our request is there so I think that if there is an obvious remedy I I'm not opposed to adding it into the report any other comments or questions about the the draft report so far okay Ohana go ahead yeah sorry that

025was a little late um yeah I think this report looks great I it was really helpful and very clear for me as I look through it um just a clarification question because I know this is like we're also going to talk later in the agenda about some retaliatory practices just about like signing early right now I'm just like to clarify we're keeping this separate right like this is just about weightless fees to figure out if we can do something about regulating that and separately things about like uh will increase the rent that we're starting to see if you don't sign like these are separate things that wouldn't be part of this report correct that's a really good question I would initially say yes that those are separate things but I guess if you if you're

026being pressured to commit to signing a lease early on that might be a form of a wait list um but I'm not positive Gail well I guess the other part of that too is is the idea of signing um having leases that are signed by the tenant but not countersigned I mean I sort of think these are all subcategories of the same thing and maybe we should kind of address them as such because there's there's quite a few things that fall under the category of you know unfortunate things that have come since the early leasing one and so yeah I wonder if we can rethink the scope a little bit in terms of maybe it not being about weightless just wait list but like early signing or or early commitments to Lisa's I guess not

027sure I think we can talk about that in our subgroup does that sound good Gail Mitchell yeah no that sounds great okay and yeah Hannah if you have any ideas for how that you know if that should be incorporated or how it should be incorporated please do let me know any other questions or comments on the draft report okay with that I think we can move on to 7-b discussion of our committees I know that we previously made a town hall committee but I think that since we're putting the town hall off until spring I don't think that's going to be meeting anytime soon I know that there's interest in maybe forming some kind of you know other smaller groups Among Us like um a committee on education for example to educate ourselves and maybe

028renters two I know there's a distinct ideas but I'd like to open up the floor for discussion on any sorts of committees that you all think should exist because it is helpful if we have smaller groups among the commission to do work to bring it back to the to the commission during our these meetings Anna yeah I like the idea of the education subcommittee assuming that's like the subgroup from our work plan about like I don't know the education resources and I assume Town Hall might be within that maybe that could be a good idea um I like that because um I don't know we have a lot of policy stuff going on which is great but I think having an active education subcommittee for all of those resources so that's ongoing and you know

029doesn't get sidetracked from new ordinances and policy writing would be good Nick is there an enforcement committee there isn't currently but I do think that's a very good idea considering the fact that there are a lot of laws that aren't enforced in the city I was recently in a group of tenants uh just like I think Tuesday and I asked them if they knew what the rights and duties of tenants handbook was and only two people raised their hand out of probably around 25 or so and I asked them you know you you should have received this when you moved in and vast majority did not and I keep on seeing that again that's just one example of a law that's not um doesn't seem to be enforced so I do think that's a good

030idea foreign hopefully we can schedule it some future meeting a invite some of the people from City staff as to how the um housing department is going to implement you know how they're going to take complaints what are they going to do our complaints about this ordinance even going to go to the housing department are they going to be routed the City attorney or to perhaps even a Human Rights Commission or something you know and right now I'm not clear on any of that foreign yeah um I have a question about kind of the The Envision purpose of the enforcement committee simply because I I also want to make sure that we don't give folks the idea that that the body has power to do enforcement and so I I think that's that's also um

031a component to consider as well I think there are pieces of enforcement that that we can recommend improvements around but I also want to make sure that we're clear about kind of purpose because enforcement would would remain the responsibility of kind of the administrators perfect Travis I'm expecting a badge you know Lucy yeah I just want to add to this because I really do think this is an important issue for us to weigh in on just going back to the example of the Complaint Form from the early leasing ordinance which because it wasn't uh constructed by renters it really wasn't usable for renters and those are the kinds of things that we as people who have contact with renters would be able to refine help the more information we can gather the more we can

032pass that along to City staff to be more competent at enforcement um a lot of enforcement issues have come up not just with ELO but with the fair housing act that was another one of our um uh priorities on the work plan and I don't think this is something we've talked about in this commission but it's a big problem in the city is the short-term rental enforcement issues and uh I don't know if this was a Geo thing or something else but we had been in contact with City staff and City staff essentially said that they don't have enough hours to spend on doing the work that it would take to be able to enforce those laws so I think some volunteer hours from the renters commission would be really useful in getting the city

033to actually be able to stand behind its its rental law so I think an enforcement commission is a really really good idea foreign Travis we're not talking about us having enforcement Powers but we should be able to direct people to the resources that will help them and to you know work with the city to find out I mean this is a new law that the city is on paper uh enforcing and we want to be able to find out how to educate tenants about these uh their options I agree with that um I think that we should definitely try to avoid any confusion about whether or not we're the people who are enforcing the rules or not because we're we won't be but that's a fair point uh maybe Improvement of enforcement committee or something

034of that you know that nature or it could be explained on the website what the purpose of the committee is and I do know I I did recently talk to John Reiser and he did say that uh it probably would be a good idea to form some kind of committee like that to work with the administrator on the rental Housing Services office in creating a system for right to renew complaints because I it seemed I I don't I'm not I don't think that such a system exists yet for right to renew so I'm hearing education and something about enforcement but I'll pass it over to Gail I was just wondering if um when you're talking and we're talking about right to new right to renew if there should be somebody or a subcommittee that's sort

035of talking about how we're gonna or if there's a way to roll out the right to renew so that we're in the process educating tenants about this right educating landlords about what's expected and sort of being on the same page because it's only my understanding is it's only effective now for leases that were signed after um October 16th so it's it's going to be it's going to be an issue you know in another by the fall and it would be helpful to have you know a clear plan on on how we're going to roll that out I mean how it's going to be rolled out so just a thought maybe we could have an education committee that's uh whose purpose is to educate uh renters and landlords about the law and be a research committee

036if I don't want to go too overboard with the Committees but it would be nice to have some subgroup that does research on uh both the housing you know the rental market and also proposal you know proposed um legislation or you know initiatives to try to make it better because I I know that some people had expressed interest in like right right to council for example and that that requires a lot of uh research um so potentially like an internal research committee and enforcement but I uh you know stop me if that doesn't sound like what we're uh what you are interested in yeah just just saying it does it sounds on the education side it does I agree it sounds like there is sort of like the internal research and education of our own

037commission that we can work in small groups and bring brick to the whole and then also maybe it's a separate uh work group that's focused more on preparing for and an education and engagement activities foreign yeah um I like I know like this idea of the research committee because I'd want to be on it but also I guess a question I have is like uh someone like a research committee my concern is like would then just everyone on the different committees still want to do their own research like for whatever they're working on like would people are we okay passing that off to a separate commit like I'm trying to think if that would be a lot of overlap given that there's research that goes into all of these things um if not that would

038be great if people are like I want to do education and plan events and don't want to research at all then that would be great but if everyone wants to do research I don't know if a separate committee would make sense Lucy I think that's a good point though I think we would need if if our goal in some for some projects is to propose new tenant protections that seems to me to be its own kind of separate research at least with like early leasing ordinance and right to renew like we did a lot of like reading other housing codes and Consulting with Nick about uh if it would like contradict I can't remember about the torments but if it contradicts state laws that kind of thing and that I don't think would overlap with

039the other committee ideas uh yeah I think that if the research committee is focused on researching uh proposals like new like new measures to improve the rental market specifically okay it seems like it wouldn't have a ton of overlap with enforcement or um education but we'll see yeah sorry I just wanted to expand because in the work plan we have um as some things listed and I don't know if I'm looking at the most recent version now but housing ordinances aimed at slowing gentrification and displacement affordable housing for seniors people with disabilities and low-income households um evictions as uh rent control those are all things that I think we would have to spend some time uh getting our information together and Consulting with um different groups and things like that great job I had a

040thought and I feel like it overlaps with a few things but uh something like housing quality comes up all the time or like things like maintenance and repairs uh and other issues with people's apartments that they suspect uh basically violate the building code and things like that so I I feel like that might require some level of either coordination with rental Housing Services or some system where we can request to look at the status of various complaints something like that so what worked with us pushing for like more information on Elo was that Kristen got us the list of complaints that everyone filed and this status um I just feel like housing quality is a lot of work in itself firstly coordinating with rental Housing Services also looking at e-track it just our stream just

041understanding how all of that works and how it can be a little more seamless for tenants if they actually want to you know complain and resolve things um I don't know how to like I don't have an immediate like clean idea but how to address that but I feel like it might Merit its own subcommittee that just regularly looks at the various complaints that come in yeah just check in on those things I don't know what others think about that Lucy yeah I just want to say I think that's a really good idea especially because there's already City staff who uh or yeah staff hired by the city who do inspections so if we could build some relationships with them and kind of figure out that situation that could be a project we take on

042that seems doable important and there's a lot of it's already being done because we have this paid staff so you know we could find out interesting things like maybe maybe they're under staff there and they need more people doing inspections things like that that would be good for us to know okay yeah well we talked about having people come and talk to us as a group it might be nice to include the inspectors in that group because they can provide us the information and perhaps come up with a way that we can best access that because some sometimes the information on e-track and stream is helpful and sometimes there's there's pieces that are missing um so maybe they can help us understand the best way to access the information we're looking for and then from

043there we can figure out you know what to do with that so it sounds like um in order to learn kind of how our city functions it might be better to have guest speakers come in and present about it in order to make those connections um I'm not sure but Richard if you had an idea for like a particular committee or Lucy on on those issues uh please maybe repeat because I I was a little I'm not positive about that yeah I just listening to what Gail said I feel like maybe there's some steps to this I agree that maybe we ourselves need some like info session of some kind to know for sure that we understand the scope of these plat of these portals like what information can go in there how what's the

044extent to which dick tenants can use that and understand learn more about their own apartment units and from there like the continue to engage with City staff there's something Lucy mentioned that since they do this work is there a way to check in with them about if there are any gaps there any challenges I'm just quoting Lucy at this point she mentioned maybe asking if they're understaffed or something like that um and also I feel like this feeds into tenant education as well like once we are sure we fully understand how this works we can with a lot of confidence tell tenants so these are the various things they can do because for now for instance we received a complaint Through The Graduate employees organizations housing caucus about attendance uh like heating system not working

045and they it seems like they weren't aware that they could file a complaint with the city about it so like that part I could tell with confidence that hey there's a process you can you know complain and good luck let us know how it goes but if you know there's some lag in that like what's the next thing to do like if if we fully understand uh the ins and outs of that maybe you can also educate tenants better go see yeah I feel like this is kind of a tangent from the committee issue but I was just remembering from our first meeting that somebody had made uh what I thought to be a very powerful public comment about uh the the various maintenance issues in their Department which were um violations of of the

046housing inspection I don't know what to call it I'm sorry it's been a long day uh you know what I mean though and um despite the fact that the apartment wasn't up to code it wasn't fixed so I think investigating this line of um these these kind of problems with maintenance like like Richard had mentioned I don't know if that's a committee or just a project we can take up that seems crucially important given that we've gotten public comments about it given that we have staff who seem who probably know a lot about it it's just an area where I think you know it's it's ripe for improvement I don't know if that's a committee though so I'm sorry that that we've been having this conversation and it's not on the agenda yeah well let's

047try to bring it back to the topic of committees I do think it's a good idea to have to invite maybe Brandi Lewis from uh the rental housing office to come in as a guest speaker at their next meeting or maybe the meeting after that uh or you know someone from that office would be great potentially an inspector if Granny's not able to make it uh is there before we continue with the um uh the conversation on on committees is uh are there any objections to inviting Brandi Lewis um from the rental housing office to come and speak at an upcoming meeting uh Lucy it's not an objection more just that I'm I would like some clarification of why Brandy and not one of the inspectors who goes goes to the apartments I'm I'm not

048clear on what Brandy's job is but I don't think that she's one of the people that goes into apartments and sees the issues uh that's a good point I um I'm not I can ask Brandi in particular if if she can specifically bring a um maybe an inspectors as well um I just thought Brandy since I think she's in charge of the rental Housing Services um uh go ahead Gail uh I was thinking Janet again not an objection but uh thinking maybe Janet Farrell who's been doing this for for a really long time um I'm not sure what Brandy's role is I thought Lee should turn her Tobit I can't say that was the head um but but I'm not sure but but I I think hearing from people that work within the um the

049mental housing department as well as the inspectors I mean I think they have two different kind of um pockets of information that were that would be to hear from someone from each of those groups yeah I believe that they just added new inspectors to their team I could be wrong about that but um I know Brandi had said that she was trying to get that done it looks like there are more names on the website now but I might be wrong there I guess that's one thing that Brandi could could help us understand uh but yeah I totally agree on that that they're two different two different roles uh so is there agreement that uh we invite Brandy and an inspector to um to our an upcoming meeting or meetings Lucy and and if we

050could invite Janet I think that's a great suggestion from Gail Janet Hears A lot of the tenant complaints it'd be great to talk to her okay yeah let's see if we can schedule these people on separate or on you know spread out a little bit so it's not all at once but I I totally agree that sounds like a good plan let me um I'll write that down but going back to uh the discussion of committees uh I think it sounded like we there was at least some interest in research committee and education like an Outreach education to tenants landlords committee and um an enforcement committee that would investigate um enforcement of the existing laws and how the the enforcement processes could be improved any uh comments on on those three ideas uh or do

051you not think that one of those should uh be created or is there something that's missing I think those three sound good to me okay um all right well then that would mean that we would probably need to like a point person for each committee and uh people who could maybe serve on those committees if it seems like we've you know bitten off more than we can chew and we have too many committees three committees maybe might turn out to be too much uh I don't know uh Travis do you think that three is too much too many for a commission like this um I think it's up to what you guys are willing to take on I think there's a lot of work that you guys have identified for yourselves so this probably is

052the right approach um I don't know that a lot of my commissions have standing committees um they have kind of committees as the work comes up and then it dissolves and then they might create the next one and so um you know I think if these are the top priorities I think and you guys are willing to take it on I think that works for you yeah okay yeah I guess that does make sense that it would be like issue based and temporary but um yeah considering how much work each of those committees might would likely have I think that um be safe to just create them and see how it see how it goes in the beginning uh so go ahead I think there's also room I mean there's nothing stopping you guys from

053making adjustments as you go and as you learn um you know the human rights Mission as I'm thinking has has kind of one standing group that um they do have a bit of a a complaint process they they take complaints about the man discrimination arguments um and so they have a standing group that reviews those complaints um but even they kind of rotate through people as as folks get burnt out and so I think there are opportunities for you guys to really just figure it out as it as you go and be okay with making changes because you're in a group okay um well do we have I guess let's start uh going down the list here um we have education is there anybody here who would be interested in heading up the effort to

054educate tenants and landlords on different um uh on the existing laws Travis I was also going to say given that I think we're missing a couple of people and if if folks are maybe nervous about being put on the spot right here this might be another thing where folks can kind of sign up um afterwards and let people think about where they want to dedicate the most time um let's do that okay uh Gail well it also might make sense for us you know not not in this meeting but to just really sort of clearly delineate what our expectations are from each of the subcommittees so that when people do have time to start to con to review and decide if this is something that they can take on that they know exactly you know

055what our what our expectations or hopes are so maybe that's something we can do before asking people to sign up that's a really good point I got ahead of myself all right um education research and enforcement all right well before we find Point people on there I guess that does make sense uh do you all would you like to um go over expectations for those three committees today or do we want to take until the next meeting thinking about what um what what how these committees should be structured and you know what they're their scope should be Richard I think it's a good idea to spend some time out like after this meeting to think a little more but I just wanted to share and remind everyone that when we set up the work plan

056priorities we did like classify some kinds of tasks under these buckets specifically tenant education so maybe that's we already have a starting point for tenant education things like creating or improving online resources uh tenants rights resources things like ELO like newer laws we have a section called commissioner education and what we just discussed about a potential info session or is within that so how does the inspection process work uh other things so yeah I feel like my suggestion here is to look at that work plan draft because it it is a good starting point and certainly we can go back and fine tune about expectations I totally agree I think people to hand off a lot of the the items in the work plan to these committees as we create them um yeah I would

057I would assume that the tenant or sorry the uh commissioner education would basically be the like the research I guess um committee that we had discussed those ideas and sound very similar than the tenant education would just be the education committee we mentioned um yeah a lot of this would fall under those three committees any other thoughts about the about the creation of committees before uh we move on and I think that we can I can send out an email uh actually uh Travis I have a question for you uh would it be allowed if we have a Google doc uh that's editable by everybody that everyone has access to or is that a violation of the Oma I don't think that that would be an issue if you're just asking people to sign up

058for something um but my suggestion would be to just go through Kristin and have her lead that process and that way she can make sure it's all by the book okay thanks Lucy yeah so it seems like from what you just summarized the the topic that isn't really covered is enforcement which is a bit concerning to me just because a lot of the conversations we've had have been about that including the public comments especially around early leasing ordinance and what Gail was saying about we want to anticipate enforcement issues with right to renew so and so I feel a bit um I wouldn't feel good if we waited until next month to talk about enforcement again so I wonder you know if we could just hash out some next steps here it doesn't have to

059be forming a committee but you know maybe there are specific issues that that um people are interested in thinking this through want to take point on or something rather than just leaving it for later well I do know that John Reiser did ask us to create or He suggests excuse me he suggested that we create a committee on uh on uh creating a system to um field complaints for the right to renew ordinance that sounds a lot like enforcement so if we could at least create as you know a committee on that today that actually might be a good idea that would first start focusing on um yellow enforcement right to renew enforcement um and I know you mentioned the other instances um with you know lack of repairs Etc I don't know if that

060should be implemented into this committee uh if we're uh or I don't know if we should give that task right away to to the committee I'm not sure all right Gail it is is generalizer suggesting that he's going to be part of that or that we're going to have meetings with him what was his um involvement could it be because I already have some I mean you know I think as Jordan spoke of you know the idea that these their releases out there that tenants are signing in landlords aren't um I I think that's a pretty clear violation in my opinion of the early leasing ordinance so if he's going to be part of that committee or not necessarily on the committee but somebody that we can regularly communicate with about that as a committee

061I think that would be incredibly helpful so that we can get some of these things done because I think it's too late for a lot of students well a lot of tenants already I think a lot of tenants have already signed these leases and and gotten onto wait lists and all that kind of stuff but if we can you know as Lucy said act on it pretty quickly then maybe we can prevent additional uh tenants from from you know signing leases or putting money down or what have you yeah his suggestion was to communicate with the administrator I know though that Travis you were doing that about ELO enforcement and right to a new enforcement I think I want to misspeak um I know that discussion of resource allocation and potential staff needs are part

062of our budget decision and conversation um for the upcoming budget and those we are having with the administrator about um rental enforcement okay um I know the suggestion that I received was that we communicate with the city attorney and the administrator do you think that that would be proper Travis um yes I I mean I think I I think again that that is something we might it might be most effective to channel through staff um to get a quick response but um yeah if there are specific questions that we have there we can get answers to them okay we'll see yeah I'm not sure who this is a question for but Travis's comment made me think of it uh I I'm wondering if the city staff has a perspective on if some of the lack

063of enforcement of rental issues is because there isn't enough budget for staff to be tracking it or if is that what you were saying Travis in terms of budget allocation like is that is that something we should be weighing in on as renters commission or is there some information that we could get as renters commission like what exactly is the issue with enforcing these laws and doesn't have to do budget yeah not necessarily at this stage I think one of the the um points that John brought up as we were drafting the ordinance um was uh specifically around you know the current staff have had full-time jobs before we've added this additional these additional couple of layers to their plate and also they are not necessarily the the staff who are Fielding these complaints right

064now are not attorneys and so if we need an additional attorney for example to be Fielding some of these complaints and reviewing them is that something where we need to make an additional um allocation in our budget for Staffing or is it something where the administrator is saying actually we've got some savings over here and so we're not going to need an additional allocation as we look towards you know the next fiscal year um and so I think when we potentially have some budget recommendations that might be a time for you guys to weigh in if there's uh an allocation and we want to support it or there's not and we feel like we need one um but but I don't know that there is something necessarily to weigh in on right now because I'm

065still waiting to kind of hear back from the administrator from the question I asked him which is hey what's your respect foreign okay so could he let us know then like how many staff hours are being spent how many staff attorney you know what's the breakdown who's spending time on rental enforcement then like who who has time for that that would be really great for us to know Nick yeah we have said it one of our early meetings that one of the things we wanted to do was have some kind of um presentation from staff about um enforcement and it's frustrating because what I'm hearing is that we've passed an ordinance that the city doesn't have resources to enforce which is concerning for me which means we're getting you know all of these emails and

066complaints that are coming in and we have attached to our agenda I feel powerless to do anything unless somebody comes to me as an attorney and says I want to be you know file a suit or something that doesn't sound right to me perhaps yeah I just I want to be clear that if that is the um impression that I am leaving it is it is not necessarily that is not necessarily the case that is kind of my question to the administrator right now is can you please now that we have passed these additional pieces and we we have some additional enforcement that needs to take place and and considerations that need to go into it can you please make an assessment as to whether or not we do need to allocate additional resources um

067there is currently staff assigned to them um and so so I don't want to leave the impression that staff is not paying attention to it right now I don't know that to be the case and it wasn't necessarily charging that I'm just not hearing that anything positive about enforcement that's taking place I'm not far be it for me you know I know staff works hard I know they have a lot to do and we passed an ordinance that just adds to their workload I get all that but we still need to find out what that path is so that we can educate our public and so that they have a means to um address these violations of the law that we help to pass I think um following the suggestion of John Riser and and

068what Gail pointed out uh I think it would make sense if we can put the Education and Research committees on hold and kind of think about those and maybe uh develop uh a written scope and like you know assign priorities to those two committees um at our next meeting but for this meeting if we could create an enforcement committee whose first task is to work with John Riser and the City attorney um and if necessary you know the administrator on uh figuring out what's going on with the current the pending ELO complaints and how right to renew complaints are going to be processed but I would love to hear your oh hey John I see that sorry from Court day three of a multi-day tax Drive annual case and then I went to another meeting

069and now I'm at this meeting so my apologies for my tardiness uh we picked a bad time to show up John Riser we were talking about you I don't care what's one more thing to do oh geez yeah well sorry to give you one more thing to do but uh we were wondering about uh you know I know you suggested that we should consider creating a committee on you know reviewing the enforcement of Elo and right to renew well I I think that is would be a good idea obviously it's up to Milton and department heads on to how it's going to be done because it's a it's an allocation of resources do they have the staff do they have the training uh the bandwidth of the funding all that kind of thing but um

070we could do I think a better job of getting enforced with respect to transparency uh feedback to people who've made the complaints whether a ticket was issued whether it was uh insufficient proofs to to charge it that type of thing um the ELO enforcement is going to be one thing and now it's combined with the uh right to renew which makes a little bit tricky because there's the interaction of right to renew with ELO and the right to renew relies on whether or not the summary proceedings act constitutes a good cause not to renew so uh what was tricky last year becomes even uh at least as tricky uh going forward once that kicks in but I think making recommendations to the administration um as to how the process might be better for those who

071um make the complaints and how they get the feedback and maybe some suggestions on how the city might process them could be helpful and I think that's what you guys are talking about probably yeah exactly thank you for saying all that I mean you guys aren't going to shake the calls and decide who gets a ticket or not uh and you're not asking to do that I appreciate that but um you know just how does the process work now all that kind of thing well I know Nick does want a badge okay Gail go ahead John I guess one of our questions that we were just talking about just before you popped on um is that right now is when things are happening with the early leasing ordinance students are students and sorry I speak

072for I mean I work with students but tenants are being asked to um sign up for wait lists or put put uh holding deposits down where they may or may not get the apartment and if they don't get the apartment they're gonna they're gonna lose their their holding faith and then you know one of the more significant and frustrating ones I think is that and we had someone speak on that earlier is the idea that tenants are being asked to sign leases that uh landlords don't counter sign until March so the tenant is bound to the lease pretty much but the landlord isn't and you know as much as we want to put together an enforcement committee and we want to see you know especially as we move forward with the right to renew all

073of this stuff is happening now and so we're I think wondering what what we can do about it because I mean we're sort of at a bad place now where tenants are really they're roads are really being jeopardized okay and I see hands up all over the place I don't wanna jump on Lucy's hand who's up uh but we're kind of limited right now to infractions that are embedded in chapter 105. um which are minimum status for light and ventilation spacing facilities requirements exits uh Plumbing Heating sanitation General requirements regarding maintenance you know abandoned buildings and then as it gets toward the bottom uh at the end of that we've got eight five thirty and eight five thirty one uh well now we have a 531 which it are the past enforcement issues or complaints

074didn't rise to a violation of the letter of law of 8530 because what 8530 said you couldn't do is that you couldn't show it to somebody else and we've had we had somebody doing that and they sent him a warning letter we call them we say knock it off and they knock it off um or they lease it they lease it they enter into a um enter into an agreement to lease the rent the lease premises to another tenant for at least 150 days before the end of the current release period so sending a an early a letter early on that says hey lock in great rates now or something didn't didn't violate the lease so how is 8 5 30 going to work going forward with a right to renew so can I just

075ask you a question then because the uh the early leasing ordinance says that landlords can't show the apartment for 150 days before the end of the lease but it also says landlords can't sign leases with new with subsequent tenants or something like that as possible actually it doesn't say that it says they can't enter into agreement to rent the lease promises to another tenant which we might be saying the same thing but the law oh yes for N3 uh sub you know parent B says that so that's awesome how is having a tenant sign a lease agreement a new tenant sign a lease agreement that the landlord just sits on how is that not I'm looking up the language now how is that not a violation of the early leasing ordinance I'm not saying it's

076not a violation and that's not that's I don't know that that was has been brought to our attention to the Past scale where the landlord may not enter into an agreement so they're saying well we haven't entered into the agreement we got them to lock in and we didn't like until later I don't know that's a that's a an infraction or a condition a situation that has been brought to our attention happy to do that okay I mean you know if there's plenty of 10 of seeing this I I don't recall which landlords are doing it but there are some landlords that that's all they're doing and so tenants don't have a right to to then go find another place because they're locked into this lease but they also and I don't know that I

077knew that that was going on I knew that the waiting list the reservation list the the end around about a formal lease I knew that that was kind of going on but I didn't know about like hey you sign it here and I'll just put in my back pocket and then deciding depending what happens I'll sign it later I'm sorry to talk over you Lucy I know you've had your hand raised but um I will make sure that that I get that information to you John okay thank you ma'am hi Lucy hey glad you're here so one thing that we talked about uh which you may have may have some insights on that the rest of us don't in terms of enforcement we've raised a series of enforcement issues tonight that each of us has

078you know different access to an experience with and it won't um go over all of them but but but there's a lot of of things that are being enforced so a question we had was is that an issue of Staffing is there just not hours being put into enforcing those things and I guess there's there's two this is a separate question there's two things there's the um is there a legal violation of something but then is there a kind of a pre-step to that like with these wait lists or with the if these um refusing to counter sign things good City staff step in then and say like we've noticed uh this Behavior we we strongly encourage you to stop or something like this um so yeah two questions is is there is there's staff

079time devoted to enforcing these laws and if not do you see a solution to that the answer is yes and no yes there is someone who uh Fields these calls sometimes they're calls but usually they're a it's a if you go to the city's website you guys have probably been to the city's website under the rental housing and you can click on the form you know what I'm talking about most of you I would hope I can share my screen and do it if if you're not or you can just go to the building department and Rental housing and then on the left for tenant resources and you can click your way through and find the complaint have you all done that thank you Zach left and red yeah did I did I show what

080you want me to show or is there more yeah but then if you were you showed part of what I was talking about and if you click on that and you eventually get to a forum and also I think in there it says who the person's name is and how to contact her and sometimes they're phone calls and sometimes they're emails sometimes their actual uh uh complaints and then and then someone on the first floor in the building department uh gets those calls uh maybe calls the tenant maybe calls the landlord get some background um once in a while they would get assigned to another person we did have a ticket that was issued uh adjudicated uh successfully on behalf of the city's part um to find some costs so we did have that one

081but that that had a kind of a housing inspector that was involved on it and then if the if the uh her name's Janet if she asks questions she calls me and we kind of talked about it whether or not it violates a530 thank you right that makes sense to me although that seems like it's heavily dependent on robust tenant education which we don't have so I'm trying to think and in that case it'd be a housing inspector so there you go the housing inspector is the one who knows I think yeah go ahead so thinking about realistically enforcing these laws I'm wondering if there's a system in place or if we could um this is just seems like something important to talk about if we know that there are laws that are being violated

082is there a way to enforce them that doesn't depend on an individual reporting the claim and let me just give an example so with the short term leasing there are a lot of violations of that and a colleague of mine at the University of Michigan figured out a way to uh track track these things and I can't remember what that all was but it was like going through Airbnb and you know some kind of thing like this she brought this to her City councilor Jen eyer and Jen ire said staff does not have time to look those things up and enforce that so the enforcement issues I understand that we have a process I think the process is ineffective but what other systems do we have in place of enforcing these laws that doesn't depend

083on the on the tenants reporting these claims we're reactive no doubt about it and you know we we get the call so we can make do some sort of Investigation ticket is issued or a warning or phone call or it isn't you're talking about is there something proactive we can do riser such as use Lisa One Direction Communications to get the word out to you CTN to come up with a poster to put into dorms or not dorms that's not where they would go but to put around coffee houses or wherever tenants congregate to get the word out about this ordinance so the answer is yes but that may or may not be the rental housing department you know what I mean that might I do know what you mean so I was thinking about

084this as an issue of the renters commission and I don't even I mean do you think that tenants education needs to be better but I'm also saying if the city knows about if we know about a law being violated and what other methods do we have of enforcing those things not just not just preventing it but enforcing it if it's broken and it's known that it's broken like with these airbnbs yeah but it's been brought to our attention that sometimes people speed and uh you know we don't put notice is up for that they get pulled over I'm not saying that we couldn't do that but we could do a better job of getting the word out an example of that might be when we came up with a period products ordinance and uh the

085required um menstrual products in restrooms all over town and generally privately owned businesses in the city does it itself as well and we came up with a poster and we got that the press release on that and we got we kind of got the word out on that so I if you're asking if the city could do a could increase its efforts to get the word out I think the answer is yes right and but the you know how do we do that what do we say and to whom do we say it and how do we say it that's not quite what I'm saying though I need to interject here we're we're very far off of our agenda here okay this is a very you know these are important conversations but I'm I think

086that this is highlighting the need for a subgroup to start working on this Lucia I'm sorry for not understanding what you're saying if I can put my email in the chat or you can say it right now so that I can grasp it I actually have your email so I will follow up I appreciate that thanks okay um I I think that does everyone okay so I I guess I I'm gonna be proposing this idea that we do create an enforcement committee that it starts very quickly to start working on um on figuring out what's going on with the ELO enforcement Gathering more details and potentially coming to recommendations to be made to the administrator and to I know Janet Farrell's seems to be so a lot of how we enforce is through education by

087the way so I don't know if you want to call it the enforcement committee uh which seems pretty heavy-handed or the education and enforcement committee but kind of getting the word out in better process is sounds like that the goals are twofold letting people know what the law is you know how not to violate it if you're a landlord and what to do if it's been violated or you think it's been violating your tenant and then how to better process those claims is that the twofold thing that's needed question mark or no at least Lucy's saying no that doesn't capture the issue of People purposefully violating it because they know it won't be enforced like with these wait lists let me just know what they're doing but Lucy is a wait list violative of the

088law under the law I mean getting and we can have that discussion offline if you want to but currently 8530 doesn't prohibit weightless well we're not yeah I guess I was talking about early leasing uh Nick 85 30. I see originally that's right what's that I just see that Richard has her hand up um so I can keep it brief I know that there's some items on the agenda left but just since I at some time ago we talked about next steps I just wanted to propose differentiating between two things like Gail you and I prepared this report for waitlist policies and we did discuss that there's a few like this is maybe part of a larger question which is Elo enforcement so that subgroup can continue maybe more people can get plugged in to

089look at enforcement of Elon maybe even enforcement of other ongoing laws that we keep getting complaints about which includes short-term rental but then there's also more prospective like right renew enforcement which is about like what is to come um so and there was a right to renew subcommittee that was looking at recommending it like reading the law recommending it to council so I feel like those things can happen in parallel and just so because this that was the first law that as a com as a commission we recommended I think it's fair to have that on our plate to see it through during the enforcement part because that's kind of forward-looking um but it makes sense I think we discussed that we have to work a little more on the waitlist policies so do you

090feel do others feel like that's part of the ELO enforcement investigation and we do we've made some Headway there right we looked at the complaint forms we also noticed other issues with the yellow enforcement so yeah I think we have some next steps that we could we could keep working with and now I'll just pass it on to you to respond and then move forward with the agenda so you're saying just keep the current the the old group we had for the right to renew and have them continue with these tasks yeah there's a lot of overlap I realize but just wanted to do a recap that we had a group of people there was like 45 people who were looking at that so just if there's interest or capacity to regroup and the Gabby

091let's spend some time I think I don't want to put Nick on the spot but I learned Nick was involved in that um do you remember all the people who were involved in that subgroup that could essentially a committee I can I think you you Gail Nick I joined Travis was involved Elizabeth uh Lucy uh but yeah there was like five to six okay I know that some overlap with the ELO enforcement uh but maybe folks who are interested in the research piece can plug into that because it's it will require some research to just quickly look at what other cities are doing and something like that okay so uh sounds like we have a proposal to just reform that group uh to have them start looking at how ELO and right to renew are

092enforced right um and see if uh there might be some recommendations that we can make to improve the process because I know that especially with right to renew there isn't I don't think there is much of a process yet since it's brand new law Lucy yeah I don't know if this is a thing for Kristen but I wasn't in that group before but I would like to be now or if Sarah if you can do that I don't I don't know if that's I think uh I think we can just send out a first email to all the people who are interested um and if you know I'll send you the same group and then I'll include Lucy if there's anybody else who wants to be included in that you know we do have them

093in a certain size but I think we do have room for more people if you are interested and just send me an email if you um if you are interested in figuring out how we can best enforce these two laws okay do are there any objections to moving ahead with regrouping the right to renew group and having them start working on assessing you know the current complaint process and uh maybe providing some recommendations to improve it any objections on that okay sorry I'm sorry that that discussion got sidetracked I think it's easy to um kind of this fear from the agenda all right in terms of the research and attendant Outreach education I think we'll have to come back to those committee ideas later on at our next meeting I do appreciate the interest that

094those of you um who did speak up shared all right we will move on to unless there's anybody anything else to be said about committees we will move on to 7-c okay move on um yeah sorry so the um I did update it at the agenda online and I gave it to everybody so right now we're technically on seven Dash B1 um but that was my fault that should have been attached to 7A I will be making that Amendment and um that will be in the meeting minutes and that's just so that way the public knows and you all know as well oh yeah I see that there the seven Dash B1 yeah no worries at all okay we'll move on to 7-c uh report from City staff that's me um so I have that

095applications have been provided to Zach and council member radina for two regular vacancies and two landlord vacancies I understand that uh councilmember Medina and I will be meeting soon to talk about those applications uh we're going to be reviewing them we are actively reviewing them actually foreign anything else from City staff okay thank you so much for being here and for helping with the agenda it's very helpful all right uh 7-c or 7--d excuse me our plan for the next meeting in December um I think uh looks like there's sounds like we would like to come back to the discussion of committees now that we have a more concrete idea of what those might be the right to renew committee which we've kind of regrouped here I think it's a good idea that we report

096back on what we've been able to do any other ideas for what we should do on our next meeting I know I will also be inviting I'll send out um Community you know invitation to uh do we have a preference on who should come first Janet brandy or the inspectors Sarah um I will make sure that like Kristen and I do reach out to Janet and everybody um and then uh just for kind of the next like thing really quickly I do want you guys to be thinking about um 2023 calendar um that is coming up and it would be super helpful if we could have that finalized in December so yeah and by the calendar do you mean like a meeting date yeah it's just confirming that you guys do want to go ahead

097and move with this same date throughout 2023 um we don't have to do we just have to do the yearly calendar so it's just renters commission it's not any of the subcommittees or anything like that just strictly the regular sessions of the renters commission we have to approve them so that way um we can have it up and ready for January 1st okay did you say that you want to have Janet at your next public meeting and ask her questions or is that a committee is going to do that The Proposal was to have her at our next public meeting and you're going to reach out to her supervisor so that that can be vetted because um are there concerns about that sort of confidentiality of the process no no it's just I I don't

098know that other I don't know of other boards and commissions who bring City staff to a public meeting to kind of talk about the process um I don't know Travis has his hand up all yield to him yeah so so I have heard of other commissions where we all have staff new presentations and ask some questions um I think that the assumption is that this body would like to extend an invitation um and so you know it's not like we're subpoenaing um and and I would expect that our staff person would work through that process and with us so um so that that the appropriate channels are being notified yeah I'm just saying that's a um I don't know I shouldn't I don't want to say the word red flag but um uh that's something

099that uh is not going to be up to Janet I'll tell you that General might want to come and she's very helpful um but at a public forum where she's asked questions on the cuff uh you know I don't know I got it John I'll I'll talk to any everybody that I need to talk to okay thank you Sarah and thanks Don for raising the concern and if it's needed that we write questions in advance or something like that so they could feel them I'm sure that can be arranged I think I think there's also just uh you know Janet may not be the person right like even though she's doing some of the day-to-day um it may be you know her supervisor or somebody else who's actually the person that would come to this

100group and so um I want to set that expectation too you know so Missy is usually the one presenting to to energy commission Missy stultz um and she may bring a staff member with her but she's usually the the person presenting so so but yeah I I trust that Sarah and Christian will be able to kind of work out the the requests from the commission and work with staff right thank you very much Sarah and you know you can obviously communicate with the commission as needed to clarify what we would like to do for our next week okay uh and you recommended Sarah that we talk about what the calendar year will look like for 2023 at our next meeting okay that makes sense any objections to having a quick discussion about whether or not

101we want to continue with this date at our next meeting okay sounds good love to have that on our next agenda any other agenda points that you would like to have for the December meeting uh Richa I was wondering what the timeline for appointments are or timer for appointments is is that something we just discussed privately over email or like how do we find out can that be like an update in December yeah uh Travis I think you have a better idea yeah I was actually going to speak a little bit to that as well um so I I know for a fact that we will have a new Council liaison appointed to this body by our next meeting and so one of the things to potentially add to that would be uh introduction from

102the new council member just so that you can all get to know that person um my expectation at this point and my hope is that I will be reappointed so I won't have to reintroduce myself but we will have one new liaison and so that will be an opportunity for for them to be able to introduce themselves um and then um I know that we have a small group of folks who kind of raise their hand and said that they'd like to help in reviewing some of the applications for for appointment and so I know that Zach and I just got some additional we we have actually had a number of new uh landlord applications for the non-voting seats and so those are the new ones that we received um and so I think that

103there's some opportunity for us as a subgroup to kind of meet separately and hopefully would potentially be able to to get that process rolling before our next meeting because it's a two-step process they might not be appointed by the next meeting but hopefully we'll have some idea of who the recommendations are to the mayor and ultimately it is the mayor's appointment but um but you know he he relies pretty heavily on recommendations from the bodies okay um yeah so I think we can just check back in on the landlord and tenant applications in December I I'm not sure I'm guessing we will have made up our mind and sent out uh sent our recommendations on to the mayor but we could maybe report on that uh Lucy hey yeah I was wondering if we could

104add something maybe like a generic discussion section to the agenda just in general I feel like these meetings are really infrequent I found our conversation today about enforcement to be really important even though it was described as a tangent and I I just really think we should be making space to be talking about these things uh so I don't know if that can be just a regular agenda practice in the future to be able to talk about matters arising or to have a little bit more flexibility in what we're talking about because there are a lot of issues we meet very infrequently and it um there's a lot of different expertise and perspectives in this room so it just I if if it's an if it's an issue of the agenda being so rigid that

105we can't have conversations if we could just add a line in to make space for that that seems really important to me but uh Hannah um uh I wonder and this might be like too formal and like uh like regular city council like but I wonder if um there's potential for like an open Forum time to like cycle through each commissioner to bring up things they've heard of that maybe don't make sense to have been in an email like something like Lucy's saying like things that is on that commissioner's mind um and people can skip if they don't have an update or something specific to share that day and maybe time limited since these already go um long just an idea Travis yeah just just building upon that a number of the commissions have kind

106of a commission comment period as well as the public comment period And so um depending on where that makes sense for you guys and your agenda but there there a lot of them do have that where it's an opportunity for Commissioners to kind of report out um or talk about raise issues things like that um and then often because you know the agendas are often built out trying to keep it within a certain time frame if it's not something that has to be discussed at that meeting then that helps to build out what what maybe a discussion Point might be on the next agenda if somebody's raising it and so it kind of gives that opportunity to build some um some future Topics in as well um and then one other thing that I I

107know that I have in a couple of my other bodies um that if it is beneficial to you even though sometimes I forget that I need to prepare for one um is a lot of our bodies have a council update period where if there are opportunities for your Council Liaisons to provide updates on things that council is actually doing that are relevant to you or so similar to your hhsab period And so something you want to think about too I know we we can weigh in throughout the meeting but if you want us to provide a specific update as it's as it's needed um some of our our commissions have that built into the agenda I think all these ideas make a lot of sense um yeah I definitely would like to put a council

108report on the agenda do we have any objections to adding that no okay um the other ideas were like a like a forum section um I don't know what you called what Travis you said that some commissions already have something like that but it's called uh it's just called commissioner updates um and then kind of an open floor for people to take an opportunity to you know I think they a lot of them do have kind of a three minute time or whatever it is similar to a public comment time period but an opportunity for each commissioner should they so choose to raise their hand and bring up things that have been on their list or give updates on things that they're working on Lucy do you think that that would be an improvement yeah

109I think I think it's worth trying there's a lot of things to discuss and we should have space for that for sure and if you think of um a discussion um topic that you want to be to want to have included we can you know put it of course directly into the agenda just to make sure we do have enough time to talk about it um I hope you don't feel that we've that that discussion was you know stifled because we didn't think it's important I think it's you're absolutely right it's extremely important to talk about those uh Richard yeah I had uh shared a couple of things with Kristen actually four to five points before the meeting to ask if we could talk about it so only if time allows towards the end I

110was I had a question about short-term rentals because a complaint had come in uh from someone who lives somewhere in downtown it's uh and yeah basically we I just want to double check if what I see on stream about the status of that properties short-term rental application like it says on hold but they might still be renting it out um to tourists and things like that so we can probably check in later but just wanted to say that like I submitted an agenda item before the meeting so maybe that's another with the commissioner rotation thing would be a time where I would bring something like that up and think that's in the communications for tonight Rita so I it is included but also it's completely fine that we um you know do a council update

111in the commissioner update is our specific spot in the agenda that you prefer um go ahead Travis for the bodies I am on it is usually at the end of the meeting so that it's uh but so that it doesn't necessarily like be you want to make sure you're getting through your agenda items and then moving on to that portion for most of our bodies so um so that's where it usually is but it really is up to you that seems to make sense to me as well Nick did you have your hand raised you are muted thank you I remember when I was on school board we had certain kind of meetings some there there's the meeting where you have an agenda and you're getting through the agenda and there's a psychological Dynamic I

112think when you have an agenda to get through the agenda and when there's a long discussion on an item sometimes people get the people who aren't as engaged on that item might get frustrated so sometimes we would have meetings that were just study sessions you would pick one topic and it would basically be a freewheeling discussion it would not be necessarily a voting you wouldn't be acting but you know there's so many things to talk about with this really important topic of providing affordable and decent housing for people who come into our city to live or to live for a short time or to educate themselves here and you know and it would be really nice to have an opportunity to have those discussions and how we could help make it better I agree okay

113um do any other points for the next agenda for December if you think of anything you can always email uh Sarah should we direct our emails to UCR or to Kristen you could do it to both um for right now Kristen should be back next week thank you all right then we will move on to our second uh General oh no sorry did I miss anything yeah okay we'll move on to our second uh public comments section and uh I'll pass it off to Sarah all righty um this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak for up to three minutes if you would like to address the renters commission priests please press star nine if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature I will select callers that have their raised

114hands using three digits of her phone number or by the name that number again is 877-853-5249 and you would enter the meeting ID nine three five eight zero eight zero one nine four one please state your name at the beginning of your comment if you feel comfortable doing so if not that's fine um a t a Tara you have three minutes to address the renters commission hello thank you um so I just had a question the renters commission keeps saying that students are being forced to join wait lists and it seems like this is something that students are seeking out they're trying to create housing security for themselves so I'm just my opinion and students that are joining a waitlist shows that there's a demand for excuse me for renting housing right now since landlords

115aren't allowed to rent um wait lists are a student's next best option the student population is a diverse population and while some students want to wait to run many students do not want to wait to provide housing security for themselves this is proven by the student's current demand and even willingness to pay a fee to secure that housing I think the renters commission should be careful not to create more housing instability within the student population thank you is there anyone else that would like to speak to the renters Commission seeing no additional speakers I will close the public comment thank you very much Sarah now we'll move on to 0.9 Communications so 9-j uh we have a bunch of attachments here um various Communications with the commission uh I'm wondering if we should go through

116document by document um I know there was a there's there's a attachment email from farpstein uh Sarah do you know uh who sent this to the commission or how it was provided to the commission um I believe it was through the we have like the Ann Arbor renters commission email oh yeah yeah you're right you're right okay I guess if we open up discussion on um this email I can put it up real quickly somebody who doesn't like the uh 150-day lease ordinance which is the amendment to the early leasing ordinance um I guess I I just wanted to say uh push back on the narrative that's provided in this email because having very recently been a student uh I very much preferred the current system so long as it's you know enforced correctly and

117one of the reasons why is because during my uh half at the end of my freshman year I wasn't sure if I was going to study abroad or not um because I had applied to a program and I didn't hear back until February meaning um you know because I couldn't I wasn't sure what I was going to be doing in the successive year um I didn't want to sign a lease but there was immense pressure to sign a lease in October November December uh and very few leases available February March um and so you know if if the this admended leasing period as we have it now is enforced I think that uh it would really help students in that situation Travis thanks I I just had a question I mean with this coming into

118um the renters commission inbox um is there somebody currently from the commission that's working to provide responses to the folks who email I mean this person specifically is is asking for an explanation of the ordinance and potentially might be posting it to the parents Facebook group Facebook support group and so it might be an opportunity for a clear explanation and an education opportunity from this body and so I just want to make sure that um while we are receiving it here formally in our agenda that we're also we also have a process for the commission to actually respond to folks so that they feel that they're being heard and acknowledged um uh do you know how we should do that I didn't see you know that the email was redacted I don't know how to

119reach out to this person you can tell me and or Christian what you would like to say and then we will reach out okay well I'm thinking maybe the right to renew group can briefly discuss how to respond to that since um we did just add on to the early leasing ordinance um and maybe we can send the response through Sarah or Kristen Gail I agree that's a good idea I think it might be worthwhile if it's okay Sarah if if you or Chris to get back to the person that reached out to us to say that um you know that you've shared it with us and that we will be getting back to her just just so she knows we're we're looking into it I assume it's a she sorry so they don't it's

120we're looking into it yep I will make sure that it is a practice that if we do um include any of these in the this General Communications that we are also including that hey um the renters commission is soliciting they have heard this and they'll be back with you that's great thank you thanks okay uh any other thoughts on that email if not we'll move on to the next one okay the next one was provided by Richard I believe it's a class action complaints um go ahead Richard if you'd like to describe what this is I think this is just like an FYI maybe something we can talk about at another meeting but this had to do with I think the company is called real page uh that had has been selling some kind of

121tool to landlords to recommend rates at which they could rent apartments and these seem to be suspiciously closed little under the market rate or so uh why this seemed relevant is because according to the plaintiff this is this affects student housing quite a bit and they just named anaba here perhaps as an example of a store in town where something like this could be happening which is felt like maybe we could look at this like read and if it's relevant to a subcommittee um you could just dig deeper but I think it was more of something I felt like everyone would be interested in yeah that is very concerning so I guess the accusation here is that certain landlord companies are using the same software to artificially increase the the cost of student housing um

122yeah Hannah um yeah I well I read a lot of the complaint and then went um scan the rest so I don't know specifically but um thank you for providing this Richard I see I mean this seems like the very beginning of the process but I do think you're like uh it seems like Ann Arbor and landlords later in the complaint are specifically listed like I think they are specifically targeting landlords here so knowing that these take a million years to go through the courts at some point I would it's possible I think a lot of people in Ann Arbor might be signing on to this and I think there's an education opportunity there but I'm really happy you provided this because it seems like they are going after Ann Arbor landlords specifically and have

123evidence behind it yeah Nick yeah I didn't get a chance to read the whole complaint but thank you uh Risha for uh uncovering that it was fascinating reading and fascinating to know that that is going on and it could be infiltrating our rental market if it hasn't already and uh so please keep an eye on that for us yeah any other comments questions on that that class action okay we'll go to the next attachment which I was also provided by Richa regarding uh I think it's um in a Statewide uh was it coveted based uh eviction rules is that right yeah and this is something Nick had shared with us and I just passed it on to Kristin again more of an FYI I think I also need to read this more closely there was

124some public comment around this that uh the Supreme Court had invited from tenants and landlords so I feel like some homework for me would be to read this and also take a look at the kinds of comments that people have left in favor of this and in opposition to it but just wanted to pass it on if others want to read and discuss next time and it seems like the flavor of that is to there were some additional tenant protections added to the uh landlord-tenant procedure that Gail may know more about it than I do that now we're trying they're trying to sort of streamline them out those extra tenant protections and they would comment on that yeah I don't I know Legal Services is following this um and they had some proposed comments for

125it but it's not something that comes up for for me a lot but I'm happy to share whatever I have with you guys John um I got a clock on in the back sorry so um one of the things that uh you folks might want to look into and follow up with Gail is our chapter 105. some of the earlier segments of it the sections of the housing code you guys have been focusing on the last two eight five thirty and eight five thirty one but there's a lot of stuff in earlier sections that might need tweaking and Gail has been emailing with housing staff currently and it has to do with inspections it has to do with certificates of compliance it has to do with owner occupied and whether an owner occupied rental housing

126that runs to students is exempt from having to have an inspection or certificate of compliance so there's a lot of things one of the things you could do is the committee or as a commission is take a look at the housing code talk to Gail talk to Nick talk to others and whether there are recommendations that you could make to city council to make it better for tenants and make it clearer because there are some ambiguities in there that Gail can talk to you offline about what those are that's just throwing that out there don't forget about the meat and potatoes that comprise everyday running that's at the beginning of chapter 105. again yeah the owner occupied issue is is a I think a big issue impacting a lot of tenant or maybe not a

127lot of tenants but the request it's it's impact attendance that I see um where landlords who also live in the property or their family member lives in the property according to the city they don't need to have a rental certificate um I think that the language in in the housing ordinance says otherwise so we can talk about that at another time any other comments on that document before we go to the next attachment okay the next attachment is uh labeled forward Arch renewal interests it's redacted letter or email rather that was sent out to a tenant I spoke to um they were actually very unhappy about uh uh what was going on in this in this email and they thought that there was a good chance it was legal um so I told them to

128email it onto the commission uh so this is a system where if a tenant you know because leasing contracts aren't supposed to be signed until there are only five months left in the lease uh what's happening is some landlord companies are asking their tenants to sign or to commit early on uh to renewing without signing a lease in some instances sometimes they do ask them to sign a lease but uh in order to pressure them to to make that commitment early since they're not obligated to uh they say that the price of their rental unit will or the price of their monthly rent will increase the longer it takes them to commit to renewing so um to me that's quite concerning um I the way I view it is uh it's sort of a retaliation

129for exercising your rights uh in in waiting to commit to a renewal um but I thought that everyone here should be aware of this any questions or comments on on this document Richard and Zach I think just a comment that again this is a part of just looking back at how landlords were circumventing ELO last year and how they're continuing to do it in some ways basically just pushing back against the timeline uh I know we had a second public comment that said that you know tenants are asking for it but clearly like we have emails that say otherwise so maybe like since we've read similar emails uh when we were in the waitlist policies like writing uh this probably merits another section around the retaliatory rent increases or like what happens if you don't

130renew early like the various channels that downloads take yeah Hannah um yeah I agree I think this sounds great for the enforcement committee or just like a separate part of this report I will also fly because I'm I know I talk to students today and they send emails right before this meeting and so it's on the online agenda but maybe not in the last agenda we got emailed but the final documents we're going to look at are the same kind of thing at multiple other properties um that some students send in today so yeah the some we'll see it later but it's like we're gonna up the rent every month or every three weeks until you resign and so um yes would love to see the enforcement committee work on this June what was their

131response to that like what how did those students feel about that situation um bad I believe they all resigned and didn't know about the renters commission I I don't know all of these people it seems like some word of mouth so some of these people I'm not sure who sent them in but um they are very upset um not knowing that this could have been a problem I think um because they just resigned because they kept seeing it go up is what I believe happened understandable all right Nick yeah just my real quick off the cuff legal opinion is that this is not that this violates right to renew because it's not a good faith offered to renew um if you're saying unless you agree to violate you know let us violate the ordinance we're

132going to raise your rent higher you know then we're offering to renew for now and this is the kind of thing that I would love to see tested to see if it's a violent you know sustained to be a violation of the ordinance so it's really concerning to me that in response to us helping Council with you know this new legislation that it caused a flurry of how do we get around it and that's you know it's kind of sad too especially because they don't have vacancy rights you know and it's just I mean one of the other emails that was attached I don't know if I reached it attached it or somebody else but you know they made a quarter of a million dollars in these non-refundable fees for the wait lists that just

133goes in our pockets and they're going to fill all their seats anyway so it's really sad and frustrating to see these uh and runs around the legislation that's being passed Hannah this is a quick question for you Nick about that because this is what I was wondering when those students talk to me today is it seems like an opportunistic like squeeze people out of money perhaps before right to renew like these are all leases that were in effect before I turn and went into effect so it seems like uh maybe we can do this now before we sign all these new leases where that will be in effect so it's kind of a question I have like this wouldn't this would violate in the future but not now right and that that goes to the

134question of uh the enforceability uh this took effect I think was September 13th so right to renew is in effect and the ordinance doesn't say this is only um for leases that were signed after September 13th it says the ordinance is effective September 13th so to me that means as of that date you can't um do the wait lists you can't do the cheaper rent if you let us violate the law um you know John Reiser may have a different opinion or he you know um but I certainly think that he should at least be tested we see how our judges uh rule on it yeah okay uh anything else on uh that letter uh the renewal interest from Arch okay we'll move on when we have two more here and then I think we

135can adjourn uh excuse that correct this is another similar letter I think uh it was received by Gail if you'd like to introduce it briefly it's from the Capo yeah I think this is proposing quite similar to the last letter that um you can go ahead and renew now or that you know we can't hold the we can't hold the rent for you or the price for you um so it's sort of uh puts people on pressure to sign the lease as soon as possible I mean this one I think was the lease has to be signed within 48 hours after you accept um except or tell them that you want to renew so it's much like the last one we looked at and so the lease just wouldn't be countersigned I assume no this

136isn't a I don't I'm not clear on that can you scroll down a little or up I think this is just that I don't know I mean that's not clear to me if they're going to counter sign the lease but because it's a renewal it's not the landlord can renew the lease they can't um they can't come make an agreement with another person to sign the lease with before 150 days does that make sense sorry I'm getting a little tired no I I understand that but I'm I'm not so sure that's my understanding of the city of the new city laws were was that um because of Any I think we should talk about that later about the okay yes that's fine okay any questions comments about this letter well I'm sorry you know I

137did see done I saw your hand up at a certain point but I feel like I didn't get to uh was there something that you wanted to say yes just things that that the question was almost gone but my thing is that I want them are reading the things uh and it's I barely understand what is about just it because I don't have the chances well maybe more than me that to know about it a little bit and then you start talking it was just like I'm just kind of lost what's it about it's just like and even though have the chances to read it because maybe some of you might have the chances to know or read about but maybe not everybody knows what it's about so all of a sudden I'm just like

138trying to catch up all the things all the information so that's that's that's a that's a thing thank you so thank you very much for saying that I'm very sorry that um that there was any confusion there I uh maybe I don't know apologies this is just it's it's just a process it's okay just like it thanks you you pay attention to my hands thank you thanks Ella I really appreciate thank you of course maybe we can talk on the phone sometime and we could walk through um these letters so we can make sure everyone I do I do video you have a lot to talk on the phone I do believe so thank you all right and if anyone else is confused please just you know that's okay these are sometimes pretty wordy confusing

139okay uh I think we can move on to the the last email uh here let's see uh was this provided by you Hannah it went to the regular um email but I told people to send it to this email so um I only have the information in this email I wasn't sure if they were going to attach any letters um I'm sure we could follow up if needed if we need those but there's there's actually three emails it looks like it's two from the same property and one completely different property with this issue of the like telling us they were continuing to raise the rent um until resigning so it's what I already said this is just the emails about it yeah and I think the top two re-signed and the last person said they're

140not going to live there again because of these issues at the different property pretty difficult to know what to say to somebody on these issues and the issue of the cost of rent since we can't legally regulate put any sort of Regulation the cost of rent but it's very disturbing yeah email and any of these landlord emails or announcements that suggest that the apartment may not be available for you later meaning the time when they have to have it open for the tenant or that the price is going to go up there's like a written admission that they're going to violate right to renew to me and I would love to take a case like that and um and test it so any of those folks that want to talk to somebody um you know

141their students they can go to Student Legal Services I can talk to Gail about working with her yeah I'll also point out that um landlords easily could be doing this without any sort of right you know your lower right to renew they they could Implement a system where the right the rent for Renewal increases every week or every two weeks uh I I'm saying that I did I'm not convinced that this is necessarily a risk directly because of the new laws that were put in place although it um maybe was you know the impulse was triggered by it I don't know I'm sure there's an innocent explanation that's not what I was saying Okay um Travis sorry I don't mean to prolong the meeting but my suggestion for a council comment came specifically from the

142need to ask one more thing during this Communications Point um so uh I we had policy agenda committee before this uh in the evening and one additional thing I wanted to put on everyone's radar and if you have ideas feel free to just send them to me directly um we have a new legislature that will be taking office in January um and one that is potentially more open to some of the priorities that we have as a city than what was in the past um and so while we currently can't pass things like or we currently can't at the local level do things that would be constituting rent control um we have legislators now who might be willing to introduce that and with a new legislative majority that might seem more attraction than in the

143past um I'm not totally convinced that that's a partisan issue but um and and and prepared to be disappointed but am hopeful that I guess I'm cautiously optimistic and I know that um incoming state representative Carrie rangans um is incredibly interested in renters issues and is willing to work with us and so if there are items that um are of importance to you guys as a group obviously there are things I've already kind of written down we are going to be in the process very soon as the city of reevaluating what our policy agenda is and what we are asking our lobbyists to work on up in Lansing um and so I just want to put that on your radar because um we might be able to have a very different conversation six months or

144a year from now if some of the things that are our priorities on rental issues might get some action at the state level and might actually Empower us to protect renters in a more meaningful way so I wanted to put that in your radar if folks have ideas feel free to email me um because we will continue to have these conversations at our policy agenda committee meeting um and it's a rolling thing we can always add to it but um before the new body is seated it would be great to start developing that list makes a lot of sense thanks Travis it's a good point um okay there any other points on the um uh the various Communications we've received okay uh before we move on to a German uh I guess I uh would

145like to just open it up in case anybody does have an announcement or anything of that nature [Music] regarding your business one thing I do want to make people aware of is that um the central Student Government at U of M uh is has put together a a survey and they're trying to gather a lot of information about the cost of renting the city for student tenants uh what student tenants feel about the excuse me the leasing window in regards to the early leasing ordinance um but there's a lot of questions on there I'd be more than happy to send that out to everybody so that you can all see what that survey is like please don't fill it out because that would be you might we don't want false uh uh false responses and

146then the other thing is that there is a student tenant town hall on December 8th if any Commissioners are interested in tending and just listening to to hear what at least our student tenants um in the city are feeling right now and what they're dealing with of course it's not all about the student tenants but they are an important part of the picture no time letters uh I can find it here in a second this evening I can't but um I'd be six o'clock yeah thank you I'll send out the graphic to everybody on the commission all right anything any announcements on any uh from anybody here before we go to adjournment okay uh if you if anyone uh felt lost at all during the meeting or wants to figure out what they can work

147on or anything of the sort please you know you can always send an email to the whole commission or to myself um and we can just talk about it because I definitely don't want to make I don't want anybody to feel like they're being left behind or lost or that'd be bad okay now move on to adjournment um do we have a motion to adjourn motion motion by Hannah okay do we have a second by Patrick thank you very much um all those in favor say aye aye all right all those opposed say nay okay I thought we were adjourned thank you guys thank you very much