Recommendation to Receive a Report Analyzing the Impact of Rising Rents on Alameda Residents; Public Hearing to Consider Additional Tenant Protections and Provide Direction to Staff about Policies to Pursue regarding Enhanced Mediation/Rent Stabilization, Just Cause Eviction Protection and/or Relocation Benefits, the Composition of the Rent Review Advisory Committee (RRAC), and the Use of Boomerang Funds to Expand the City’s Supply of Permanent Affordable Housing; and Consider Adoption of Urgency Ordinance Imposing within the City of Alameda a Temporary (65 Day) Moratorium on Certain Residential Rent Increases and on Evictions from All Residential Rental Units Except for Just Cause Eviction for the Immediate Preservation of Peace, Health or Safety. [Requires four affirmative votes] (City Manager 2110)
preservation of peace, health and safety, this ordinance would require four affirmative votes. Madam Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Did we do item number three? There were no speakers. Okay. Thank you. There were no speakers. Okay. You. All right. Before we continue. If you happen to have a cell phone, if you haven't already turned it down, if you could double check, that would be greatly appreciated. Also, we have received 90 speaker slips from the public, from all of you. We normally give 3 minutes per speaker, which would be 180 minutes at best. Approximately. Right. Which is 3 hours. Oh. Thank you. Okay, let's try again. But we're not going. Okay, let's turn and set. 270. Okay, then. That's four and a half hours of public speaking. All right. Let me. But we normally do is we have our staff, presentation staff. You have an estimate of how long the presentation is about? I'd say about a half hour. Half hour, 40 minutes. Staff presentation for all parts of it. That's correct. All right. It's 6:00. If. I'm if we did 2 minutes per speaker instead of three. Then we'd be at. Australia, 130 over 2 hours of public speaking. I'm hoping to. Be out. Here. So. Okay. So hours and of course so sensitive. Do one minute a situation like this. We could do one minute. So I'm going to actually ask you all to raise your hand. The choices would be 3 minutes, 2 minutes or one. I actually am going to do this. Thanks. All right. If you think that we should limit public speakers to one minute, raise your hand. Thank you. If you think we should limit it to two, raise your hand. If you think we should limit it to three. Raise your hand. All right. So, okay, so now I'm going to ask counsel, given that information, I'm going to ask for us, between us, if you think we should limit it to one. And remember about 97. Raise your hand. I'm just gonna say one minute. Yeah, one minute. That's what the audience agreed to. I think that was agreement. I'm sorry. I, I, I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. Perhaps one alternative might be that we continue with our normal practice of 3 minutes and 2 hours into this. Remind people to, if they should, if they're repeating other people's attempts to reduce their time or 2 hours into this at that point determine that, well, you know, we're only one third into where we want to be and then move accordingly. So I have no idea. So I. Appreciate that. At this point, I'm going to ask each of you. One minute to minute or 3 minutes, and I'm going to. Now that's going to determine it. All those in favor. One minute. I one minute. There's three two that a majority has that has the majority of the women. We're going to limit it to one minute. I appreciate that. And now we're going to start with a staff presentation. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the city council. My name is Debbie Potter. I'm the city's community development director. And we will be presenting a we have a staff presentation for you this evening. Our presentation is a three part presentation. We are going to start with a presentation of the Alameda rent study by Janet Smith Heimer, who is the founder and principal in Valley Urban Economics. She prepared the rent study for the city of Alameda. Her presentation will be followed by a presentation of Claudia Young from the Housing Authority, who staffs the RAC and Angie Watts and her Jim, who is with Echo housing the city contracts with Echo Housing for fair housing and landlord tenant counseling services. And when that conclusion, when that presentation has concluded, then I will return to present on the staff report. So with that, I'd like to introduce Janet Smith Heimer. And before she starts, some people have turned into slips intending to see their time to another speaker. So you may do that. Not everyone that you don't have to speak for yourself, but you will be able to give the one minute of your minute to someone else. And when we get to that, you'll be able to say, I see my time. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Janet Smith Heimer, and I'm the principal and founder of a consulting firm called B.A. Urban Economics. Long ago, we were called Bay Area Economics, as some of you may know us by that earlier name. We're almost a 30 year old consulting firm headquartered in Berkeley, but we have offices around the country and we practice nationally. In fact, I just got back from New York City working on a project for the mayor there. We are expert in economic development, affordable housing and a number of other specialties. And I just wanted the audience and the council to know that we have worked for a number of cities over the years on a number of rent stabilization issues. We've worked for Rent Stabilization Boards and Berkeley Fantasy, and currently we're working for the West Hollywood Rent Stabilization Board on an issue that they're facing. So as my understanding, staff said, 30 minutes for their presentation that correct. 30 to 40. Okay at most 40 minutes. And I'm we started the clock now. An uninterrupted go. Could you call up. The who has the presentation if they could go back to it? Yeah. Is working. Okay. It was up a moment ago. There you go. It'll be up. There. Okay. Perfect. So while we're waiting for that to come up, I'll just mention our portion of those should be about 15 minutes, and then I'm happy to answer questions. This will be the highlights of the report we did called the Alameda Rent Study, which is posted online. Any minute it should come up. We can see it here, but not there. I have it. I can. Should I start? Okay. So those of you in the audience can't see, but hopefully it'll come up shortly just to sort of start out and give you a sense of our work. We were asked by the city to work on the rent study starting in June of this year and we finished the work a couple of weeks ago and we were asked to really take a close look at all available data that is published and some that is privately published so that we could help understand some of the factors that are shaping the rental market in the city of Alameda today. There's two kinds of data that we relied on mostly. So I wanted to start my presentation by just giving you a sense of both of those, because as I go through this, you'll hear me refer to each of the two kinds. No data is perfect, but the two kinds that we use a lot in our study are the first kind of the American community survey. This is a kind of data that the U.S. Census Bureau puts out. They take a sample over a period of time in each city in the U.S. and each county. Also for Alameda, it's based on size of the city. How often they do this detailed data for Alameda. The last period that is available covers 2011 to 2013. It's what we used to think of as the long form of census data. So it used to be that you filled out a long survey. Some of you who got this in your mailbox now they do it by phone. It's collected through a very detailed phone survey. It's statistically valid, and it does give you a lot of really good information about some of these issues. However, since the last version of this was ended in 2013, it doesn't take us current to the present day of 2015. So it doesn't really give us the full picture of what's happening to rents in market rate units in Alameda today. So to augment that, we used a second data source which is available from a private vendor. The vendor used to be called Real Facts. They changed their name recently to something called Real Answers. This is a private data vendor that surveys every quarter larger apartment projects. They kind of start at 50 units and above. And so they do survey the 50 unit and above projects that exist in Alameda in the city of Alameda. They do it every quarter. So when you buy this data, what you're looking at is a subset of all your rental units, but it is the subset that's easily easy to track. And you can compare things quarter over quarter things like rents and vacancy rates and the percent of increase of those. Can you look you know, when you're speaking I'm sorry, we're the council. Could you look at the stretch? I'm sorry. I'm trying. To I. Was hoping to come up here. So that's just a brief introduction to the two kinds of data. Next slide, if you're watching on the monitor here. Anyone doing? Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. I can do it. Got a belt that controls that, too. Okay, I apologize. So just to sort of start to talk about a little bit about who are Alamitos renter households. So looking at the American Community Survey data, which ends in 2013, what we know is that there are about 16,500 renter households in the city of Alameda, and that's about 55% of your total household number. At that point in time, that's a slightly higher proportion of renter households in the city of Alameda than compared to the county overall. We also know or knew in 2013 that Alameda renter households had a median income that was about $55,000 a year. So median is the midpoint among all the households in the dataset. And that was only about half of the median for owner households in the city of Alameda, which was about 115,000 in 2013. Sorry. So a another piece. I'm going to go back here. Another piece of information from that same data set is we looked at how long Almeida's rental households have lived in their unit. This gets a little tricky, but the basic finding we could make is in 2013, which was when the data was collected, we know that about 13% of those 16,500 renter households had lived in their unit since 1999 or before. So at that point in time, it would have been 14 years or longer. That's a little bit higher of a longevity proportion than some other comparison areas we looked at. So, for example, in the county overall, all of Alameda County, about 9% of all of its renter households. I'm sorry to interrupt. Is there an update on when we're going to be able to get this to work? Because at this point, my preference would be to start hearing from the public. I think that's actually more relevant. What's happening now has changed since 2013 so. That America have more up to date statistics, which I was. But I don't. Honestly, I have a room of people that can tell me right now that they're experiencing. We can't get the mechanical part to work. And my preference would be to proceed with our speakers and and then go back to this when that part is working. Um, yes. So, um. So I, I think that's not a bad idea. Logistically, I don't imagine we meant to say that the data is not important because I think the data certainly is important, especially as an underpinning. So I'm going to go ahead and start. Calling able to do this evening. But if you wanted to hear from the council, I would agree to. Continue. That. But I think the council should probably weigh in on that change. And if there's an objection. I just want to say that I do appreciate your presentation and the report. But for now, you know, we should probably wait when the. Hearing. No objection, everyone's going to go ahead and start calling speakers and it's going to be one minute. Do we have someone to keep track of the time or. Are you going to be able to keep track at the time? No, it's not working. That's not working either. Okay. All right. I'm on time right now. Okay. Yes. Can someone can use a phone timer? And I really appreciate everyone's patience and cooperation. Interim Assistant Manager Moore. Madame would be our. Minute timer. If we approach someone who is going to be a key. Thank you. Wonderful. All right, so when you're speaking, I would appreciate it if the audience members would hold your applause so we can hear the speakers. Be respectful. I'm confident we can, because I really want to hear from all of you, which is why I'm actually bumping this up now. And then we'll do one minute and we're just going to give you all the chance to start talking to us. Mark Landreth I'm going to I'm going to call like three or four at a time and you can stand up and we'll be ready. All right. Thank you so much. It'll be Marc Landreth, John Cashman, Karen Miller and then Pauline. And I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name Zu Lock. Thank you very much, Mr. Landreth. And speak clearly into the mic. If the mic is not at your level, please lower. So we will be able to hear you and lean in a little bit. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor. City Managers and City Council. Thank you for this. Where's my timer? Start now. Okay. Got it. So. So my name is Mark Landreth. I grew up in the city all my life. I've inherited a home that I grew up in, was built in 1890. And I have I'm fortunate to have Gallagher and Lyndsey manage it for me. It's a small Victorian, has two studio pluses and a three bedroom, two bath. So it's not a real big but I'd like to share with you is that a year ago, November 21st, I had major heart failure. So the job that I had I'm young 55, but I planned on working another ten years. So my livelihood, my income, like many of yours, depends on the rent that I receive. Now, January 1st, I'm going to be able to retire from my company with three quarters of my pension is going to pay. Go ahead. Three quarters of my pension is going to pay 1100 dollars a month towards medical. And not only I've had to invest in the property over years. It was a brick foundation home. I had to redo that. So there's cost of goods associated the property to make maintain it. And any restriction on my ability to rent is like anybody here getting a restriction on what they would earn an income. I just want to share that perspective. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'm going to go ahead and call the speakers. I'm actually going to have like five or six because I was just reminded some people are coming from across the street from the library. Give me just a minute. So be John Cashman, Karen Miller, Pauline. Mark Palmer, Ken Slaven and then Linda Sol Self. Mayor and City Councilor. I'm John Cashman and I bought my first apartment house in 1976 at 1401 Central Avenue. I love Alameda and I think the rent control could be a hassle. In Alameda, I was the past president of the Berkeley Association of Realtors, and they did a study in Berkeley on the rent control issues. And when rent control started in Berkeley. 5000 property owners took their units off the market because they didn't want to deal with the rent control and those issues. I sold 1401 Central ten years ago and my tenants are still there from 1976 till now. When I sold the apartments, I picked the buyer because I wanted that person to be good to my tenants because I had them for over 25 years. Some landlords can be good landlords and just need somebody to maybe see if there's a problem tenant or if there's a problem landlord, but not rent control. I don't think that's the issue. I met an attorney when I was president of the board who told me he went to Cal. I appreciate your comment. Thank you very much. And he rent. He rented this unit, but he still had it was using his office supplies. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Next speaker. And I know 60 seconds is short. Maybe we should consider 90 seconds. But about 90. Seconds. That's why I wrote everything down. You in 90 or. Just think of it. Okay. We're going to keep the 60 seconds and let you try to finish your thought. All right, let's go. Okay. Mayor Spencer and members of the city council. My name is Karen Miller, and I've lived in Alameda since 1982 and been a housing provider since 2003. We bought our six unit building as a retirement plan. As neither of us have a pension. Alameda has a long tradition of welcoming renters. When the Navy came here during World War Two. Households were asked to create housing for the arriving sailors. Overnight, we went from a bedroom community to a town of multiple units. The majority of Alameda housing providers are Alameda INS with just one property, and they understand the special relationship that we have with our renters. I was a member of the Rock from 2003 until this year and was chair for the last ten years. The RAC is a unique body in Alameda. Unlike the various other city boards, it is a mediation panel. It requires that all members be able to objectively hear both parties in a dispute and make a recommendation that is fair to all parties. It works because no member is an advocate. Oftentimes, the parties come to an agreement on their own and a recommendation does not need to be made. In the 13 years that I was a member, only one. I remember one time, three times that the parties did not come to an agreement in the matter. It was referred to council earlier this year. This council directed that community meetings be held to find out the extent of the housing issue and come up with recommendations. After months of work by both housing providers and residents, the consensus was to strengthen the RAC, which was done by ordinance effective October 1st. We have no data as to how these changes will impact the renters, and I would urge the Council to let that process go forward before making any changes. Thank you. Next speaker. Hmm. Hmm hmm. Hmm hmm. My name is Pauline Zazula. I own a single five unit apartment building in Alameda. My highest rent is 1450, according to the sun. The median rent is 2800. I want you to know that I'm a moderate landlord. I now have had tenants for two and three years. The same group. I like them. I don't charge excessive rents. Please take that into consideration when you are making rent control rules that some of us are moderate landlords. These. Hold your applause. Thank you. Honorable mayor and city council members. Thank you. My wife and I are small potatoes. We are small. We are mom and pop landlords. And I think there's probably close, you know, close to 99% of us that are very small landlords, not the big type that you hear about. Now, this is what my wife and I get from our tenants. We get, you know, Christmas cards, we get birthday cards. Our rents are like the lady who just, just left are hundreds of dollars below market rents. We're not allowed to gouge anybody. We want a small profit because that is our livelihood. On the moratorium that might as well call out what it really is. Such a it's a wage freeze and a freeze is a ploy. I know. It's just. Anyway, the the new study, the arrest study is fine, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I say. Get on with. Just get on with the new. The new provisions with the RC and see how they work. Before we go on to other things. On top of things. Thank you. Madam Mayor, council members and citizens of Alameda is me. The Ordinance 3131 is called the Rent Review Ordinance. Housing providers are required to work out a fair rent and. Increase with rack. That's Rent Revised Review Advisory Committee, which is a really good one. And the thing is, it's only been in effect for only two months. The cost of living in a home goes up for everyone, not just the renters. The cost for a plumber or electrician. The average hourly cost is $125 an hour. It used to be only $85 an hour. Utility expenses have gone up an average of 5% a year. The premium on my home insurance just went up 17% this last year. And property taxes go up as well. So let's give ordinance 3131 a chance. Thank you very much. Question. Do I have a moment or do I have a moment and a half? Just start. And comment. Let's go. One moment. You get one minute. Okay. My name is Lyla Berghoff. Tig. My husband and I own a three unit Victorian in Alameda. And good afternoon and good evening to all of you. When we bought the building, we found there were many dangerous problems with it. It was a miracle that it hadn't burned down, killing a number of people. We brought everything up to code. We felt we would not discriminate, period, at a time when this was rampant in Alameda. We've had very good tenants for the most part, but we are at a point where we need to increase rents. Our rents are lower than you would pay in a slum section of Hayward first. For two of the three units. We want to keep our tenants. We were given a letter by the last tenant who moved out who was able to buy a nice mobile home in Citrus Heights, that we were the best landlord he'd ever had . And he gave us a letter to that effect. Please don't make it impossible for us to make some money on a long term investment and provide good housing for people in Alameda. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to say this one more time. Please hold your applause. And we have plenty of other people that I think could sit here and not clap, which means we could start rotating seats. So please hold your applause. Let's get through all of our speakers. Thank you. Hi. My name is Linda Sue Lodge, and my husband Gary and I have been landlords in this town for 35 plus years. I'm not going to repeat everything, Kenny said, but I was on the committee. I was one of the landlords, the housing providers, and we talked to the tenants. We came up with the plan. We all agreed on it to enforce the rec change. You came up with a new law. I'm rambling here. Anyway, let me go back to my notes here. Okay. It wasn't that long ago that we had a 30% vacancy factor in the city. I mean, I'm just talking a few years ago and during the last ten years, we have had no less than three four parcel tax. Plus, we've had to reinforce our buildings for earthquake. And now you're talking about putting a moratorium on rents when we don't have high rents. When we did that study, two things came out of that study. The city of Alameda had the lowest rents or some of the lowest rents in the in the county. Berkeley. Oakland. And San Francisco had the highest rents and they have rent control. We don't have rent control. What we do works. Thank you. All right. Our next speakers are going to be Marie Kane, Catherine Pauling, Dianne Mills, Jason Buckley. John Klein and Buckley and Stella. And if you want 2 minutes for those two names on the same slip. Tom HRT Biasi. All right. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and honorable counsel. My name is Marie Kane, and I worked in real estate. I know very many of the. Small mom. And pop. Landlords. That are. Here, and I'm one myself. We're very. Fair. You know, if I get a good tenant, I don't raise the rents. I've let people save money to buy a home. That were my tenants. And I think that applies to 90% of the mom and pop owners that are here tonight. So I urge you to continue on with the rent advisory board and try out the plan. Give it a chance. Before you throw it out the window. Thanks. Thank you. Now, if you heard your name, please line up. And then the next one in line. Come on up and speak. Come on up, Catherine. Hi. I'm Catherine Pawling. I've been a renter in Alameda for nine years. My children only know Alameda schools. We've been part of sports, part of PTA, I and four different schools activities. I hope. I hope that I'm able to stay five more years so that they can graduate from Encino High School. What you have with longevity and what we are losing with active displacement across the city, that report that these many fine landlords are referring to also stated that rents have risen more than 50% in less than four years. And that's what we're talking about. Maybe to them, 10% sounds reasonable, but 10% on $2,000 is 200 a year. And when you. Have a. Year after year, we are now on the third year of 10%. It is getting to be over 30% in only 25 months. This is terrible for families. And the families and the people who came here are now shuttled off into other rooms because this room has been filled out and you're not hearing them. The places that have rent control. San Francisco. Oakland. Richmond, Berkeley. They only allowed around 2% or less per year. And yet I understand some board members are going to suggest that with a moratorium, the moratorium would have a cap of like eight or 10%. It's unconscionable. I don't think you're hearing us. We've been coming here for over a year with tragic stories of the people that are doing and maybe it isn't the small mom and pops. And I thank them for being here and I thank them for what they're doing. But the large complexes are coming in with 50% rent increases, 30% higher. So there there is another side. To this story, and you are not getting. The full. Impact. Of what's. Happening out there. Thank you very much. All right, next speaker. So when I call your name, if I've called your name, please line up on that wall and then we're just doing them in order. Okay. Thank you, Mayor and council members. My name is Duane Moles and a resident here since the nineties. I think a lot of what we've heard this evening about mom and pop operations that run a good organization here is completely true. And what we're really talking about is about bad apples. But that's why we have laws and regulations, not because of the law abiding, not because the just. Yes, landlords have a right to, you know, fair and reasonable return on their investment. However, we have protections, consumer protections for exactly those people and individuals who do become predatory in their practices. So it's not about every landlord being bad, but we as citizens need protections from those 30 and, you know, and 50% increases. People who get kicked out of their homes for no fault whatsoever, who pay their bills on time, are good citizens, are good parts of our community. So we're not trying to slander landlords in general, but we do need protections. Please consider that how many people need to be. Thank you. And when you approach the mike, if you could say your name. That'd be great. So if I've called your name, please line up there. I've called some names I don't think are. Here it is. Oh, is Duane right? Okay, go ahead. Hello. My name is Tom Hercules. I definitely wrote too much, so I will make this quick. I came here today away from my wife and children, to discuss a matter that will potentially affect my family in a negative way. Today, we all discussed the future of many people, renters and landlords alike. Let's not rush into bad decisions because of political tides, but sort out a rational approach to this issue. My story is probably quite common in many people with the American Dream of making their life better than their parents. I grew up in Michigan and oftentimes lives on what we called a shoestring budget. Later, we moved to California. I met somebody who taught me the trade that I still do today. I came to Alameda from the Navy and fell in love with this place. The reason I tell my story is I'm not a large corporation, a foreign investor norm or some outsider looking to make fast money in a community that I don't live in. I say for ten years when I bought my first house, I was able to get two more buildings on an owner carry as you could not prove to my prove myself to be viable or bank worthy. I spent the majority of my money back in my buildings to keep them excess exceptionally clean and fit. No tenant of mine ever waits more than a couple of days for any type of repair. I appreciate my tenant to get to know them personally. I never give rent increases at 10%, and typically it's 75 or $50. Jan Mason can attest to that. I take care of my tenants and they'll take care of me. The last time we had rent increases to people, I chose not to give a rent increase because of their situation, because these are people and we are trying to take care of one another and we all live in the same community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank speaker. So I'm going to say names and some of you may already spoken. Jason Buckley. I think we already had John Klein. He's there. Okay. Oh, sorry. And Buckley and is going to concede. Okay, Tom. Court of horror device. Okay. Michael Brown. So then go ahead and line up and brought you Dominic. Pass the nifty easy. Don starts. Marilyn Schumacher. I think that's what this is. All right. So then you all can line up. Go ahead. Thank you. Hi. I'm going to make this really quick. The holidays are coming. This moratorium. 65 days. Just do it, for crying out loud. Just do it. Save our community, at least through the holidays, from this predatory, greedy practice of giving people the boot for no reason other than naked greed. And, you know, we're half the population. We're keeping an eye on how all you vote. And we're going to remember that in Election Day. That's all. Thank you. Speaker. Thank you. My name is John Klein and with it Alameda. Renters Coalition are two things I'm still waiting to run into a good landlord this week at the RAC. There was a landlord there with seven or eight units and given rent increases for three or four years. Just the nicest person that you'd want to meet. But now she wanted to $100 rent increases in in 14 months. The tenant tried to negotiate her down to $50 instead of $100 this time. The tenant said the landlord said no. So mediation did not work with a good landlord. The second thing is, about 5 hours ago I got an email from someone who had just gotten a 60 day notice on a 50% rent increase. And that's the same as a an eviction for her. So I'm still waiting to find a good landlord. Thank you. Thank you. Come on up. Say your name. Thank you. I really appreciate y'all. That's good. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Michael Brown. I've been a landlord in Alameda for 38 years and I'm a mom and pop operation as well as I'm a practicing attorney in town. And I'd like to direct some of my comments to the study that was presented briefly today. I believe it's somewhat skewed because it only focuses on interviewing property owners with 50 or more units. And because I'm a mom and pop with converted Victorians, the maintenance costs and the cost of. Just. Maintaining those is significantly higher. And I understand the larger projects tend to be owned by investment groups that are looking for particular returns. And my understanding the report sort of focuses on the rent increases that the bigger units have generated, not the mom and pops. Also, the special assessments that I get on my tax bill is probably one of the highest cost of operating a property, and those special assessments represent about 26.60% of anyone's tax bill. And those go to the benefit of the public at large, including the tenants. Also, because these properties are old, they constantly are requiring maintenance work that you can't just generate out of rents. You've got to collect money over time just for paint. I just did a paint for $28,000 on a five unit building. I just spent 5000 on asphalt slurry coat. I like to maintain good properties and these type of draconian measures that are being proposed which clearly impact the viability of the properties and cause further depreciation. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker. That your name? Good evening, Madame Mayor. City Council. My name's Dominic Pasternak, and I've been an Alameda resident for over 36 years. I've raised my family here, and I also have owned income property in Alameda for over 12 years. I have a unique perspective regarding rent control. I grew up in San Francisco. My family owned and still owns income property in San Francisco. I have seen the effects of rent control both before and after. Rent control hurts the conscientious small property owners such as we are. Even a moratorium on rent increase only mostly hurts small property owners like myself who have been conservative with rents and rent increases. The big out-of-town investors who have already bought in and raised their rents excessively will not be affected by a moratorium. I know of conservative small landlords like ourselves who've owned property for many years may charge rents at less than market rates because tenants don't move out and don't charge high rent increases. The building we purchased had low rents and had quote unquote deferred maintenance by the previous owner. We invested in much sweat equity and kept rents low while improving the property. There are many old buildings in Alameda that require high maintenance, which won't be done by the owner if there is insufficient profit margin or reasonable rents or rent increases. Rent control creates a two tiered system of rents, where new high rents subsidize older lower rents. This is what's happening in San Francisco and in other cities where rent control exists. Thank you. Next speakers. Maria, it'll be Maria Dominguez. I have some names here. I just want to make sure that we have everyone lining up. Lisa Lawley. Karen Bay. And talking. T ru a c h i h w u lin anders. All right, thanks. Thank you. Mayor and City Council, I appreciate your time and thank you for having us here this evening to speak on this issue. I speak in opposition to a moratorium or any moratorium on rents or evictions. The city just spent a significant amount of time holding meetings, gathering information and establishing new standards for the Rent Review Advisory Committee. I encourage you to give the new process and procedure a chance. To work before. You consider taking any other action. Rent control typically reduces availability of rentals, which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I encourage you to give the new Rent Review Advisory Committee a chance to really work and see how that goes. Thank you. You. Several people have conceded their time to me. So here we go. You know how many people have. It's in a package with my name on it. Marilyn Shoemaker. All right. Or later. Do you want me to count them. So you can tell me that six people. 12. 15. All right. Very good, then. We're going to go ahead and we're going to start with 10 minutes, see if you can do it in ten. Do you think? I will try. All right. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Council members and staff, thank you for calling this special meeting to discuss our current housing needs. Our meetings for fair rents are property owners, residents and community members like myself. My name is Marilyn Shoemaker. I have lived in Alameda since 1973. We've raised our family here and our children still have dear friendships with kids. They met in Alameda attending preschool. In 1976, my husband and I became a small property owner in Alameda, and since 1986, I've been a local realtor, primarily helping folks buy and sell and live in Alameda. I have been through all the ups and downs that real estate and the rental market has experienced here on the island. Our group is composed of people like me, property owners, management companies and residents of Alameda. Many of us are small owners like me. Most of our group has been providing housing in the community and renting our properties for decades. We represent a diverse group of owners and property owners of all sizes from buildings like mine, with just four units to larger units. We represent more than 3000 rental units in Alameda. We are committed to providing quality housing to our beautiful and unique island. There is no doubt that California is experiencing a housing shortage and increasing rents. And nowhere is it felt more than right here in the Bay Area. Cities have not created enough new housing stock, particularly multifamily units, to meet the demand of our growing region. People are back to work. The economy is booming, and we need to provide people with affordable places to live in. Alameda We are lacking real localized data about this crisis. Studies conducted by outside parties offering regional statistics do not give an accurate picture of what is happening here in Alameda. And so this council is left with anecdotal information. We are eager to see the results of the research the city's consultant is conducting and hope it will include real data from property Alameda Property Owners. We know that the housing shortage is a real issue. We have all been impacted. As property owners. We are responsible for maintaining our properties and providing a safe and comfortable place for our residents to call home. During the last economic downturn. Downturn. Many of us actually lowered our rents. Rents have gone up and down with the economy, and owners like myself have been reasonable to help preserve and community, our community and help our residents. Over the years, like myself, many owners owners have passed on along improvements with costs in reasonable, measured increases. Folks come to stay in Alameda for our schools, our safe streets, the new library, access to quality health care on the island. Property owners have been strong supporters of bonds and other taxes to support these services and needs in the community. We fully realize that not all property owners operate their businesses as we do. We know that there have been some cases of egregious rent increases and we do not support the behavior by our colleagues. We value our residents as part of our community, our neighbors, friends, teachers, colleagues. One of my residents has been with us for 22 years. Another five and a half years. I value having good neighbors. It's important to our group to retain good residents and neighbors who make Alameda the community it is today. We are committed to continuing to do our part to keep rents in alameda a fair. Many of us have worked in good faith with within the rack process and feel that Alameda residents and property owners have had positive outcomes through rent mediation. However, in fairness, the RAC has not been given the same time to the same. Given the time to work effectively, particularly since the improvements this Council passed on in ordinance October 1st, just last month, to strengthen the Board and provide better noticing and communication between the property owners and residents. We urge the Council to uphold the rack and continue to adopt appropriate amendments for a period of time sufficient to determine effectiveness and equity for both residents and property owners. The rack is a viable, fair way to address rent increases and property costs for both residents and owners. We support continuing the equitable treatment of all parties going forward, recognizing that we are in rent and housing crisis in the region and state. The RAC also can be a source for actual data, real cases and mediating disputes. Without this information, we do not have an accurate picture of the volume and severity of cases in Alameda. Rent control is not one size fits all. And as you well know, Alameda is not a urban, high rise apartment or condo community. While it is true, we have many rental units, they are spread throughout the island, intermixed with our single family homes and part of the individual neighborhoods. This makes for a very balanced community with great residents and good neighbors. Rent control is being route being proposed before changes to the rack have function under its new ordinance. There is no evidence that the rent control provisions would be better for residents than the current rack process. We understand the need for a temporary hold on rent increases while staff works through the issues. If the city council chooses this path. We want staff to have time to examine real data so they are not responding to anecdotal information. We believe the moratorium should include 30 to 60 day evictions and excessive rent and excessive rent increases of 10% or more. Cities have that. Cities that have adopted just cause provisions have experienced difficulties. As a property owner, my responsibility is to all the residents and the neighbors. We need the ability to remove residents that are truly troublesome. Reasonable and appropriate protections and provisions could be added to the rent rack process. Amanda Rak We suggest the city council add the 30 to 60 day evictions to the rack process. Give the process time. We thank the Council for addressing it seriously considering a very real issue in Alameda and the region. Affordable housing and rental housing. This is an important and complex issue. We appreciate the work that has been done. We hope that you will listen to the following testimony of many of your Alameda constituents so that you will have a better understanding of who they are and the service they provide to residents and the community. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. I am a landlord and I ran a small house in Alameda. The house rents out well below the market rental rate, and after five years of renting to the same tenant, I increased the rent by a total of $160 over the five year period. That actually works out to $30 a year and actually to $2.66 per month. In that same period of time. I invested. $26,000 on improvements in the property. And at point I'm still working with a negative cash flow. I know other property owners who also rent their properties at a significant financial loss and rent control poses an enormous problem for us. We're operating under a great financial loss and with rent controlled, which may only allow about 2% increase, we may have to sell our properties and this would create a reduce in the stock of affordable housing. I suggest that all renters who have any complaints use the rent review board. It has a very effective. It's been very effective in mediating disputes. Thank you. Thank you. And a mayor, members of city council and city staff. Good evening. My name is Lisa Lawley, and I'm an ally. I've been an ally comedian for over 25 years now. I am a property owner and I am also an owner of small residential income property as well as managing rental properties in Alameda. I'm speaking tonight, as I most recently experienced Rent Review Advisory Committee firsthand this past Monday. I was one of the three cases on the agenda. One case was dismissed because the tenant did not appear. In the second case, the tenant and the property manager came to an agreement prior to the meeting and canceled their appearance. In my case, the tenant did appear and I was able to present my case. I felt the rack treated us both fairly and the committee allowed us allowed both sides to be heard in a non-confrontational dialog. They asked questions that made both of us see the other person's view as the direct result of the committee's interaction with us, we were able to come to a mutually agreeable resolution. I think both of us were satisfied with the outcome since we came up with a resolution on our own and the rec did not have to make a recommendation. As a landlord property manager, I do feel having the RAC in place is not only helping both sides, but also allows the parties to be both effectively be able to effectively communicate with each other. While I understand, I understand that there are those who will disagree. I was there and I went through the process. It's fair and I hope you will let the RAC continue to bring tenants and landlords together so they can resolve disputes rather than instituting a one size fits all policy such as rent control. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Karen Bay. I've been a landlord in Alameda for over 35 years. And so I wanted to mention today that in the San Francisco Business Times today, one of the articles. Oakland ranked nation's fifth most most expensive rental market. So rent control does not work. Two of the top. Remote control. Cities are the highest nations with the nation's most expensive rental market. San Francisco is number one. Oakland is number five. I want to talk a little bit about some. Of the. Ideas that are out there. The moratorium. I think we need to focus on a targeted approach, one that focuses on excessive rents. One of the ideas is 10%. And I'm hearing a lot of people saying, you know, that there are 20 to 50% is ridiculous. And I. Agree. I think we should target on merit the relocation assistance program. I think we need to consider rent raising fees and using that increase. To go into the. Housing trust fund to help with relocation assistance. But I think to burden the small mom and pops with. The moratorium on. Top of that relocation. Assistance, it just doesn't work. I think we need. To. Focus. On the larger 50 plus units. So thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Madame Mayor and city council members. My name is Lynn Anders and I'm here to speak on behalf of our family and the property that we own here in Alameda. My father, maybe, if you probably know, is Dr. Paul Anders, who was born and raised one of 12 kids on a farm in Wisconsin, put himself through college, dental school, moved out here, started a practice in Alameda. And when his wife became ill and when he had some health issues, he decided to build some income property as a. Backup plan, plan B, now, he has had. I'd say. Some of his tenants, about one fourth of his tenants are. Long term tenants. Some of them have lived there for over 30 years and they are paying well below market rent. He has he believes in having a good relationship with his tenants. He maintains his property when he was made aware of that, that this his buildings were soft story structures, he had the option of not just sending a letter to the tenants to inform them. He decided to incur $300,000 of his own money to upgrade the buildings. I urge you to give the rack a chance. There are plenty of out of landlords here in Alameda that treat their tenants. With with regard. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to call a few more names at this point. Eric Anders. Jeanne Allen. Mark Kleiman. Lisa Fowler. And Doug Biggs. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Chilwell and my husband and I are well. We learned in Alameda 1991, right after college. We scraped every penny that we have and we bought our house and threw a lot of sweat and tears. We save enough money now to buy investment property. We bought a dilapidated building and we somehow scraped $200,000 to make it. To make the upgrades. We were willing to do it because we looked at it as part of our retirement plan. We treat our tenants will respect. We are fair and we respond to their needs and we do not raise rent because they are part of the community. And we understand, you know, we're like a family. I believe that Alameda is a small town that we are very proud of and have worked the system. So I urge that council led to rock works because we could make it work. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Eric Anders. I was born here and a long life time resident. Just a couple of points. I believe what is being proposed is unwarranted. The RAC has not had a chance to function and there's no information on how well it is functioning yet. It's been too soon. Rent control suppresses tax rolls everywhere. It's been implemented and the city of Alameda has long term unfunded liabilities. I would hate to see us harm our income stream. There are 98 soft story units as of March in this year in this city that are on retrofitted. And how are you going to fund that if we stop rent increases? It costs about $100,000 for a ten unit building to get retrofitted. Rent control is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you yell fire in a room, people will run. If you yell rent control, people will raise their rents. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and city council members. Fellow property owners and renters. I'm going to read you an email I sent you because it just will be easier for me to get my thoughts together. Hey, have you considered letting the new ordinance work? Have you considered the school bond issue? Just appeared on our tax bills. Have you. Considered how our beautiful Victorians will look when housing providers are no longer able. To paint them? Our recent bid was over $30,000 for a bid on a Victorian. Have you considered the effect on apartment sales and how the effect will be less revenue for the city? Are you aware that some housing providers that own smaller buildings pay for. PGE, which. Is a gas? Water, garbage, recycling. And all of those fees have increased and do increase increase every year. Are you aware that the city raised our city license tax 20% about two years ago? I believe the moratorium on rent was adversely affects the small property owners. I also believe the major the majority of evictions have already taken place in the past. Our tenants have stayed 2 to 3 years and moved on. We raised rents when Tunis tenants moved out and now tenants are staying longer. So with the threat of rent control, we will raise our rents a very reasonable. Fee every year. Unfortunately, the small apartment owners are the majority and the ones that will get hurt by rent control as well as the appearance of the city in the years to come. If people are not don't have the money to paint their buildings. In rent. Control areas, many tenants take. Advantage rent control by renting out the units as well as going on Airbnb. It's not fair to the owners of the property. Many property owners depend on the income for their retirement. It's not fair to them. Would you like a governmental agency. To take away your part of retirement? Thank you. Thank you. Lisa Fowler, you're here. Okay. All right. Thanks. Good evening. And my name's Mark Wyman, and I'm going to take a little bit different bet. We've got a lot of people talking about the rent control. And my main concern for me, or one of the main concerns is more regulations. I think we have more regulations than we need already. And as a property owner, you really don't have many rights to do anything with your property anyway. And this is just going to be another big bureaucracy that's going to get created that's going to be nothing but a money sucker pepper. I think so. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Doug Biggs, homeowner in Alameda, executive director, Alameda Point, Collaborative, Member of the Shrub Board. I want to address the issue of boomerang funds. Ultimately, you can't solve this problem. Unless you build additional housing. With the rape and pillaging of redevelopment funds. We lost our. Biggest tool in creating affordable housing in the state of California, and to. Date, the politicians haven't. Been able to fix that. Many jurisdictions are taking the opportunity of getting boomerang funds and allocating them preserving them for affordable housing. The county of Alameda has already done that, passed an ordinance designating boomerang funds for affordable housing. I urge you as strongly as possible to take that action here locally and set aside boomerang funds coming back to. The city of Alameda. For affordable housing. Not only will allow us to leverage that with other funding sources, which is highly critical nowadays, but it will also give us local input, local funding for local housing to be able to do it the way we need to. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm going to call some more names and I don't know if any of these seat of their time or not. Karen Lucas. Mo Hassan. C f a ah oc dash taller. Karen Kellenberger. And it looks like, oh, maybe this person ceded their time. I'm not sure. Anthony. Charvet. Doug Smith and I are the ones who turn the ones that are seating their time. Those are seating to Doug. Okay. And then there's a quite a few that are seating to Doug. All right. Thank you. And if we can try to keep the door closed. Thanks. Go ahead. Karen. My name is Karen Lucas and I have been a small rental property owner in Alameda for 40 years. My I have always worked hard to upgrade my property and to maintain it. Well. I'm sorry. Please stop this. We're just going to stop a moment. But that's okay. We're going to take a recess. Groups that are from more of the tenant perspective. We're going to have what we have been doing is one minute per speaker so that we can hear from all of you. I know some speakers need a few seconds more to finish up their sentences and whatnot. That's fine. All right. We're going to have a steady stream then to try to get through 30 speakers from the tenants perspectives. That's the goal here. If you are one of those people that want to speak and I'm going to say this, if you are in this first quarter area on my side from the front, like halfway down, please line up against that wall. And that's how we're going to call you up in order. We will also ask, because some of you were unable to turn in speakers steps and whatnot when you're up at the dais. Please state your name. And it's my understanding we also have speakers slips, if you'd like to fill one out there. Yes. All right. So we're going to pause for a moment. All right. So people that are from that haven't spoken, that want to speak on the tenant perspective from this first quarter of seats. I'm going to divide them into quarters. Right. Please line up against that wall. Thank you. I'm going to. We're going to have a line. Then. Then. Mary's at the front of the line. Well have you cannot identify yourself. Lara, do we have slips? You want the. Amy's on it. Where is she? Oh, I'll do it. All right. Or a sheet of paper. You made out. All right, so because we normally have speakers, tips are not going to work. If you want to give us your name, you know, that's greatly appreciated. And you can fill out your slip. You are not required to give us your name to speak, though. But this is how we're going to do it. And we're going to keep track of the time. So one minute per speaker, please hold your applause so that we can try to give everyone the opportunity to speak here. That's the goal. Thank you. And I'm going to start with the gentleman and the friend line. Thank you. Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Barry Benioff. I'm a tenant at 1240 Regent Street, and I'd like to urge you to enact a moratorium on uncalled for evictions and excessive rent increases to do the same thing as evictions. I also want to urge you to look at the long term solution. The moratorium is just for now. I think we need something for Alameda that will serve for many years. It seems that the de facto rent increase in Alameda has become 10%. And if 10% is piled on, 10% piled on 10% in 12 years, rents will be tripled. I think that's far too much. Senior citizens, teachers, even members of the city staff are not going to have their salaries tripled in 12 years. Well, that's one. I know. A minute goes quickly ahead. You can finish the next point if you like. I just want to say one more thing. And what is Social Security done this year for the cost of living? 0%. 0%. Well, thank you very much for letting me speak. Thank you. Next speaker at the podium. State your name. Thank you. But evening. My name is to. And. You know, I have a big problem with. This, speaking to them like. Oh, sorry. Get really close. I have a big. Problem with how landlords can raise 10%. And seniors, people on fixed income, said farm rich kids. We don't even get your 10% yearly, let alone monthly. But yet a landlord will raise their rent 10% or more. To me that is just not and not acceptable. I feel that 2% is plenty for these landlords because a lot of times these landlords. Even though they raised around 10% or 15%, but they're not doing anything into the apartment. They might go to somebody else, but the people that live there and take care of the unit, they don't come in to do anything. So I think moratorium would be called for because this is really an emergency in Alameda. I've spoken to a lot of people and these poor kids have been yanked out of school after church, away from their friends. The same thing with seniors. They're told, hey, you got to go. They lived here all their lives and they paid their dues. But now, all of a sudden, they can't live here anymore. And I. I feared for the mayor and the council members to put in a moment, one moment. And I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you. And after you're finished speaking, you can either take a seat or you can, of course, go to where you want to go. Good evening, Mayor. Council. Tonight I. Am. My name is Lisa Hall. I'm a lifelong Alameda and former homeowner. And for the last three years, I've been in renters. Hell. My rent has been raised twice. But tonight, I'm speaking for the Alameda home team president, Helen Soares, who's unable to attend. She asked me to read an excerpt of her letter to the council. Not one solution, but several taken together can help alleviate the rental market crisis. Alameda is fortunate to have many homes under construction or under consideration. City staff continue working diligently to find funding for more homes. The boomerang use of redevelopment money building homes for low income is a new funding tool. New housing and money will help. But another part of this solution is to continue to work with the renters, owners, managers, and to keep rents as low as feasible and affordable and monitoring this difficult process with care and firmness. That's why the moratorium would work tonight. Please approve the boomerang funding concept. The moratorium and press forward on development of housing, especially new multifamily homes. And continue to work with the Alameda Renters Coalition, who has over 3000 members of Alameda that live in your city. Thank you. Hello? Yeah, I'm not going to give my name, but I'm a first year college student at Berkeley City and I'm paying my way through college. And this is my first student, my first council meeting. So I'm sorry if I'm a little shaky. So my landlord has given my mother and I till the end of the month to leave and we pay our rent in full and on time. And she still continues to raise the rent. She hasn't given us any logical reason for us to leave. I have spoken to her personally on the phone and she hasn't give me any reason other than it is her right to have us leave and she doesn't want to renew the lease. So where did it go exactly? Is your rent current? Sorry. Is the rent current? Yes. All right, continue. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I'm currently working on, like minimum wage, and soon I'm going to have to start paying rent for my mother. So. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening. My name is. Laura. Thank you. My name is Rene. And I rent on Santa Clara, and I've been in Alameda for six, almost seven years now. I'm a single mother. I have a daughter who's in college in Santa Barbara. And I am an educator in elementary school. And my landlord has raised my rent. $300 and $300. And she recently gave me a notice to vacate. With no reason for any 60 days. I what? I'm sorry. $300 from what amounts. And now I'm paying 1875. Thank you. She is giving me no reason as to why she wants me to leave. I just want to make a point. We let the sorry speaker speak unfettered without anyone. Appreciate the. Questions. I'd like to give these speakers this. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you do. Please continue. Thank you. I lost my train of thought now. Sorry, but basically that's my situation right now. I someone ran into the back of the house and detached the. Stairs and I asked her to repair those. I let her know what happened and after that she said, I can't afford to fix that. You have to move out. So I'm kind of dealing with also harassment issues that are going on. And so all the people that spoke before, the landlords are saying they're all great landlords and that's great, but not all of them and that's not my situation. So please consider. Thank you. So before you speak, I the reason I'm asking from what amount is because. Right, we need to know what's the percentage. So if you're coming up here and speaking, please, this is your opportunity to tell us what is the percentage increase? What is it right now? How how you know, in the last year or two years, three years, whatever your rent increase has been, if you received a 60 day notice, this is your time to tell us. Thank you. I'm on it. Hello. My name is Michael Miller and I'm a renter here in Alameda. I love the city for many years and I've come here to beg you to help us. We need a moratorium. We need it now. A moratorium is. It's not going to be long term, but it gives us time to pause and to think about what's going on, to figure out what suits the citizens of Alameda best and what's fair. Because right now we have a problem of speculators coming into our city and buying up land. These people do not live in Alameda. The rental companies that they're bringing into Alameda are not based in Alameda. And none of this money is staying in Alameda. It is all leaving and it's driving out long term tenants. We're in a bubble when that bubble bursts and all these people that are paying 20 $500 for a one bedroom apartment, move out. What's that going to do to business on Park Street? Every rent increase. I could afford a mild rent increase. But that money is comes from somewhere. That money comes from restaurants on Park Street. Money comes from businesses on Park Street. You can't be shortsighted on this. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you. Hello. I'm Marian Keter. I live on Santa Clara Avenue, and I also work at 1910 Central at the Children's Learning Center, formerly now the Phillips Academy. And I'd like to speak for Liz, one of my coworkers, Liz Taylor, who was on San Antonio. Her house burned down on September 28th of 2014. She then could not find a place in Alameda to live at all. Rents were so incredibly high. She's now in Oakland and has just applied to give her apartment, her house to get her house back. And it was on the market and she was denied it after living there for nine and a half years. She is an amazing person. We work with special needs children and have for over 15 years. We are core members of the Alameda community. We live here. We have events here. Our students work all over Park Street, all over Alameda. And it is an absolute travesty that we are losing great Alameda ins because of landlords who are insisting on more rent. That is more than teachers and people that work in nonprofits in our community can afford to pay. Please think about the moratorium, put it into practice. Give us some time to really get a great situation. Be fair to everyone so we don't lose all of the soul of Alameda. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Jenny Hubler. I live in Alameda. I'm also a special ed teacher, actually at the same school as was previously stated. And I just want to say that as teachers, we don't also get cost increase. We work in a nonprofit. We don't make a lot of money. And as these, you know, rents get higher and higher. And I know that Liz, when she was going through it, there was even bidding on some of the rent that, you know, she was not able to meet. And so I just think that to make it fairer and make it so that teachers I'm speaking for teachers because I am a teacher, you know, we can give better education. We can do more for the kids. We can stay longer at work. We can get there earlier and not be stressed out and give a better education when we can actually live in the community that we work. So I just wanted to share that on, you know, at least for the teachers, because I'm sure many of them feel the same way. Thank. Hi. I'm Katherine shopping. Thank you all for being here and listening to us. I'm very grateful that Sabri arrangements were made so that there is a wider representation of all interests involved and not just the landlords. I'm a homeowner in this town. My husband's family dates back 90 years as Alameddine, and there's only one of his family that can afford to live here. And that's him because we owned a house. I just want to mainly point out, first of all, the parade of senior citizen landlords was clever, but it's not. They are not representative of who is raising these rents. And we all know that it was clever, but. It was also very cynical. I'm going to continue just one more second. I think I would like to point out one simple fact. While people are talking about wonderful property management companies like Gallacher and Lindsay, I would like to underline this fact on their fliers. At the bottom, it so states that they will collect 30% of the first month's rent from every tenant that goes through them and gets a rent. Now you tell me how that is not going to benefit them to continue to raise these rents. They are going to profit. For as long as these rents continue to go up 30% to 2500 is a hell of a lot better than 30% of a thousand. And it doesn't take a mathematician to figure that one out. And I don't believe they're the only property managers who do this. I don't know for sure, but this is a changed policy. This was not true three years ago. Thanks. Thank you. So at this point. You're going to be allowed to speak. But then I'm going to take the last quarter of this side. If you could go and line up the need from the tenant side and where are we on our time? Does anyone know? Oh, we started this at. 730 is what I have. Yes. All right. So we could finish this side. So if you're from the tenant perspective, if you could line up against the wall and then we'll call you next, is there anyone from that side that's going to be speaking? So anyone on this side, anyone on the right hasn't spoken yet and wants to speak from the tenant perspective. No speakers. All right. Thank you. A one. All right. So you go ahead and speak then. I thank you. My name is Marie Chavez. I rushed in here because I got this information. This meeting was happening this morning on KPFA. And I just wanted to say that I think that the rent control stuff gets very confusing for me as a tenant. I've been a tenant in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and now five years in Alameda. So what I'm trying to say is I understand that there's a really. Big crisis, housing crisis. Happening. But I think that Alameda, our sweet, beautiful island of Alameda, has a really wonderful opportunity to make a model of working together with tenants and landlords, something that's fair for both of us. I cannot count or guarantee on my 2% cola every year with work, but I can almost guarantee my 10% increase every year. And there's a gap there for me now. Less money in my pocket. I'm sweating it for rent every year. I was really crossing my fingers and glad I didn't get the 60 day notice. I know I'm going to get the 10% and 30 day notice. I don't know what I'm going to have to do for next year, but less money in my pocket means less money I have to spend here in Alameda. And I try to do as much of all of my shopping here, all my gas, everything. So I just want to say, please keep Alameda a place where renters can live and that we don't have to inherit or be incredibly rich to stay and live here. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Either under or else they learned a very proud member of the Alameda Renters Coalition. And I'd like to bring to the attention of the city council that the police have arrested John Klein on our steering committee and charged him with assault of a police officer. We want all renters to know that and we think this is extremely unfair and that he should be released. And this is not the way to conduct a of a conversation about rent issues. Thank you. Next speaker. Please hold your applause. Thank you. My name is Tommy Thomas. I've been a renter. I've been a landlord and a homeowner. And I'm back to being a renter. Life circumstances have taken me a lot of places. I am trapped in the place that I live right now. I rent from a corporate organization. I can't afford to move. And I live in terror. That the next rent increase that's coming up in a couple of months is going to be as extreme as the rent increase was the last time I got a rent increase. I can't afford to. The gentleman who said this cost the businesses, local businesses money. I don't go out. I don't take vacations. And I can't afford to buy a car that isn't mandated together. I work in an industry where I see what's happening with the home buying community and I see the gap that the increasing gap that we hear about in the national press about what's happening between the people who are in. I consider them to be the people that are above the line and the rest of us who are. Every time we get close to the goal line in terms of the financial environment in the Bay Area, jolts lurches forward and we can't catch up. We need the moratorium and we need a real study on it to be able to try to make it fair and equitable for everybody, not just the landlords that are already acting in a fair way. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Speakers, from the tenant perspective, in the first half of this side, if you could please line up over there again and anyone that's standing. If you could take a seat, that would be appreciated. If you are waiting to speak, if you could line up over there and then for the first half of this front section. Next speaker. Thank you. So state your name. Thanks. Hi. A miracle. And I actually just moved to Alameda last year. In February. I was seven months pregnant and I had been wrongfully evicted from my home in San Francisco because the landlord wanted to make more money out of the home. So I had to move when I was seven months pregnant. I'm a teacher and I moved Alameda. And so when I got here, you know, I found this little place very tiny for for a family with a kid. I'm living there now. And this year my rent already been increased 9%. So if next year it gets increased again to 9%, we will have to move out of the Bay Area because we can no longer afford to live here. And I think this is where a lot of teachers are finding themselves in situation. I choose to be a teacher. I have a Ph.D. I should be a teacher because I, I feel like this is Michael Jackson to society. And I think there's really important contribution to do. And I think to not to disregard these people that are part of our society is is really wrong. So I think we need to do something about this problem. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. I am Gwen. Hammer. I've lived and I've rented here for 15 years. I work in public health. My salary has been cap for the past seven years. I have volunteered my time here. Served for four or five years. Give me my medical background and help with them and with Coast Guard Auxiliary for ten years. I do vessel safety checks. I do search and rescue missions. On top of that, I'm communicable disease expert and a biological person that works for you, the state and everyone here. I'm scared. I'm going to be honest with you, because my salary is now my rent is almost one half my take home pay. You're going to lose me. You're going to lose people like me from the whole Bay Area. So I'm here just pleading with you to let you know I'm a scared person. I never thought I would ever be in this position where I'd be just as worried as the woman. Two people before us that spoke where you do very little. Don't go out. Stay home. Drive an old car because you don't know what the next month is going to bring. So thank you. I hope you figure it out. Thank you. Next speaker. Just so you know, you don't have to state your name if you want to. And then we have it for our record. My name is Jennifer Strong, and I've been living in Alameda for ten years and my story is different than everybody else's because I have a wonderful landlord and we have a great relationship and I have a Chihuahua. I know a lot of animals are being displaced and all of this. So people who have pets are really getting pushed out. But I'm here just because I care. I care about what's happening. I don't have it's not affecting my life personally, necessarily. But the fiber of Alameda is changing. I have disposable income to spend on Park Street and I do. And I would like to have more people be able to come before you and say, you know, I have a good situation and this is why I moved to Alameda and this is why I want to stay in Alameda. I don't have children in the schools. I don't have a husband. I'm just here spending my disposable income and I'm seeing things change and hearing really terrible stories. And I think that Alameda is being taken advantage of because these are already put into place in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Please allow Alameda to have the same kinds of protection. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker. Trish. I'm just an Isaac. And my rents went up 10%. Two years in a row. And I'm afraid to ask for the landlord to do any maintenance because my rents going to go up any more. And I think there's a lot of other tenants that are afraid to ask for them to do needed maintenance, some stuff serious because they don't want the rent to go up. So if you don't put some sort of cap on the rent, then tenants are going to speak up about those, you know, few situations where some maintenance should be done and you know, who knows, it could bias could start or whatever, you know, if you do it, if the alarms aren't kept code and fire extinguishers and whatnot. So I think tenants should be able to speak up about maintenance without the rent going. So thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Jessica Warren and I'm a renter in Alameda. I have two rentals here to say we fell in love with Alameda. That's an understatement. We found our home and family here. Our family out in Alameda happens to be made up mostly of struggling artists. In order to meet with other artists, we started a group that has now about close to a thousand members. We turn to our little studio that we ran into a place that these artists can show their work. I can't say enough about how much each and every one of these artists has touched my life in some way , and I'm so grateful for it. My mother passed away last August, so we flew to Florida to take care of her. We visit Florida several times before that, but on our way home this time I had the feeling that we were coming home. I hope Alameda works hard at keeping this amazing community that they have created. Please help us keep the rents down so that we can continue to provide a place for artists to meet, create and display their artworks. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name's Tim Kennelly. I've lived here about 15 years. 13 years? The same place. I just want you to get rid of a loophole on the 60 and 30 day notices. Because what my landlord did, he's been increasing my rent 8% the last three years. And then he just recently gave me a six day notice because he knew he'd have to come in here or go to the rack and explain another increase the same year of 8% or whatever. He's going to increase it, but he just took the easy way out. He gave me a 60 day notice and then he doesn't have to explain anything to anybody. A 60 day notice to vacate. Yes. Thank you. With no reason. Got it. You're about a month ago. Okay. And it was like two days before. October 1st when that new ordinance or whatever is kicked in. He knew what he was. He knew what he was doing. So if he at least close that loophole, hopefully tonight, I don't know if you can do that or not. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. My name is Jane Griswold. And I've I've lived here in Alameda since 1985. I love this community. My my wife. Her. My wife's parents were born and raised here and married here. This is home. This is home to us. We're living in a large complex in which we're having somewhere between a seven and 9% increase a year. We're now paying $825 for a one bedroom apartment. The irony is that another apartment exactly like ours that was vacated, was then rented for 20 $300. So this one bedroom, the difference between what we're paying and what is being asked is making it unworkable for us, where we're afraid to move. And we're also unable to find anything that is equitable in any way. We have a 23 year old daughter who's about to graduate. We'd like her to come home. We'd like to get a two bedroom. Don't know if we can ever do that. May have to leave Alameda. It's it's a very sad circumstance. And I'm hoping that this lovely town and you all can make it right and change the the path that we're on. Thank you. Thank you. Were you on this side? Come on. It. Hello. My name is Rachel Baeza. I have to. Apologize. I'm a little shaky. I just watched somebody get thrown to. The ground. And arrested and bloodied out there. So bear with me. I have been a long time tenant. I have three children in the army at a public school. We were given 60 days to vacate. Two weeks into September and two weeks into the. School year. We were model tenants. We were never. Late. We were told the reason we. Were asked to vacate was because they were going to. Sell the unit. We then found out that they lied. We were paying. $2,000 a month. They turned around and we rented it for. $4,000. A month. We scrambled, we found a place to live within the school district. So my children did not have to move schools. But we live in constant. Fear of having. The same thing. Done to us. We are just praying that we make it through till they graduate. We never ask for repairs. We try to draw very little attention to ourselves. It's a horrible way to live. Q Thank you. Did you want to speak? Come on. It. Then she's our last speaker at this time, and then we figure it out from the rest. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Sarah Dawson. I've been a resident of Alameda for about five years. Always rented. We've lived in three properties. The first we left because. The rent was increased regularly every year the second we left because our landlord decided to sell. And with the third, we're in a lease right now, which comes up in June. My husband and I would like to start a family. We plan to adopt, and we feel very insecure at this point with being able to manage our finances over the next couple of years. The idea of, you know, thinking back on the amount of times that we've had to move due to, you know, rent increases and issues with with rental properties. Sorry, I'm so nervous. It makes me very uncomfortable to think about starting a family at this point. So what we are asking for is just some security for renters in the future. Things. All right. At this point, I'm going to ask the rest of the people that are seated if you would raise your hands so we can see how many more from the Tennant perspective are here seated that would want to speak. One. All right. So the ones that are seated, we have one against the wall. How many haven't spoken that would like to three or. Okay, so I would propose that all of you come over here and then we're going to be finished with speakers in this room that want to speak. So don't have anyone else come in at this point. Thank you. From the tenant perspective. All right, someone come to the mike. Whomever is in line can come on up to the mic one of you and start speaking. We're on. Thank you. Appreciate it. If you could, state your name, if you'd like. Hi, I'm Helen Gilliland. I've lived in. Alameda for 35 years, so Alameda is my. Hometown. I'm a. Renter. The building I live in was sold about two years ago. I don't know who owns it. It's run by a property manager in Oakland. My rent has increased 12 and. A half percent in the last two years, and my salary has not. So. At night. Because I want to retire soon in like three years. At night I look on Craigslist at cities all over the country to see where I can afford to live. And it makes me really sad that I think I have to. Move out to Alameda. Because, like I said, it's my hometown. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker. Evening. My name? Ninette Landes. I've spoken here once before. When? When we had a rent increase. And basically, I'm a preschool teacher. I my income is not increasing. I moved here from Oakland after being wrongfully evicted by someone who just wanted to make money by turning the apartment building into condos. And so I moved to an apartment here that was owned by a friend of the family, which they were then forced to sell the building. When they sold the building, the new owner increased the rent by $245. The first year and the second year wanted another $125 a month increase. And so I'm expecting another increase from January. And it's just kind of, you know, reaching the limit of being able to just make ends meet. I mean, my time's up. You speak a little bit more. So anyway, I I'm also responsible for my 84 year old mother. And so, you know, my income is is what we're living on with, along with her Social Security. So there's no there's no foreseeable increase in my income in the future. As and as, you know, this problem is throughout the Bay Area. I grew up in Oakland and I don't want to move. I don't know where to move. I wouldn't know where to move. I moved from Oakland, Alameda, because Alameda was, you know, felt like home. I had lived here in the eighties as well. So, you know, I hope that all of this discussion is going to lead to something positive for the working class people of this community. I'm also here on behalf of. Other wind up. I'm sorry. Okay. Other neighbors. I'm here on behalf of them as well. They don't speak English. They're disabled, they're elderly. The building I live in is an 11 unit building and they're not able to be here. I'm sick, but I'm here because I feel it's important that we, you know, bring this. Side of this story forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Emile Floris, veteran. And. And I rented it from 2000 to 2000 and allow 12. Or a baby farm. And the owner decided to. Sell their place. And at some point I was seeking another resident. MM My kids. Have been settled. Here. I'm a single dad. And then I took a medical retirement and I was in search of a place and I did come across a gentleman and who ran it, ran it to me being. A single father and a disabled vet. Then at a in 2012 and I just wanted to say that I hope things work out. For people that are seeking assistance and but. All renters are not the same. There are some good landlords and owner property. Owners out there. And I just want to speak on that. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening. My name? Brian. And rather than testifying, what I would like to do is take a higher take an upper view looking down on this, because I know at the end of this you're going to be thinking about some policy issues. In 1995, the state passed the Cost Hawkins Act, which essentially removed rent control. So whenever you hear that term, it means nothing now. You need to understand that there is no rent control in California. There are some variations, though, and I'll delineate those for you in the people in the audience here at the best. Right now, what we have here in the Bay Area is Berkeley. Berkeley used to have a rent registry, but because of lack of rent control, that doesn't really apply much anymore. They also have what's called stabilization, which is very good. Below them is San Francisco. San Francisco has what we call stabilization. Now let's go into the negative. We've got Oakland. Oakland does have subtle aspects of stabilization, but in fact, it's what we call arbitration. You have to petition as a tenant. Otherwise you give up your rights and then just step below. There is nothing or what a lot of cities have is, which is called mediation. And mediation is very demoralizing because a tenant actually has to petition and then they have to sit there with a landlord. But, you know, landlords just can sit there and be polite and not agree to anything. So it really means nothing. You need to think this through stabilization and you must have just cause you've heard what all of the other tenants have said here must have just caused. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Rachel Tisha. I'm very happy to say I have a wonderful landlord. I'm sorry if I get emotional. It's. It's an important cause. My husband and I moved here from Oakland in 2011, and for the first time since living in the Bay Area for ten years, I felt safe. I'm a licensed marriage family therapist with a specialty in working with families with young kids. I've done home visits in Hayward and Fruitvale, and I it felt so wonderful to come home to Alameda and feel safe. But the reason I'm speaking is I am so beyond appreciative for every landlord that has is is a is a real person and and considerate and mindful and on my end. Of course, rents are going to go up. But if there can be some predictability and to link it to something I saw last month that was so clear is last month in the city council, my husband and I came and before us was a young girl and her teacher and her mother and we're talking about some exercise campaign with the school. And I saw every single one of you light up in support of those kids. And the reason why I want to come up is as a therapist who specializes in families with young kids, is that lack of predictability, that scramble? One woman already spoke about they may not even adopt or have kids. And then if there's 50% renters in Alameda, you can do the numbers in the schools. And just to be cold and hard about it, that affects test scores. That makes kids anxious. And life is difficult. It's true. But if your parents don't know how they're going to make ends meet every 12 months, that impacts the schools and the kids. And if you don't see it now, it's going to start creeping up and you're going to need more funds for counseling within the schools and the test scores are going to go down. So. Please consider this. And I. It's clear how much you all cared about the kids. And thank you for listening to us. Thank you. Next speaker. And then she is the last speaker at this point, from the Tennant perspective. Then we're going to take a short recess and we'll continue. Go ahead. I'm Vicki Autumn. I just want to thank you for. Taking the time to do this, to let the renter speak. I grew up in Berkeley. When I went to buy a house, when I had kids, I couldn't afford it. I was priced out. So I bought a house in Richmond. I owned it for 25 years. When I decided to give it up, as I was getting older, I went to do some traveling. I decided to move to Alameda because this is where my grandchildren are and their parents have lived here forever and I was lucky to find a really great rental. My sister and I lived together. We had wonderful landlord, the ghettos, amazing people, but they were in their eighties and decided they couldn't handle the property anymore and sold. And we knew we were going to get a rent increase because the guy paid more for it and the clients who paid for it and we did immediately got a $150 rent raise, which for us was not undoable. It was about 9%. And but we're still sitting there worried, you know, what's going to happen next because he wouldn't give us a lease. And so one of the tenants got evicted and for no cause. And we thought there might have been a cause and there wasn't. It turned out that was the guy's doing what he's doing with the eight units that he's evicting, one by one mildly upgrading and raising the rents about $1,000 for per unit. So when I tried to bring that to the rent control board, they said I didn't qualify because even though he offered us one of the units at the extra thousand dollars, that wasn't technically a rent increase because it was a different unit. So Catch 22, we did find another place, but it's, you know, through friends and it's temporary. And I don't know whether it'll be able to stay near my grandkids, but I hope I can. So good luck figuring it out for us. Thanks. Thank you. All right. At this point, we're going to take a brief recess. It's my understanding I'm going to check on my staff at this point. Staff. My understanding is that we have other speakers then ready to go. All right. So hold up just a minute. So we're going to take a recess. But please stay in your seats because I'm going to still be talking to you over the mic at. Mike, please. All right. So we are still on recess, but we're getting ready to resume. I need everyone's attention to. Please take your seat. We are bringing in new people to sit. If you have been here, if you've already spoken, if you. We may need some room available for new people to speak. We are now going to be shifting to people from more of the landlord's perspective. But we're having people come in at this point. Come on in. We've got seats at last. And thank you very much for your cooperation. No. Exotic. Aaron's up. You have, Caryn Stark. And they're going to be filling up the seat. No. This just my own script. I look at my script. Yeah. I do too. But I couldn't find a middle. I thought. Oh, yeah. Amy. All right. We are now resuming. We're going to the time is approximately 822. We're going to go for approximately half an hour from the next site. It might be a little more, might be less. I'm not sure how many more speakers we have, but we are doing the landlord perspective at this point. We may have people, more people joining us. So, you know, we'll do that as quietly as possible. Ms.. Lucas, your turn. And thank you very much for everyone's cooperation. Thank you for letting me start again. My name is Karen Lucas. I have been a small rental property owner in Alameda for 40 years. I have always worked hard to upgrade my property and to maintain it well. My tenants now have been with me for. I have three sets of tenants for 28, ten and eight years. Their rents are below market rate because they are such. Good tenants and I want to keep them. I do not. Want to see the moratorium or any rent control. I feel that would interfere with my relationship with the tenants. Many other Alameda property owners feel the same. We take care of our small older properties and try to treat our tenants fairly. Give the newly strengthened. Rent Review. Advisory Commission a. Chance to do its job. Hopefully the Commission. Will be able to rein in unreasonable landlords. Now that you have passed a new ordinance requiring. Landlord landlords to. Appear and notify tenants that the Commission is there to help them. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Doug Smith. I'm a third generation business owner of a 63 unit apartment building here in the city. We've owned it for over 30 years. I know that some tenants have received excessive double digit rent increases from a few owners, and others have been told to move so that owners can circumvent that increase . I don't support this type of behavior and any reasonable landlord in this room does not either. I believe that the current rent review ordinance has the power to stop these type of landlords from continuing their poor behavior without hurting the good, reasonable landlords. We need to give it a chance, make some tweaks to it, and we can make it work. Being a business owner in Alameda over the last 30 years, I understand that Alameda is very unique and special and I don't want to see it destroyed by bad policy. We're not San Francisco. We're not Oakland. We have amazing business owners, homeowners and renters that are all here for the quality of life that Alameda provides. They can still walk to the local coffee shop, run and run into their neighbors. Their children can walk to their amazing schools. I have four seeds. And our seniors can walk to the farmer's market and feel safe by adding a few provisions to the current ordinance. We can stop the excessive increases and the displaced tenants and still allow Alameda to thrive both socially and economically. There's a lot of talk about rent control. This is being spearheaded by a statewide activist group called Tenants Together. They don't care about Alameda. Their goal is to push rent control in every city in California. They are eroding relationships between tenants and owners in an effort to further their agenda. They're attempting to bully, threaten and extort city staff to agree with them or be voted out. I encourage you not to be intimidated by them and do what is best for the entire city. And that includes business owners. Homeowners. He had four people fill out slips and submit their time, seed their time to him. So that's why he gets 5 minutes. And we had we've been doing that sometimes that that that has been allowed for both sides but still comes out the same 30 minutes per side. Go ahead. When he gets extra time for that. I encourage you to what's do what's best for the entire city and that includes business owners, homeowners and renters. Equally, what you're not hearing about rent control, what will it do to Alameda, just like it did in Oakland and San Francisco and Berkeley, you will see higher rents due to supply and demand. You will see crime increase as the Oakland renters flee. Crime filled, poorly maintained, graffiti ridden, rent controlled housing in favor of our safe neighborhoods, top notch schools and well-maintained housing. I'm sorry to interrupt again. I will have to have people leave the room. If you cannot be quiet, please be respectful. Thank you. And you get one warning. Thank you. Go ahead. You'll see that property values fall, businesses closed, and seniors will no longer feel safe to walk the streets. And eventually Alameda will be. Oakland staff has done a great job gathering data and what it shows is far different than what activists are trying to convince you of. Yes, rents did increase 54% from 2000 to 2013, while wages only grew 29%. If you take the time to look at those numbers, you'll see that without any rent restrictions in place, the rents still only increased on average 4.15% per year, and tenants have $571 more per month after paying rent than they did back in 2000. Let's focus our efforts on the families with children, seniors and disabled and those that really need the help. Since 2000, the renting population over the age of 55 has grown by 81%, while the working renters have decreased by 16%. We need more quality, affordable housing for seniors. I pray that you can come together as a group and do what is best for all the people of Alameda. You each bring a vast array of knowledge to the table. I hope that you can respect each other and what each of you can contribute and come to a solution with this. This plan tonight that the tenants staged was on social media and I was aware of it and I have copies of it. I just, again, encourage you don't fall for the intimidation. Make the needed changes. That needs to be done. And let's get back to work. Thank you. Next speaker. And if you have a speaker, are you speaking for the woman or do you have people have ceded their time to you? I have one person that's needed time. Thank you. My name is Tom Scott. I'm wearing two hats tonight. One, I'm the president of Cambridge Management Company, a company located in Santa Clara that has one property in Santa sent in in the city of Alameda we've had for 30 years. I'm also speaking primarily on behalf of the California Apartment Association. CAA represents many of the larger owners in Alameda, but also includes a number of smaller owners in Alameda, as well as many other cities in California. Our large owner members have agreed voluntarily before you've done anything to a 10% cap, as is evidenced by a letter we sent to you today. I don't know if you've received it, but if you have and I have copies to distribute. As a matter of policy, we do not support rent moratoriums as they do not address the underlying issues. But we do understand why many of you may feel the need to do so. And we just urge you that if you do pass a moratorium to limit it to increases over 10% and limit it to 45 days. It should also be noted that many of the CIA members, including myself, did work with the facilitator, Jeff Camara, to make the recent modifications to the Iraq ordinance. And with one minor exception, we fully support that. If further enhancements are needed to address more issues, we look forward to working with the city, but also to make sure that the Association uses its resources to assist with reining in the bad actors and garner support for reasonable solutions among its members. And quickly address those issues in a manner that suits all. I also agree with the comment that we can't look for a one size fits all. And in closing, I'll just say that CIA and its members are deeply committed to providing quality rental housing for Alameda residents. And we hope going forward that the city works with us, other property owners and other stakeholders groups to help solve the problems. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. And may I ask, do you have anyone that has seeded their time to you? I don't want one minute is sufficient. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Spencer. Members of the Council on City Staff. I'm John Sullivan, a housing provider in Alameda and also a member of the California Apartment Association. The tenants have identified two features of our rent or present rent of yours that, you know, that are lacking some teeth, some real consequences. And they list them as the extra large that the above 10% increase. Generally, it's one. The other is the 60 day notice without cause. No. To give these two features some teeth, some, you know, good consequences. We are open to giving much longer rent increases. I mean, increased notices to serve the 30, 60 days. It could be certainly longer than that. And adding a feature. Financial consequences. Essentially, any landlord has to compensate a tenant who moves out as a result of his actions under, you know, AOB. So what these major remedies, plus those put forward by John Lindsay's group, which we work close together, you know, I'd ask them, my good friends on the other side, the I and the Angela and Doyle and John and so forth, to let's say that's across the aisle that's come across the aisle. Sounded like John Lee and John Boehner and. You work together to put these remedies in as part of our our present orders. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Malcolm Lee. I'm a small mom and pop landlord in Alameda for about 13 and a half years. Ever since I bought the building, there was I still have some of the tenants who I inherited from previous landlord and I fought for many years. In the beginning I did not increase rent, mainly because of the economic situation. Supply and demand works together. The and I don't increase rent until the last few years, mainly because I had to put a new roof. I had two new roof will be for their 15 unit building. It cost about 40,000 to put new roof. And on top of that, I had exterior painting. It costs about 15,000, and that was after getting at many, many bids from many contractors. So what I'm saying, yes, is I have very good working relationship with my tenant. We have very good bonding. And recently I had to evict one tenant, mainly because she was threatening to burn down my my neighbor's building. It was very hard to get rid of a bad tenant. And if we had that just causing eviction or rent control, it is it's going to be very, very hot for landlord to get bad apples off the building. Now, when you get rid of a bad tenant is is very costly time attorney for you court very costly and a lot and we even have to negotiate rent so that they can stay there before they find a not a not a place to live. So please do not do rent control and please do not do the just cost eviction. Not a point that I wanted to bring up. This is as an investor I come to I manage to party myself. I am in on a meet over on a weekly basis. In the beginning you have big time negative cash flow. It takes forever, even for 15 years to be able to in to to break even. And just after the the downturn back in 2000, eight, 2000, I couldn't even refinance my mortgage mainly because the value dropped and there was a lot of vacancy. This is just a time that I could take take a deep breath and catch my breath so that I could start seeing the return of my investment. So please do not do that. Okay. I think that's all I have. Thank you so much. Next speaker. And where are we on time? You are at. One minute. Anytime. Good evening, Mayor. Members of council. My name is Scott Brady. My wife and I are residents of. Blaine in New York. Sorry, we got to hear you. My wife and I are residents of Alameda. We're also small property owners. We're a large part of that body of Alameda residents who own a little bit of property. Our rental property is a large part of our retirement plan. Right now, the rental income covers costs of mortgage taxes, insurance and maintenance. Placing a moratorium on rent increases would impact our ability to fund repairs and improvements. Much of the information in the reports that were attached to the meeting agenda discuss issues related to large apartment buildings. Legislation imposed to control the actions of a few large apartment complex owners can have adverse effects on the many small property owners who have dealt with their tenants in good faith. Just one month ago, the council enacted the rent review ordinance to help stabilize rents here in Alameda. Yet here you are one month into the term of that ordinance and before any results could possibly be determined, looking at another ordinance to place a moratorium on rent increases and evictions. If you truly believe that that rent review ordinance is good legislation and since all five of you voted for it, I'm assuming you think that then give it a chance to achieve the results that you expect it will bring. Don't rush to approve additional legislation that may only compound the situation. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Brad Drury. I'm a housing provider here in Alameda. I have been for over 15 years an owner here. And I really believe that it's paramount to treat my tenants with respect. I really actually enjoy, not enjoy it. I think it's really important for us to hear the stories of all the tenants that we've heard this evening. It's critical. And I think you have a body of owners on the site that's very unique from that study right there. 60% of the people that own property, the rental properties here live on the island. I'm not one of those people. I'm one of the other 40%, but I care. I've always cared. We didn't have any increases between 2002 and 2012, and then in the last few years we've had marginal increases, usually less than 10%. It's a unique time right now, and I really ask you to look at the unique character of Alameda and the unique character of you are owners that really care the small mom and pops that really want to work with the mediation. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all. I really appreciate the time and the effort that you're taking to hear both sides of the story. But I do. Ask you not to allow the demonization of the two sides to to make you change your minds about how this should be handled. My brother and I invested in Alameda because we love this town. We think it is a wonderful place to live. And the people who live here are good people and reasonable people. And I hope that we continue in this process of creating policy. To be in that mode reasonable. We're all individuals and we all have stories to tell. In my other job. I work in nonprofit housing, so I really sympathize with the dilemma that folks have not being able to continue to live where they live. But at the same time. I look at what. Happened my brother and I invested in 2007 during the height of the real estate bubble. As property fell, property values fell. We developed a negative. We need our rent. Increases to be able to survive. We don't want to have to sell the property, and we might have to. So we ask you to take that into consideration. We try very hard not to raise the. Rents because we know that's going to affect our tenants. Thank you. Barbara Castle. My name is Rick Stores and I'm on two five unit buildings in Alameda. But I speak to you more from the perspective of a long time landlord in both San Francisco and Berkeley. Mom and Pop, if you will. I was both a resident and a investor in those communities. And my experience as such tells me that rent control has really long term negative impacts on the community as a whole because it petrified the community. It petrified the existing housing stock because the landlords are not incentivized to maintain the properties and improve the properties. It petrified the community because it deters investment in more rental properties within those communities. It also petrified the tenant base in a different sense that the people that are fortunate enough to live in rent controlled properties are not able to move about and improve. Moved to a two bedroom apartment building, for instance, and they also are petrified in the sense that they're living in fear of being evicted from. Ellis act evictions and owner move and evictions. And while inequity exists I don't believe that rent control is is going to help that situation. I actually think it will exacerbate that situation. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Council. My name is Todd Park. I majored in Environmental Economics and policy management at Cal Berkeley, and I just wanted to share. My thoughts. On policy and possible solutions to our rent control or this exact situation. One thing I learned is rent control is very detrimental and actually ends up increasing. Rent has all of these unexpected consequences. However, I want to propose that we do encourage increasing a lot of property and new developments in this city. I'm both a tenant and a landlord, and I know that if we increase the the supply of housing in the city, which means we don't impose a rent control, then more people will move in with roommates. It also. Means building more, more developments and. Many, many different places for people to live. And affordable housing. That would actually produce a long term. Result that would be good. For more people without. A dilapidated the environment in this wonderful city that we live in. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. I'm Christopher Hansen, and I am unknown to most of you. Although at one point in time, in a past life when I had hair, I was very involved in city politics and was served on committees and commissions and ran mayoral and council campaigns. So I offer you a political perspective. Alameda is a victim of its own success. In 1976, Alameda passed a measure which limited the stock of residential housing to a duplex. 50 years later, the unintended consequence of that measure has come to roost. We are in the Bay Area that is having an incredible surge of demand and we have an incredible lack of supply. Rent control or rent stabilization would have a similar unintended consequence. When you look at the rent study that's before you, you see 25% of the housing stock that is rented is single family dwelling. It is the first thing that will be sold to owner occupants. The second, 25% of rental stock is duplexes. 25% sold again, reducing the rental stock by 50%. If you think we have a problem today, imagine what it will be 20 and 30 years from today. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi. My name's Kim Peralta, and I'm here on behalf of my family who has owned property on San Antonio for the last 50 years. My mother is 91 and I would hate to think of her as a predatory landlord. Someone mentioned that it was clever that elderly landlords were the ones that spoke before you. The reason is they're the ones that invested their money here in Alameda. 50, 60, 70 years ago. And the family now has that property and owns it and can rent it. Most mom and pops are really, truly good landlords and don't raise their rent. My mom went 15 years on one of her units before she raised rent. Now this is her only income and is so afraid that with rent control she will get behind an eight ball and not be able to afford her property. So with this 10% supposedly set increase, she now feels that yearly she should raise it 10% to make sure she can afford to keep the property that has been in our family. There's no right, there's no wrong. There's probably no real solution except to go after the people who are raising the rents way too much on the renters. And they have a right to be upset. But don't take it out on the people that have supported Alameda, whose taxes have made it affordable and easy for the tenants here to have great parks, great schools. There are the ones that are really supporting the tenants, buy good rents and great places to live. I hope you have. Great, great sleep and can manage to figure out how to help make this happen. Because I wouldn't want to be in your shoes. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening. Thanks for having me here. I want to talk about choices. Element of real estate. And the cost to live in this city has always been very, very expensive. It's been a choice of people to want better schools and better environment. Given the chance, we could all protest the cost of living today because it's high. I know I'm one of those old people that bought years ago when I was 21. I wanted to live in the Gold Coast, but, you know, I was dumb. 21 couldn't do it. I don't force anyone to rent for me. Not one person. I never knew that after years of struggling and buying day old bread, that I would now have silent partners telling me how to treat my property. Granted that there are some greedy landlords and there are some needy people. Shame on them for raising their rents that high. Shame on them. And shame on the tenants that make life miserable for their neighbors and their landlords and refuse to go. You know, it's a choice to live here. Not an entitlement. Please give me another minute. For every greedy provider, there are hardworking, honest property owners who appreciate tenants and give them a decent place to live. But for every bad tenant, there are wonderful, respectful, reliable, responsible tenants. I know I have rented under Section eight for over 32 years in this city. 70% of every one of the investments I've ever had. I rented to low cost people. Handicapped. Blind. Crippled. Retarded. That's not politically correct, but it's true. I can say that I have a daughter as special needs. I miss living in Alameda. But I made a choice to move to Elk Grove because there was a job opportunity there. And I took it was a hard choice to make. I love this city. This is my city. Please be fair to both sides. Let the rent ordinances work. Give them a chance. And don't penalize people that have paid their dues and tried their best to do this. Don't lump all of us and label us all. We're not all evil and we don't all wear the black coat and black hat. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. At this point, if you are in this room and you're here to speak on the landlord perspective, please raise your hand if you haven't spoken yet. Seeing no hands. I'm going to ask if you're in this room and you're here to speak on the tenant perspective, please raise your hand. All right, I see. One, two, three, four, five, six. All right. So those of you that are next stop, these line up on that wall. And who's ever in the front of the line. You'll be able to come up. State your name. We're going to. And. Staff. Amy, do you know if we have people in other rooms that are waiting to speak? It's my understanding we do not have speakers in any other rooms. If you are in another room watching us and you want to speak on this issue, please make your way here now. Thank you. All right. Next step. When you approach the mike, please state your name. You are not required to give your name, though. All right. We're ready to go. Good evening, Mayor. Council members and staff. I'm Bill Smith and I think there's been a great hearing tonight. We've gotten a lot of passion, not a lot of ideas out. I want to address some things we've talked about from the individual point of view. And as one person talked about from policy point of view, we really have to consider the what's happening in the broader scheme to come with good policy. But one person said we need to build more to get out of this problem, but we can't build enough if we don't limit the jobs in Alameda, can't limit the jobs in the region. So that's not going to be a solution is to build our way out of it. And so if we don't build our way out of it, we're going to have a we're going to have a constraint. And so the way the free market works, it's not a free market. We have a constraint. So it's not a free market. So then we have a constraint. So that means that prices will go up and that'll serve the wealthiest of our communities. That'll drive up the prices. A lot of the hardships that you've heard here will continue. And it's not only on the individuals, but we have a lot of lower paid people that work at grocery stores, who work at teachers. We heard from a teacher tonight from professionals. We've heard from one of the new businesses this morning, athletic company, a person there, a good level position. She can't stay in the floor. It's going to be her business. If we put in rent control that can help individuals. It can serve as a recruiting tool for our businesses, too, and help develop alameda point and bring attract a business if we want it. Thank you. And best wishes with this decision. Thank you. Next speaker. Well evening. Thank you for having me. My name is Estella Moya, and I'm a teacher here in Alameda. I moved from Florida in 2011 to be close to my family. And every year I have noticed that my income stays the same in my rent is going higher in higher and up and proportionate way. And I'm afraid that in this coming year, when they rise, I have to sign the new contract is going to be so high that I had to move. And the purpose of me coming here from Florida was defeated because I will not be able to be close to my family. I live here and I love to live here and I love to teach here in Alameda. I would like to continue being here. And I will have to say something that for some people, maybe talking about 10% is not a lot, but for me, 10% every year. And this coming increase is going to represent a $180, which is a lot of money because for one little apartment, $180 in, I pay 1800 dollars. And another thing before, if you let me say something, I don't even know my landlord, because every time I ask for in the office, they say that there's people who live abroad , abroad, and they don't they don't even want me to know who they are. And that's something that it doesn't help me to have a personal relationship with them. And I don't know how to feel about it. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, mayor spencer and members of the council and staff. I'm John Spangler and this is probably the 10th or 15th time I've addressed you in the last three years on rent control and rent increases. Linda and I were homeowners for 12 years. Then we sold our house. Now we're renters. We've been renters for five years. I would rather own my own house. The power balance is really interesting. You do not have any power at all. Surrender. How many homeowners would like it if their bank said, Oh, we decided to raise your rent, your mortgage rate by 15% this year because we needed the money. After signing a 30 year mortgage. It doesn't work that way. Owning property comes. It makes gives you privileges. People who rent, especially people I've met since I've became involved with the only two renters coalition a couple of years ago. Need justice. They need fairness. If I can finish up. Yes, you may. Couple of misconceptions. One, tenants together. What is not a statewide conspiracy that's come to Alameda to take over this town. How many renters coalition went to tenants together to get help for people getting rent increases of 35% per year in successive years. And if you do not have some form of rent control, how has the rent the opponents of rent control who have been speaking in the last half hour say how else are you going to go after those so-called greedy landlords, except by some form of rent stabilization? It needs to be fair. Absolutely. None of us want to go after the mom and pop landlords. We want to go after the people who are doing the rent increases of 35%. We don't want our friends who are landlords in this town, including Rick Stores in Glasgow going to church with for 15 plus years. We don't want to go after them with hammer and tongs. We want to go after the people who deserve it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is David O'Sullivan. I've been a renter in Alameda for four years. This is going to be short and sweet. Unfortunately, I think the passion that you've seen tonight. From both sides. You're not going to please everyone on one side in these things. Politics, unfortunately, someone is not going to be happy. My plea to you tonight would be. If you, the poor, the vulnerable, the people who are scared. A lot of people are very, very scared in this town. I think that's what the reaction was tonight. People are very frightened about their lives. What's going to happen to them? I would ask you to remember the poor, the vulnerable, the scared people in your decision. We are going to make this very important decision. Thank you. Thank you. Before you speak, let me repeat. For anyone that's watching in any other room, please make your way down here. We have four more speakers on this item. Thank you. You may approach. Good evening, Mary Spencer. City Council and staff. My name is Garfield. Ken Cross. You may be familiar with me. I've lived here 23 years and I've been a federal employee for 30 years. I make $60,000 a year and the median income in Alameda is 72,000. So I figured that out a ways back. What I've received from a limited liability company which has taken over the property for the last five or six years, they've issued to me a notice to terminate my tenancy. And I'm going to I'm proving that this is retaliatory for several reasons. One of them is my opposition to them trying to enter my unit without a 24 hour notice. And I took a video of 12 people lined up from, you know, prospective buyers to enter my apartment. And the and the onsite manager wouldn't even provide their provide me with, you know, the names of these people. Then they fired the property management company. I can't even contact them. And I've received this notice, you know, and the attorney told me that they violated the the ordinance or California state law against retaliation. You know, and I can't I have no one to no one to call. And they they participated in this committee mediation process, which set them off. You know, that was that created these people to retaliate against me. Now I'm losing my residency, and I don't have credit because I've tried to avoid paying people so I could keep my apartment, keep from being homeless. I'm going to I might be homeless if the hotel in San Francisco denies my application and I'll be living in my car and taking a shower at Saint Vincent de Paul. And I work for the government, but that just doesn't sit right with me. I know that we. Government. People are the enemy of these because we want to regulate these fascists, these corporatists, and they don't want us in the way they think that we're in the way and they've got the right to do as they please. I'm urging you to consider or to do something, put a cap on just on this rent increases and these eviction notices. Then they gave me a letter before the manager was fired that I'm a good tenant. You know, I'm a good tenant. I paid my rent on time every year, never a partial payment. And this is the treatment I'm getting. They're trying to blow blow smoke at me with this. I've already got an attorney that says it's totally illegal. That's retaliation is within three months of of them trying to come into my apartment with 12 strangers, tracks, track dirt all through my apartment and everything, and not even tell me who's going to get the key to it. This limited liability company is named Homes Business LLC and the apartment is Bayview Apartments in Alameda and Jeff Cambria tried to do some mediation with them and he succeeded in having the landlord show up to the rec committee. And we succeeded in getting a two and a half percent decrease from a 10% this year. And last year it was it was a 10% increase. 30 other showed up in this room. Now, they don't want to be a part of it. I'm an activist committee. They're all intimidated and they're turning against me because I had the I had the balconies on my. List lined up. They would replace all the balconies because of me. Now I'm getting the the hammer. And sir, could you provide if you want your contact information so I could follow up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Kirsten Upson. I am a native of the Bay Area. I've been an Alameda resident for seven years as a tenant and just recently I am a homeowner. And truly being a homeowner was was something I've always aspired to. And I have a great job. I'm an administrator at a public university. It's been as a therapist were middle income and as a previous speaker talked about, you know, it's always the housing prices are going up, rents are going up. And it's always was just a little bit out of reach. But we liquidated our retirement. We finally did it. We have two kids and a public school system here. My life is here. My family is here. And truly becoming a homeowner was because I was terrified of being a tenant. If my apartment had been brought up to market rate. You know, we would have had to move out of state, probably we wouldn't have been able to stay in the area. So I'm here to support my my friends and my family who are renters. And I'm just hoping that. This dialog gives you all some reason to to come up with some good policy to give tenants an option to, you know, to. I don't know. Try it. Exorbitant raises and unjust. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening. Laura Thomas. Renewed Hope Housing Advocates. I'm here tonight to speak very briefly in support of the notion of. Setting the taking the redevelopment money that is coming back to the city and setting up a housing fund out of out of it. I think, you know, what I'm talking about is in the staff report, I know it hasn't been discussed, but so I won't say much more about that because you know what I'm talking about anyway. It's a very emotional hearing. It's been 15 years, 16 years since Renewed Hope was founded when the last big dot.com, the last big techno boom pushed a bunch of people out of Alameda, most of them from the West End. And then there's been, you know, the you know, the eviction of all the people that. Summer house, the building that was summer house. I find myself very emotionally. Affected by this. And I had some remarks. I'm not actually going to go into them because I know we're I know you're limiting the time. But I do want to say that this is an economic expulsion happening here. It's probably the one of the most serious things that's happened in this city in the 30 years that I've lived here. And I think it's incumbent upon you, because you are elected officials, to take a stand, to stop it. And a moratorium is not rent control. You are not enacting rent control tonight. You're only stopping the most egregious evictions. And stopping rent increases for a period of time while this could actually be discussed. And the landlords who are good could put forward as they have their point of view. And the issue about whether rent control is good or bad destroys the city, raises crime, all those other things can actually. Be. Discussed throughout. All you're doing is considering a moratorium tonight, and I hope you pass it, because I think there's plenty of reason. To protect the citizens of this town they are under in. Like I said, they are under the threat of economic expulsion. It's like a forced migration of people out of Alameda. Thank you for giving me the time. He told your class, we have one more speaker. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. City council members. I guess I'm one of the tenant outsiders. My name's Eddie Water from. Oakland Tenants Union. And obviously tonight, in this very limited space of time, we can't really we can't discuss any kind of details we can't discuss about all the time that's needed to counter the specious arguments we've heard from the landlords. Or for us to discuss what a meaningful rent control ordinance which should look like. And Alameda does look, there's definitely need one. Hopefully you guys will you folks will consider a really quality law. I the beauty of this of this evening, though, is that this would not have happened if it wasn't the tenants advocating for it and working really hard for it in the last couple of years. And I think the other tenant other tenant activists in the Bay Area, in the state. Look at our pride with the folks here in Alameda and Richmond are doing. And if. Even if the moratorium. Passes for the tenants, their work is just beginning because. What they need is a. Permanent, solid rent control and just cause law in the books. And I and I trust that they will get it one way or another. Thank you. Thank you. All right. At this point, we have no more no further speakers. We have we did not do staff presentation. We took this out of order. You may recall those of you that were here at this point. STAFF It's my understanding you have approximately 40 minutes to present. We do. And including I think the most important portion of that presentation is Ms.. Potter's presentation, which talks about different options that you have. And I would really urge the Council to give her a chance to talk about that. Because I appreciate that I just need your time estimate at this time because we may be taking a short break before we do that. Okay. And my suggestion was going to be that we could walk through the three parts of the staff presentation. We could I could do the presentation, which is the overview of the options. Our staff would be available to answer specific questions of the Council. All right, so it's my understanding that we do need to do some presentation. So your estimate, like 15 minutes. Half an hour. 40 minutes. I'm not asking you to reduce your time. I'm asking you what your time estimate is. Is there an interest in having a presentation about the rent study, about the rack process, and an overview of the staff report? If that's the case, if that's the pleasure of the council, we would need 30 to 40 minutes. To do. That. My. So let me ask counsel. Are we sufficient having that on the record without having it presented to us in regards to if we decided to make any decision tonight legally? Is that on the record? Because it's already been prepared. The staff report is on the record. And so if it pleases the council to not have the rent study and some of the other studies presented tonight, it is on the record. It's in your packet, it's available on the website. It is before you tonight. If you would like to have an overview of that and be able to ask some questions about it. And I would recommend that you go ahead and allow them to do maybe a brief report. However, it could be done. The rest of the of the staff report that Ms.. Potter is referencing is sort of laying out to you what your actual deliberations should be tonight. And that is, of course, critically important. All right. So I would prefer if we jumped off that we would take a short recess. When we return, that we start with your options and check in on our time and then see how much more data we would like before that we can get to us deliberating. Madam Mayor. And we could go ahead. I think it's important to have some context before we get to the options that that are going to be presented. So I. I, I would like to have a concise overview. And I mean concise. So there's context to the options, and that context can be balanced against what we've heard tonight. So the only reason I thought that we didn't necessarily that I would prefer not starting with that is that it is in the staff report. We had the ability to read it in advance. This is no new information that's being provided to council. So at that being said, let me hear from the other council members. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I would agree with the vice mayor's comments that it's important for us to have the context. You know, often we always have staff reports, but, you know, having presentation, especially on an issue that's critical, I think is important. And I know we can be concise, you know, and precise about it. That would be helpful in that regard. Can I finish, Mike? Can I finish my my comments, please? And I'd also like to hope that, you know, we as council members can, you know, withhold our comments to the end. That way, staff can be as efficient as they can and because they've done a lot of hard work on this presentation. Member De Saag. But my strong sense is that what policy options will mull over have to flow out of the data that's been prepared. So I'm, I'm fine with having a review by area economics and their study and any other pertinent information. And I would just. Say and then we ask, do you. Think you merit that? I feel that while we have all read the material, our staff report and all the many attachments that represents a lot of hard work by our staff, we want to also inform the public and I don't expect that everyone went through the hundreds of pages. So to have that brief overview and I know Ms.. Potter will do a nice, concise job, I think as everyone, almost everyone has said, well, we'll just add context to the very important decision we have before, as I don't think this is something I'm mindful of the hour, but I don't think this is the place to cut corners. And for me personally, we've had four council members say that they do need a brief overview. I'm going to since no council member shared what they think a brief overview is, I will be making that decision. A brief overview of the facts will be 10 minutes. We are going to take a ten minute recess. Thank you. I don't think any of us agreed to that. But we'll we'll leave it to. We will. We will endeavor to be expedient. Thank you. We can appeal the ruling. Yes, we can. It's going to be 15. So I. I want to make sure that we have babies. All right. All right. I want you to speak to. Hey. Lara, can I ask you where we are in the time on a recess? It's 919. We have 920 right now if you want to. All right. We're going to return from our recess. Thank you, everyone. We're going to resume with our presentation. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just on the last comment that. The last comment that Miss Potter's presentation is going to be limited to 10 minutes. I want to make sure that we have the sufficient time to synthesize what we've heard in 3 hours of testimony and that we're going to be presented prior that's going to be presented prior to the options that we're going to have to deliberate on. And if if it has to go over 10 minutes, I want to make sure that we have that opportunity to continue so that we give this sufficient do. And I appreciate that. However, I'm going to say when I asked for the reduction of actually when I asked in regards to how long our public speakers would have to speak, they normally have 3 minutes. We were then the same person is speaking now, I believe said one minute, which is a big reduction. And I and it's also my understanding that staff is ready to proceed. So thank you. I think Mr. Eddy was going to say. Well, I want to I'd like to make a motion that we actually allow staff to take as much time as they need to present this very important issue. Could you put a time limit? I'm willing to second that motion. All right. I mean, we've got to. Have a chance to discuss that earlier. I mean, you made a decision. You walked off the dais and then, you know, that was the end of that. So, you know, this is a really big deal because we had never had as many speakers in this council and we haven't had as many as far as I can remember , from the sun count days. It's my honor. That there are not. Can you let me finish, please? If we can't sit here and get an informed information from staff, then I don't know how we can make it. Make a decision that that's going to be so monumental if we make it. It's my understanding that staff, when I went up and I asked how much time she needs, she said she could do it in 5 minutes. It's just my part. That's right. Exactly. So we have one part and that's the part that we're we're going through. And I, I would. So we have her. I would concur, though, with the vice mayor and also Councilmember Odie. This is a monumental decision before us. If we were to shortcut the analysis by somehow truncating the look at the the data and the information that we will be basing this very important decision on, I think we are cheating the public and I think they will feel that way and wonder what, you know, where we sneaking around? Were we doing something underhanded? So let's be transparent. Let's give the information that was painstakingly gathered over a period, a significant period of time. Let's give it its due. And Madame Mayor, I think you've done quite a good job with quite a difficult meeting tonight. But bear in mind that there are five of us on the council. So there's a motion to have unlimited discussion now by staff before we get to our time. Is that correct? Is that the motion? No, I believe the motion is that the staff is going to be allowed sufficient time to give context. To. Their presentation and context to the decision that we're about to make. And that's and that's for that's for our benefit in in conjunction with what we've heard in testimony. And I voted for one minute and you generously gave additional time so that people could fill that out. And I appreciate that. But we do need and it's it's only 925. I think it's important that we move that we move in a manner that allows staff with the direction to be concise, to present what they need to present to us. Madam Mayor, if I may remember, I do believe that the saying measure twice, cut once is incredibly important here, which means that we should gather all information that we can from our staff, from our consultants, and we might have questions that, you know, push the boundaries of the time beyond 5 to 10 minutes. So we need to be open to that. The saving grace is it is 930. We do have time. And I think in the end we need to make a decision and have a deliberation that our residents will be proud of. So I do think having a little bit more time doesn't hurt, but it helps awfully on. That being said, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor. I. Oppose. And can you clarify? This is the consultant presentation. If we can follow along online. Thank you. So you can all follow along online or you could have read it in advance, but you can go ahead. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So again, good evening. My name is Janet Smith Heimer, and I'm the owner of a firm called B.A Urban Economics in the City engaged our firm in June 2015 to do a two part study, most of its data study. And then I have a couple comments and there were several pairs at the end of our report that looked at a couple of policy choices. Among many that you have. I think Debbie is going to go through a greater detail on more of them. So that first page. Thank you as sorry. Go back to that. Just to remind you of what we were saying a couple of hours ago, there's two big data sources and I'm going to talk about them in a minute. And I was just trying to be very clear when I started last time to describe that one ends in 2013 and the other is less perfect. It's for 50 unit above projects, but it's more current. So that was really my main point in the beginning. Next page. Thank you. So we went through that. Alameda has about 16,500 households that are renters in 2013. That's about 55% of all households. And then there was the point that the median incomes for renters in Alameda was about half of the owner households, 55,000 versus 115,000. Next page, please. Okay. We were asked to figure out how many households of the renters are over are seniors. And the answer there are the 16, 5000, 16,500 is about 30. 100 are aged 65 and older. And among that group of 3100, about 1300 are aged 75 and older. We were asked to look at the length of time that the renters have been present in Alameda, as we mentioned before. And about 13% of our households who are renters in Alameda have been living in the community since 1999 or sooner or earlier, and that's a higher rate than for Alameda County overall. Next slide, please. This is the new material. I think I was we didn't get to this slide last time. As you as I think you're well aware of, you've had a measure for a long time which has constrained your multifamily building permit. So this slide shows a little bit of data in that regard. Since 2000, you've permitted 112 multifamily units there. In the full report, it shows year by year, and most of those were the last two years. We did a calculation to figure out the ratio of how many multifamily units have been permitted in city volume. You know, the city of Oakland, Alameda County in the Bay Area per 1000 residents in 2000. So if you think of different sized cities to normalize that information. So the city of Alameda comes out at 1.5 multifamily units per 1000 residents in 2000, whereas Oakland, the county and the Bay Area have higher production. So I think one of the main things to think about here is the region does have a shortage of housing. We've heard some of the repercussions tonight. And and so those are the ratios even amidst a shortage that are approaching 20 or 25 units per thousand residents with the city of our unit being a lot less. I just want to mention in the last couple of years with the density bonus that you've adopted in your multifamily overlay, those those things are going to shift that trend. And that is where most of the multifamily has occurred in the last two years. Any eight units of the 112. So we have a really interesting mix of housing supply that houses renters. One of the things that really does not get discussed much, although I heard it this evening, is that about a quarter of your rental households live in single family homes. And this is true for almost every city that I've worked in the Bay Area in my career. When you actually look at where do all renters live, a good number, 20 or 25% in most cities in the Bay Area are actually renting single family homes. As you consider forms of rent stabilization and you will be guided through that by others. And when you look at cost Hawkins, which does limit what can be done statewide, single family homes are exempt. So, so even if you were to adopt a regulation, about a quarter of your supply would would automatically be exempt from that. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Another large amount, 28%, is in small to to force for unit buildings. And at the other end, a spectrum of 50 plus units, which we'll talk more about in a minute, is about 13% of all your rental housing. Next slide, please. So a lot of we've heard a lot of testimony about rent increases. So we looked at two kinds of data. As I mentioned in the beginning, the first kind of American community survey and other census data spanning the period of 2000 to 2013. So it ends in 2013. During that long 13 year period, you had a 54% overall rent increase. These are self-reported rents and there are some other caveats. But in the sake of time, I'll skip those happy answer questions. That averages about 4% a year for that 13 year period. Those were what your rents look like for that period of time among everybody. Just to contrast to rent are household incomes. While rents went up over that 30 year period, 54% incomes went up 29%. So not keeping pace with rent. When we look at the other data that's were current just for the larger projects, 50 plus units we can, that's what the graph shows. We're showing oh 711 in 2015 and we have data for every year in between there. But we picked 11 to 2015 year to date because that's the recovery period. And so that's the most recent data. Thinking about the last four plus years, you've had a jump of 52%, which is an average of 13% a year, at least on those larger properties. I know that just just to anticipate a question you might ask, it's very hard to find data other than the American community survey for your smaller properties. One quick survey. But that's really the only way to do it. So there is no good other data covering the rest of your properties that we can show you. The final point here is in your 50 plus unit properties, the most recent data, the average rents, this is all sizes of units. Among those properties is over $2,000 a month. Next slide, please. Okay. Put it in perspective a little bit. Your your Almeida is experiencing a lot of rapid rent increases, but really so is everybody. So this is just for those same 50 plus unit projects, the sources, real answers. We're showing you all the cities in Alameda County. And this is kind of a quick way to say that munis average at just over $2,000 from those projects is less of a number than some of the other cities. So you can see Berkeley at the far end exceeding $3,000 across those larger properties. And at the end at the other end, San Leandro is much lower, 1500 something. That's that slide. Let's next slide. We wanted to really focus on need. I think that's one of the really key questions facing you is how do we get to answer and understand better about need, who's most at need of or impacted by these by the rents? One metric that I'm happy to answer more questions about, it's slightly old data too. It's from the federal government, but it's about the rent burden. So rent burden means how much of a percent of income do you pay for your housing costs? Just to be clear, rent burden in this context is both rent and utilities. So it's really your gross housing costs. So this data shows you just the cut of the very low income households in Alameda in 2012, as reported by the federal government, HUD, you had about 5125 very low income renter households. That means households earning 50% or less of the area, median income excuse me, about 40. Yes. Clarifying question here. Could you put a number on that? I know we hear about the area median income, but just for our audience and for our. It's hard to. Do succinctly because it varies by the size of the household. So there are charts that we could pull that would tell you. But I think roughly a family of four oh stuff and you have the chart. Four. For a family of four at 50%, am I 46,000? It's fair to say that again. For a family of four in Alameda County. These very low income households. So 50% and their immune is 46,000. Is that right? Yeah. Though it varies by household size. I'll just read it really quickly here to give you the full spectrum. So a one person, very low income household makes 32,550. Or a person makes 46,450. Those are very low incomes. 50% am-I are below that. How? Okay. So back to this metric about needs, so you have about 5000 105,000, one or 25 real income households, you know, roughly earning between 32 five and 46 four essentially on this chart, if you assume they're mostly 1 to 4 person households and 4000 of those are paying more than a third of their income in rent. Again, this was in 2012, so it's likely that that was before the most recent spikes in rents that these numbers would probably shift upwards if one had the data. The the group considered the most at risk by most housing analysts are the group that pays that's very low income and pays half or more of their income for housing. And so among your 5125 households, you have about 3000 that are doing that. So they're earning somewhere between, you know, below 30, 25 to 46 five if depending on their household size and they're paying half of that in their housing costs, or at least they were in 2012. There are more detail in the full report about a few of the kinds of households that are in this data about senior housing and senior households in single households. But we did not. I like that for this, for brevity of presentation, we'll move on sort of back to the 50 units plus. This is a kind of a little out of order here, but this is placing you on vacancy. So the way to think about this is you saw a moment ago that you all the cities had high rents. Your rents have been rising. So of all the cities here is vacancy, which is one way to think about will this keep going? We all have very low vacancies in Alameda County. You remember that San Leandro had the lowest average rent on those large properties. On the other graph you're at showing as also the lowest vacancy rate. So the market will go where the rents are lower, but those usually then cause a higher rent increase. So when you get down that low, you will usually expect a rent increase. I forgot to mention that most analysts think of 5% as a healthy vacancy rate. Anything below five starts to lead to what you know the various terms for housing crunch, housing crisis. The reason it's five is that allows for turnover. So people do need to move around and 5% is considered sort of an imbalance healthy market. So then all cities in Alameda County right now are below that. You're registering at 2.7. Is there again only the larger properties, but those are the ones that are tracked. Next slide, please. Please. Almost finished. So stop. Asked us to try to make an estimate and we worked with staff to try to estimate made what units might be, what units are, how many units are on Alameda who are not automatically exempt from rent stabilization due to cost to Hopkins. I mentioned a moment ago that single family are exempt statewide. Also exempt are government subsidized units, affordable units, and other kinds of units that are owned by certain entities. Like in your case, you have Coast Guard units. So this is really taking all of the rental housing numbers from the latest data and subtracting our estimates of the number of units that would be exempt to get to a very rough number of what's left. So you recall before you had about 16,500 renter households, and that's almost the same as units because vacancy is so low. And so we're estimating that just under 12,000 of those, or about 71%, could be subject to some form of rent stabilization. And the remainder, the other 29% would be automatically exempt because of Costa Hawkins. Next slide. A question on that. How does that apply to, say, section eight, since that's a certificate or voucher, but it's a privately held unit? Yeah, it's kind of a complicated answer, Deputy. You want to make that answer? That answer or. You have to taken the microphone. If it's with the project, it's the government subsidized, if it's with the tenant, with the voucher moving around because there are two kinds of S.A, they're under their own kind of rent control because HUD controls what the amount of money is. And so that's what they're paying 3%, but the total is the amount of the voucher. And so it's really a landlord decision to accept that voucher. I see. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, next slide. You asked us to also look at how short term rental market like Airbnb might be affecting the situation in Alameda. And we're very fortunate that we've actually done some of the same kind of work for other cities, larger cities in the Bay Area. And over time, I've gotten to know some of the folks at Airbnb who are very nice to share some information. Not every. But you can get to this. But they looked and ran a little bit of data for us and told us that Alameda City has about 100 active hosts here, which means people who are posting something to rent on Airbnb. As most of you know, if you've looked at Airbnb or participate in it, this ranges anywhere from a spare bedroom or even a spare, you know, sleeping space to it can range to a whole unit, either your house or a second unit. So there are ways to refine this data and sort it. But because the total number was fairly small, we stopped there and wanted to report to you that they're showing about 100 active hosts on their data on their website. They gave us a median for the number of days that these that these any kind of you know, I hesitate to say, you know, any kind of rental is booked and the median Alameda City is 44 days a year, which we thought was not very long. And the median income for these hosts is 30 $800 a year. So what we're concluding from this is probably that level of activity and those kinds of numbers suggest that it's very unlikely many of these rented spaces are would otherwise be available for 12 month leases. Given the kinds of numbers that you're seeing here. Just enough why we do the math of 100 active hosts at 3800 a year. That means that there are generating $380,000, which for the city of Alameda, if we apply, the top tax rate would be $38,000. So and you certainly, you know, another day, another topic but certainly there is that there is that OC almost finished. So you had us do a couple of quick looks at some policies. We do. A lot of us work all over and we just had finished a long report on Just Cause. But Debbie is going to report to you on that. We did it for another national client. But just to go through the ones that we were asked to look at, one idea was what if we waive our transfer tax and dedicate those funds to help subsidize or reach agreements with landlords who might hold down rents for eligible parties? And so we didn't do a lot of analysis on this, but we do see that you have a $12 transfer tax locally. It's $12 on each thousand dollars of sale price, and it contributes about 7 million to senator, 7 million to your general fund, at least this year budget. We did a little bit of math on the side. There's a little bit mentioned in the report. Basically, if you start to try to figure out how you could apply those dollars because the affordable rents per the normal I levels of 30% of some of those very low income numbers are much lower amounts than what your market rate rents look like. You would have to be spending a fairly sizable amount of money depending on how you did it, to make that waiver pay for more than a few years. It's certainly something to consider, but it won't buy you on its own permanent, affordable units, or at least very many. We also look at direct subsidy. I think Debbie is going to report on more about boomerang funds, which is certainly one source that cities in the Bay Area and elsewhere in California have been rededicating to affordable housing. You certainly could do direct subsidy. The city already does. You have a number of programs that help fund some new housing production and some rehab. And so this would be really adding to what you're already doing. You certainly could consider doing some more. Most of that is added would be to add units to the supply. So a slightly different view than your existing rental stock. And the final thing I want to mention, which was asked slightly differently of us, but this is what we wanted to sort of bring before you, just so that you have a good understanding. There is something called low income housing tax credits. These are what most nonprofit housing developers use to build new units. It's a very common production mechanism. It usually needs other subsidy from cities like three or General Fund to help make those projects pencil. But one option and many nonprofits do do this is you can also acquire existing buildings. You usually have to pay market rates for those. So it can cost a lot of money, but then you can refinance that through low income housing tax credits if you do what's called substantial rehab. Which is about $12,000 a unit. So if you think about most of your older properties, usually a new kitchen and some wiring will actually equal the needs. And also making them accessible per ADA is often a really key improvement. So this is a fairly common approach that a number of the local nonprofits do do, or they acquire market on the market buildings and they they use this financing mechanism and some other subsidies are usually necessary. They do that kind of rehab and then those units are affordable for multiple decades. The federal is 20 years in the state I think is 30 years. So that's one way to create an affordable housing supply using that financing mechanism. That does not depend on only new construction. And there was interested in understanding how the property tax waiver plays into this. There are several sections in the state tax code that allow nonprofits and a few other select groups of kinds of owners, hospitals and a few others to, if they build affordable housing, to be exempt from property taxes. So that does help make the whole thing pencil. It's only part of the bigger puzzle. That's the end of my presentation. Sorry. It was a little longer than 5 minutes. I'm happy to answer questions. All right. Clarifying questions. I'm going to start to my left member, Audie. Remember Day said. I was. What struck me about the Boomerang fans was possibly looking at it as a rental subsidy. But in doing the math, let's say you divide the 16, the $1.6 million annually by 800 very elderly at risk. You know, the monthly subsidy is almost less than $100. Right. So you need more like 1000 or more dollars a unit. Exactly. Right. So it's. Completely possible that it would be done for purchasing or building a. But that's how you could do it and you could do the tax credit layer. I think Debbie is going to talk some more about that, too. Any other clarifying questions? All right. I have clarifying questions. Okay. All right. And in regards to this report, first of all, I don't see page numbers on it, so I'm not quite sure how to refer to pages. They were. All right. If you can turn to the page that says recent rental rate trends. On the do you mean on the protesters? We just gave her on the fuller. Report, the presentation we just made. There are page numbers on it, I think. Well, maybe. No, they're not on mine. Sorry. Thank you. So there is my pen. So this your statement is rents across all rental household reportedly increased 54% between 2020 13. Does that mean that you tracked one person renting a place and you know that their income increased? No, this is census data. So it's not from us. This is an American community survey data. This is tracking places. So you don't track people in that dataset. You track the place. So if rents increased in between tenancies, do you have any data that shows what percentage of that is for a tenant that is a long term tenant or if there was any change in tenancy? Unfortunately, as I mentioned, there's no real way to get to that city wide. The 50 unit above is a better data source, but it's only for those larger projects. And they do track that. They track individuals. They know they track again the units. But answering your second question, what we're talking about there is, is what they're reran to. So my my concern is, do we have any data that tracks an individual renting? What rent increases do they get? What was their average increase if they stayed in one place for the past year? Do you have any data on that? No. About two years of the same tenant stays in one place for two years. Do you have any average data for that tenant? The average data for tenants. Nobody does. So we don't know nobody. So I just want to clarify. So we actually. Contrary to the data, the anecdotal evidence that we received this evening, you do not have any data that tracks individual tenants and what the impact has been. There's a yes, but so I'm going to try to give the yes. But but what this data is doing is telling. I'm sorry, I'm not asking for a yes, but I'm asking if you have direct data that tracks tenants in a field. There is no. Way to track individuals. Thank you. I want to clarify. Okay. All right. Clarifying question would be, what is the. Yes. Okay. So what this data is doing and it's two kinds of data, but it's tracking the unit and what it rents for. So there is a slight distinction. I had another question. So if we can study questions after. Mine. That thought. Well, thanks. Okay. And I had already asked all the other people if they had any questions. So let's continue. You have another chart. Regional rental rate trends. That actually shows Alameda. It shows the eighth highest average of rental rate of 13 Alameda County cities. You could also say that we're the fifth lowest. And Berkeley is the first. And we're the highest. Do they have rent control? Yes, they do. But again, it only applies to buildings built before 1990. Okay. Well, could could our customer, could our city have any rent control that does anything different? The units that are causing the 3000 a month are the market rate units, not the rent stabilized units in Berkeley, but. Rent control in Berkeley would allow me to would still have cost to Hawkins, is that correct? You are subject to it, yes. So newer units will go to market rate, all units will go to market rate when a tenant leaves. The combination of those two things in a high demand rent controlled city like Berkeley, some are exempt and and the rest go to market, which. I appreciate that. Creates a $3,000. Average. My next question, does Oakland have rent rent control? They have on a more moderate form. Okay, Emeryville. No. Dublin. No. Pleasanton. No. Newark. No. Fremont. No. But they've considered it. Alameda is no. Union City. No. Livermore. They've considered. But the answer's no. Correct? No. Castro Valley? No. Hayward here in San Leandro both considered it multiple times. Thank you. All right. Member Ashcraft, your clarifying question. Yes, I think Hayward has it. I'm sorry. You have a mild misspoke. Do you do you remember the question this was you were being asked if the studies tracked individual renters, you said no units, but you said there was a yes but answer. Yeah, that's the yes. But so there is no way. In other words. So let's just take an example. There's no way that you can say Mary Jo moved in in 1999. What has her rent increase been every year in Alameda in that four plex except asking her or the landlord? Nobody can track that. There is no anyone who alleges that they have data that they can say what that would. The answer would be there isn't any data like that. Long ago there was from the federal government, but it's all ended. So instead this is the only data there is. You call people at their unit as in 2012 and you say, How long have you been there? What did you pay last year and what are you paying this year? And that tells you how long they've lived there and what their most recent rent was. Okay. And you keep calling a statistical sample over and over in all these cities, and that's how you get data about the units and what they're renting for. In effect, that's the same thing because whether and it doesn't answer the mayor's question about certain individuals, but what it does describe to you is your market. So a market will respond to that same signal. So landlords will follow the market and generally raise rents. I don't know how landlords in Alameda behaved or certain groups have behaved. What we do know is that rents have risen, so we can't cut it any more fine grained than that with respect to individuals. Thank you. Mm. Any other members want to ask any other clarifying questions. Remember Odie. I think you just one on that slide. We were just going over the regional rental rate trends. Uh huh. So this data, it says data are only I'm sorry, data are for rental properties with 50 units or more. The. Larger that just Alameda or do all of these cities is this the 50 year unit more data. Per minute. This is the larger projects, right. Okay. So the that 3000 that doesn't include single family homes or for Plex's or any of that stuff. Right. But not to confuse it with exempt from Costa Hawkins. It's just a private data vendor who only tracks large projects. So Berkeley has some you guys up. Some of these cities have some, but they're tracking those every quarter. They're calling a property manager and asking what's their vacancy, what rents are, what are the most recent rents on your one bedrooms? And then, you know, that's how the data comes to us. So you can track quarter by quarter. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed that. The information that you put together and the policy suggestions that you put out the back. What really caught my eye was the runner by age on page 17. It was interesting because I was looking at 2002 thousand of the 15,700 renters or so, roughly 10%, 12% were age 65 and older. But then in the two for 2013, and I think that's a three year sample, you know, the number suddenly went up to 18%. So clearly, this is a a function of the aging baby boomer, for sure. Where are the boomers? And we're urbanized. I am and we're aging. But I think from a policy perspective, this is also a segment of demographics whose income is constrained. And in the other data that you show with regard to the the very low income. I'm remembering off the top of my head, of the very low income who are spending 50% or more of their income on rent. I think 20% of them. Where were the elderly or the elderly? So, you know, what this speaks to is, like I said from the outset, is, you know, getting at look at the data and then figuring out, you know, what are the appropriate policy steps. All right. I really appreciate this very much. Thank you. Thank you. So this is now Steph's presentation if you're following along online. Good evening. And just to introduce myself again, I'm Debbie Potter, and I'm the city's community development director. And I'm going to be talking about an overview of the staff report. So my presentation this evening is going to touch on three things a brief summary of our current rent review system, the continuum of program and policy options that staff has gathered for counsel, and then recap the recommendations that are in the staff report regarding counsel. Direction to staff. So as has been referred to on multiple testimony this evening, the city currently has a rent review, rent mediation process. That process we are short shorthand for that is a rent review advisory committee or RAC. And I do want to say that the RAC has been in place actually since 1979. So it has been around for a long time. And the work that was done more recently was the council working to strengthen that process that has been in place since 1979. The RAC encourages dialog between property owners and tenants. It's really modeled on mediation and the idea that if you bring two parties together and two parties have an opportunity to talk through issues and concerns that you can reach a resolution that works for for both parties. The RAC, the mediation process applies to all rental properties in the city of Alameda. In fact, even somebody renting a room in a house would be able, under our rent review process, to to approach the RAC. Our system is initiated by tenants. Tenants are the ones who complete a rent increase complaint form a Rick and that Rick is submitted to staff. And that is the process that gets the RAC underway. That's what what what starts the process. And then once that Rick is filed, the tenant and the landlord appear before a public mediation which is presided over by the RAC board. And as the name implies, RACS decisions are non-binding and advisory only. So that's an important component of the mediation process. As also has been talked about this evening, there have been recent changes to the city's rent review process, the culmination of a yearlong community engagement process that was initiated by the community and was led on a volunteer basis by a community member. Mr. Jeff Canberra came forward with a series of six points that staff translated into an ordinance at the direction of council, and that ordinance went into effect on October 1st. The intent of the ordinance was to strengthen our existing rent review process. So we did a couple of things in that ordinance. One is that we really wanted to make sure all of the tenants in the community knew that they could. There was a process of mediation that they could avail themselves of. So one of the things that was put into place was a mandatory noticing so that property owners have to notice tenants when their rent is increased of the availability of the rec process. So that was to really expand outreach and education functions. The second change that was that went into effect October one was to make the property owners participation mandatory in the event that a tenant filed a risk and wanted to have a hearing before the the rec. In the past, the landlord's participation was voluntary. The new changes made that participation by the landlord mandatory. And then that kind of the stick about all of this is that if a rent increase is not properly noticed, or if a landlord chooses not to participate in the mediation hearing the rent increase is null and void. And those were the two changes, the two primary changes that were put into effect and have been in place for the last five weeks or so. The second ordinance that went into effect on October 1st, what were were aimed at really kind of bringing the RAC into the fold of the city, family of boards and commissions since the rack had been around since 1979. And it was really set up by a motion of the council. It had never been quite as formalized as the rest of the city's boards and commissions. So the ordinance did a couple of things. The second ordinance, it added the rack to the municipal code and kind of aligned the racks operational requirements to be consistent with our boards and commissions. So going forward, black members are nominated by the mayor and appointed by the council. Members are eligible to serve a maximum of two four year terms. And then the composition of the rack as it is a mediation body is two members are tenants, two members are housing providers and one member is a neutral property owner. So there was some discussion at council's October 20th meeting about how whether or not they wanted to move forward with appointing new RAC members. We have several vacancies under the rubric of the new ordinance or not, or if there was a desire to discuss potentially restructuring the RAC as an outcome of some of the direction that we might receive tonight. I will say at this time that staff is recommending that the Council continue forward with its appointment process as it's contained in the existing ordinance that went into effect on October 1st. So I want to talk a little bit about the continuum of tenant protections and really that that continuum is all about the amount of government regulation in the landlord tenant relationship and then that if the government is going to get more or less involved in that relationship, what are the, you know, the amount of sort of city resources that need to be dedicated to carrying out those tenant protections. So on one end of the spectrum, you have non-binding mediation. That is what we have in the city of Alameda. And then you have a spectrum along which on the kind of on the other side of that continuum is rent control, the non-binding mediation. And rent. Tenant protections that are less than rent control apply to all units or have the ability to be applied to all you all rental units in the city. When you continue on the spectrum and get rent control, you are then limited by what we refer to as the Costa Hawkins, which is state legislation that preempts essentially the amount of local government discretion in setting, you know, rent control. So we are limited by by the parameters of Costa Hawkins and we'll talk a little bit more about what those limitations are. But we don't have a complete free hand in how rent control would be set up or structured. So given that given that continuum between non-binding mediation, voluntary mediation and rent control, to talk a little bit, you heard from speakers this evening about keeping the RAC process and looking for ways to strengthen the mediation program, our rent review program here in the city of Alameda. So I want to just highlight some some possible strategies for for strengthening the mediation program. One, some people have talked this evening about just give the recent changes time to work. And initially, that's what staff was proposing. These ordinances will go in place. They'll be in place in 12 months. We'll come back and report on progress. I think it's become apparent that perhaps there needs to be a little bit more be a little bit more proactive about ways to continue to strengthen our mediation system. So these these next bullet points there. They're not mutually exclusive. And they are options that the council could consider some all or none of these. But I'm just starting and running through the list. We don't limit there is no regulation limiting the number of times rents are increased here in the city of Alameda. So one idea is to make it more explicit that rent increases could only be given once a year whether you have a lease or not. And some cities, Palo Alto and Mountain View is going to be looking at this. They have programs where they actually require the landlord to offer that. A landlord has to offer a lease. They can't just do a month to month. So that's kind of that gets at the same issue. That's a strategy that gets at that issue. Another suggestion that's been put forward is make them have a mandatory hearing for any rent increase over a certain percent, such that if you raise your rent over more than a certain percent, you'd have a mandatory appearance in front of the rack. The logic of that would be that perhaps that would be a deterrent to raising a rent up to that percentage because you might not want to go before the rack to mediate that rent increase. The another suggestion that's been put forward is expand the role of rack to mediate. No cause evictions. You heard a lot tonight about the kind of work arounds that might be going on, but loopholes, I think it was referred to in lieu of giving rent increases and having to notice your tenant and go through the the mediation, perhaps you you do a 30 or 60 day of action. Something like this might help with that. We've also heard that tenants might not be availing themselves of the rack process as much as they might otherwise if they were feeling less intimidated or a little bit less overwhelmed about the process. So another suggestion brought forward was the city could hire an ombudsperson, a staff person who would work with the tenant and help guide the tenant through the process, from filling out the report to talking to staff to appearing at the Rack meeting. And then the last suggestion that has been thought about is the city funding, third party mediation, just kind of making the mediation process here in Alameda more robust with an opportunity to to look at additional mediation efforts in addition to the rack. And then this is just kind of a sampling of cities that have mediation programs throughout the state and the Bay Area just to and we're not alone with our mediation program and there are other jurisdictions that do have mediation. So then I'm sorry. Clarifying question, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Potter. Do you know if any of these cities that are listed on this slide have binding mediation programs? I believe that these are all voluntary mediation. Okay. Which which means, again, it's advisory and non-binding. So. That's correct. Okay. Very fine question. Vice mayor. Miss Potter, can you explain before we go on to the other the other rent stabilization points that are coming up in the presentation, can you explain the, uh, the standing that a tenant gets with the decision from the rack? Because I know that was talked about and when the ordinance without but when they it's it's non-binding it's advisory but what what. What happens when the tenant gets a ruling in their favor? And say there's an unlawful detainer filed by their landlord. How does that play into it? Are you referring to if the noticing is improper? Yes. Okay. So. I'm sorry. Could you? I got confused when you were asking about the noticing. Yes. Can you explain it? To make it more simple. What protections come along with the tenant with regard to court proceedings? Well, if a tenant under the new ordinance that went into effect October 1st, if a tenant is not properly noticed about the availability of the rack, the rent increase is null and void until properly noticed. If a landlord were to serve a tenant with an unlawful detainer prior to re noticing properly, then the ordinance is is evidence in a court of law that they that the eviction was not warranted because the ordinance says you have to properly notice and if you don't properly notice it until you properly notice, the increase is not valid. And then in the in the alternative or in the other situation, if a landlord does not participate in the mediation hearing , then the rent increase is null and void and the rent cannot be increased for one year. And if, once again, if a tenant is served with an unlawful detainer, they can go with the ordinance in hand to the court, show the judge that this is the ordinance. And that becomes a defense in an unlawful detainer pursuant to. Member. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to kind of follow up on that. So if if a tenant goes to the rec and they get an opinion from the rec that their position prevails, then then what happens? I mean. So. So the way it works at a RAC meeting, the landlord, the tenant will present their their position about why they think the rent increase was was not warranted. And the landlord will present their, you know, their position about why they did the rent increase the way they did. The rack essentially asks questions of both parties and works to move the parties closer to a resolution. And if the parties agree, then the. RAC will. Issue. You know, essentially the RAC will say, okay, the parties agreed and this is what they recommended. If the Rockies saying we think that the rent increase probably makes more sense at 6%, let's say it was eight and the two parties agree to the 6%, then off they go to do to do their agreement. If the rec says 6%, we think that's more reasonable and the property owner says, I want my 8%. Then it's not a resolved case. And the the next recourse for the tenant is they can appeal to city council and request that the Council. Uphold the. RAX recommendation. But that's all the Council can do, that the property owner can still stay. Thank you very much, City Council, for your consideration. I'm still going to raise the rent 8%. Thank you. So continuing on the continuum of tenant protections on the other end from non-binding mediation is rent stabilization. As I mentioned, Costa Hawkins has several big presumptions. One is that single family homes and condominiums, as well as rental units built after 1995, are exempt from rent control. In addition to, as was mentioned by Janet. Government subsidized or government owned housing. So our estimate is that if the council were to move forward with rent stabilization, that tenant protection would apply to approximately 71% of the city's rental housing stock, taking into account primarily the single family homes being exempted. We had not that many multi-family units built after 1995, probably about 65 units or something. And the other big slug for us is government owned in government subsidized housing. So rent stabilization allows automatic rent increases. And those automatic rent increases, those annual automatic rent increases are set by the local jurisdictions. And those automatic rent increases can be a flat percentage increase. For example, in San Jose, they have a flat increase of 8%. They can be tied to CPI, for example. Oakland's is 100% of CPI. Or it could be. Just for those who don't follow all the acronyms that the. Price increase or it could be a percentage of the consumer price index, such as in Berkeley, where it's set at 60% of CPI. But that is the annual allowable increase. And then in addition to setting. And an annual automatic increase. Rent stabilization requires a hearing officer or a separate board to review return on investment and other types of petition petitions for rent control to be constitutional. It must guarantee the property owner a fair return on their investment. And therefore you need to have an infrastructure that has a hearing officer or a board to analyze and rule on the return on petitions for a return on investment. If you need to make a case that the annual automatic increase is not sufficient to guarantee your right to a fair return on investment, you need to have a mechanism to adjudicate those. And then you also need to be able to adjudicate other types of petitions having to do with things like capital improvements. People talked about, you know, new roofs, new you know, new capital, private investment that you have to recoup the cost of that. So you so you need that infrastructure. And then another thing that you would have to think about if you went down this road is if you're hearing officer and board decisions would be final or would they be advisory with an ability to appeal to the city council? If they appealed to the city council, could they be would we have that same choice? Could they be final at city council? Yeah, it would be final. That would be the administrative remedies and then it would be court would be the next recourse for that. So if it's final. But what is that? Could that apply to all homes, including. No. Now that we're talking about rent stabilization, we're in that we're in the realm of 71% of the city's housing stock. All right. All right. Thank you. I have a question on rent stabilization. And on the next slide of rent control, when we're using these phrases, are there, are there, are we using it in a particular legal manner? And I ask that because just just give you background to the question. One of the things I'm interested in is relocation assistance. I've had people tell me that relocation assistance is rent control, but but relocation assistance in the context of your presentation is another slide. So I think this might be a legal question as well. So when we talk about rent stabilization and rent control, is that mutually exclusive from relocation assistance? So we as staff are using rent control and rent stabilization interchangeably so that that it's the same it's it has the same meaning. Rent stabilization. Rent control. And you'll see coming up, when we talk about relocation benefits, staff does not believe that relocation benefits are constrained by Costa Hawkins. And we have a slide about that. I appreciate that. That's very helpful. And then the other area where Costa Hawkins preempts local authority is in that type of rent control that you can have all rent control in the state of California must allow the landlord to establish the initial rate, rent rate for a vacant unit. So that's often referred to as vacancy control. The landlord can establish the rent for a vacant unit. Once a tenant is living in the unit, then the rent is is controlled based on those automatic annual increases and then any other adjustments that I was referring to in the prior slide. And that so it's called vacancy control. Re control. When that when that in place tenant moves out, the landlord can then raise the rent up to market. And then once again the unit is re controlled. So vacancy decontrol re control. And then the other type of rent control that is far less common is what's called permanent control, and that is rent control that when the or an ordinance is adopted, establishing rent control, it applies to tenants who are in place in their units at the time the ordinance is adopted. When that tenant moves out, the unit ceases to be covered by rent control and it's permanently controlled. So you would you know, you would you would shrink your inventory of rent controlled units under the permanent control. So those are the two types of rent control jurisdictions are allowed to have in the state of California. And then this was another point that was alluded to that some of the public speakers this evening, there's also within rent control, a continuum of enforcement and regulatory authority. So it was mentioned that some rent control programs, rent stabilization programs are a tenant complaint based program such as in Oakland. If you feel that your rent has been raised outside of what was allowed to be raised, then you can file a complaint so that it is initiated by the tenant, the city of Hayward. That's how their program, their rent control, works to. It's a tenant complaint based program. How would you characterize Almeida's program, The Rack? Well, that is also tenant complaint based. That's mediation versus the rent stabilization. Okay. Okay. And then on the other end of the continuum, you have landlord registration where landlords have to affirmatively register their unit. The city notifies tenants of the allowable rent increase and that there's it's a much more robust program in terms of the enforcement and the regulatory authority. A tenant complaint based system is there is it's less. There's less to do on staff's part, since it looks to the tenants to bring the complaints forward. So, for example, in the city of Hayward, their program cost less than $50,000 a year to run. And then when you get to the landlord registration, such as the city of Berkeley, the city of Berkeley's program costs $4 million a year. That's the annual budget for the rent control program in the city of Berkeley. So now moving into there are two other types of tenant protections that we want to talk about that are that are tenant protections but are not protections necessarily tied to protecting people against rent increases. And so that's going to just cause eviction is one and the relocation benefits is the other. So just cause eviction is like in its name implies that there that that is an eviction for cause. And typically when you talk about evictions for cause, you're talking about nonpayment of rent, a tenant conducting illegal activities in their unit, being a disturbance to their neighbors, not allowing the quiet enjoyment of their neighbors unit. Those kinds of things are considered for cause and just cause. And then there is no cause eviction. And you heard a lot this evening about No Cause eviction where people were talking about getting a notice, eviction notices that were most probably or maybe one could speculate where in lieu of rent increases. And so just cause eviction ordinances are really aimed at regulating the types of evictions that are allowed in a jurisdiction. So allowing just cause evictions and prohibiting no cause evictions is really what that's about. In most instances, rent controlled cities with mine controls have just cause eviction. Because if you didn't have just cause eviction protections in a city with rent control and you have vacancy control, the property owner is going to be incentivized to evict a tenant, to move in a tenant where they could adjust the rent up to market. Eviction for Cause Only is typically a feature of a just cause eviction ordinance. Just cause eviction is not constrained by Costa Hawkins, so just cause eviction could be applied to all of the city's rental units if the council were to pursue that. And typically when you have just cause eviction, there are special noticing requirements that the landlord has to provide a tenant stating the grounds of the eviction so that it can be determined whether it was for cause or not. If a tenant were to, you know, want to go to court and fight an unlawful detainer, they would have that. They would look at that notice in those supporting documents to rely on. And Brody. Thank you so. You brought up earlier the possibility of requiring that people have to have a lease. So how what's the interplay between for cause eviction, not for cause eviction and a lease, whether it be a year lease or whether it be a month to month lease. So when when can you do one? And under what reason? I mean, what reasons and how does it work today? So I'm not sure they necessarily work together because in the jurisdictions that are. Palo Alto is the I think the only example we found as staff where they require a lease that a landlord to offer a tenant a 12 month lease. And Mountain View is now considering that their council voted to consider that in October. And neither of those jurisdictions have just cause eviction. So if you have a 12 month lease, you can't be given a no cause eviction until the lease. Yes, right. That's correct. So if you have month to month, you can get the 30 or 60 day notice. And just kind of along those same lines, A has a requirement in their rent control ordinance. They don't have just cause eviction, but their ordinance requires a 90 day notice as opposed to 60. And and in and if you agree not to go to binding arbitration over the the eviction proceedings, you could get a 90 day notice . And then they also lengthen that notice to 120 days when the rental market is constrained. Janet was talking earlier about 5% being considered a healthy rental market and San Jose has requirements of vacancy rates dip below a certain rate. The requirement is 120 days for the eviction. There's not no, they don't have a just cause eviction, but they do have longer timeframes for the eviction notice. Thank you. Number three, clarification, I think perhaps in as it has what's called minimal Jessica's eviction, it can't be for the primary dominant motive. Can't be retaliatory. I mean. Well, I believe that's the under law, right? I believe that's the state law. Okay. But just if I may, what was kind of interesting, what you said about San Jose's case is that there is there are indicators that San Jose officials are tracking in real time. And the indicators trigger or don't trigger certain policies or they scale the policies in one way or another. I mean, that's quite fascinating. Fascinating and potentially staff intensive. San Jose may have a larger staff in Alameda, but. I'm sorry, I'm an American. So but they're the places that are requiring leases. Are they requiring one year leases? Yes. Okay. So a tenant that doesn't want a one year lease and. They can happen. They can they can decline it, but the landlord has to offer it. Oh, okay. Yes. Thank you. And then I think the next. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Move on. Is there a way to have. Have a landlord have to go through RAC if they want to do an eviction for four of a tenant that is current in their rent. Could that be something that we could add to our rack? So if if a landlord wanted to give a no cause eviction, that they would have to go to the rack first. So that was one of the options that I put forward earlier about ways to strengthen strengthen the mediation process. Okay. And then if they come to wrap with that issue now, that would apply to all types of homes, right? That's correct. That's okay. And then depending upon what the decision is from. Then could it go to council and be a binding decision? Or it could. I believe that if the council wanted to make that a binding decision at the council level, it could there would be not that I don't think there's anything to preclude the council from from making it. I'm looking over at the attorney who's been working with me on all of this. I think that's right. He's going to come up. Michael Rausch from the City Attorney's Office, Marin Counsel. The question would be. The question is. If there was a a no cause eviction. Actually, I didn't say no cause I said if they were current in their rent because there's lots of different types of cars. Right. If a tenant is current in their rent and you have a landlord that wants to give them an eviction notice. Is there a way that we could have that that type of eviction notice where the landlord has to come first to rec and essentially received permission from RAC for whatever reason, whether it's on the landlord to come to rec. And could that be a binding decision or could it be? Actually, I would bet that then, depending upon what that decision is, be appealed to the Council and be binding by the council. Essentially you're creating a no cause eviction policy. I mean, that's that's the way the ordinance would read, because if the council determined that that was not cause to evict, that would be the same as having a no cause eviction regulation. So the answer is yes. It's just it would have to be drafted in that way. But essentially the answer would be yes, because that would be a defense. Then if the the landlord brought unlawful detainer action, the tenant would have the finding that there was no cause for the eviction because I had been paying my rent all the way along. Well, no, what I said was because when when the landlord then comes to rock, then they could say, there's these reasons why I want to evict, even though the tenant is current on the rent. And at that point you would have a mediation. Our rec committee be able to weigh the landlord's concerns. And make a determination as to whether or not they think it's appropriate to allow the eviction. Or for whatever the reasons are that the landlord wants to create the eviction. And then based upon that. Yes. And could. And then they could appeal. Could they appeal then, depending upon what the decision is, the. The landlord or the tenant could appeal to a council and have it be a final decision. The answer is that that could be done, but it's sort of feeling like a just cause eviction process. But the answer is yes, it could be done that way. But with. But but with mediation. I mean, you're just you're just adding that into the into the mix. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I did immediate every single eviction. I mean, I'm not sure if. That's possible or legal. Right. I mean, but the council could give we can create a local ordinance. We can create the ordinance that the council might want. So if it's a complaint based by the tenant and the tenant, we're the one to initiate it. It probably wouldn't be every eviction, but that would be you know, it's a lot we we have a lot of local leeway or a local opportunity to craft an ordinance that we think would be appropriate here in Alameda. Thank you. Any other questions? Remember Ashcroft. So would the process that the mayor just described, if I understood it correctly, would that be more streamlined or less than just enacting a just cause eviction ordinance that enumerated the the different types of causes for an eviction that are a go by state law? I think it sounds like the idea was to require mediation first. And if mediation wasn't successful, to then have an opportunity to bring that that eviction request to the council with a final decision. So it's probably an additional. Step. Huh? Thank you. Of mediation. Yes. Member de SAG. Thank you very much, Ms.. Potter, for. Your answers to our questions. One of the questions I have is in looking at the example of Jessica's eviction for the city of Glendale, a city of 200,000 in Southern California. They have embedded in there Jessica's eviction, relocation assistance. And looking at the pros and cons, it doesn't look like we if we contemplate relocation assistance, not just as a standalone item, but something that's also embedded within a Jessica's. Relocation assistance could be part of a just cause eviction ordinance. It could be a separate standalone ordinance that would really be at the pleasure of the council. Thank you. I well, I was going to say isn't when it comes to, I think, the relocation assistance, at least in the reviews of different jurisdictions. Codes that I've seen suggest that relocation assistance would assistance wouldn't be available for just any eviction. Because if you're being evicted because you're violating the law in your unit, you're causing a disturbance to your neighbors, your family to pay the rent. And it's also unclear to me why you would need to mediate those. That seems kind of cut and dried. But if those are the reasons you're being evicted, it shouldn't follow that a landlord pays relocation assistance, but there's what's called no fault just cause evictions. So say you live in a building and the landlord says, I want my family member to move in or I'm going to do substantial rehabilitation and it requires the person moving out . There's several different categories. So in that case, the tenant's being evicted, but through no fault of their own. And they we could design an ordinance that says, well, yes, you, you are deserving of some assistance and a council member. So in that case, that that is the Glendale and the city of Richmond. Right. And they're basically the same. I just saw. The slides are coming up on that. Page. And and so just once again, this is a smattering of jurisdictions that have just cause eviction ordinances. You'll notice that a number of them are also cities with rent control. And as we mentioned earlier, rent control is usually linked with a just cause eviction ordinance. Okay. Now we're going to talk about relocation assistance, which is the third category of tenant protections. Right. Measures to protect tenants from rent increases, measures to protect tenants from no cause evictions. And then what happens if you do get evicted through no fault of your own or for for no cause? There are a number of jurisdictions that require relocation assistance in those scenarios. I don't think we've come across a single example where people get relocation assistance if it's for cause. Although a landlord, some people talk this evening about how hard it is to win their way through the system. So there are sometimes deals that are worked out, but I don't know that it would be anything we would want to sanction through a formal. Ordnance or that kind of thing. So when there when there is an eviction for no cause or no fault in it, there are laws that allow and once again, the state law, the Ellis Act for people who are familiar with the last act, which allows landlords to move in family members or to, you know, going out of business or as the councilmember, as he Ashcraft was saying, if a significant rehab is going on and you need to move. That's no fault. And so these ordinances are usually tied to that kind of eviction. And so some things to think about, about what relocation assistance might look like. And it could be relocation assistance could be offered to anyone that was facing that kind of no cause or no fault eviction. Or it could be tied to length of tenancy, income, special needs, status of the tenant. There are different ways you could slice eligibility. And then there are how do you set the amount of assistance? You tie it to rent. Is it a flat amount? Is it both? So that's another thing to look at. And then lastly, just to note that relocation assistance is not constrained by cost to Hawkins. And so once again, that is a protection that could be applied to all the rental units in the city of Alameda. Well. Madumere, one of the things that I'm interested in is relocation assistance that's tied to the rack process. So that from the outset, while there might be a formula for how much relocation assistance is possible, that it would be ultimately up to the rec process to determine the final number. There might be a minimum, there might be a maximum, but something in between so that people are brought to the table. I don't I don't know if any kind of a mediation relocation assistance model. I don't know. So I don't think we came across any model like that. Typically, it's spelled out in the ordinance what relocation benefit would be, but that wouldn't preclude the council from doing something like that if it was so inclined. Nebraska. So, I mean, it seems to me a couple of things. The I think the advantage of a formula is that you would be assured that this principle or this this feature is applied evenly to all tenants, if it has to do with length of tenancy. How much the rent? You know, sometimes I think it's a the average of two months rent of a comparable unit. And then I did hear second hand that our housing authority director mentioned that an unintended consequence perhaps of specifying certain categories that might get extra assistance might be landlords being less likely to rent to seniors or somebody if they knew that that would engender or would generate a higher level of relocation assistance rather than just applying the same formula across the board. That is definitely something that we would recommend that council consider. And that's illegal. So at this point we're still in our clarifying questions. Member De. Well, actually what I was about to ask you and my council colleagues is in terms of moving forward, I think each of us have different of the models that were presented mediation, rent control, rent stabilization, just cause and and relocation assistance of the five or so different models that were present. And I think each of us has certain things that we like, maybe. It's altogether possible that tonight we can just get knee deep into the policy minutia of how to actually structure it. Or is it a wiser use of time to give direction to staff as to within the models that we like? What are the elements that that we're interested in? For example, let me give you example. We can get into a knee deep discussion tonight about if there's going to be relocation assistance. What are the triggering events? Is it 15% is a 5% is a 10%, is it 9%? We can have that discussion or we can say or those council members who are so interested in a relocation assistance, among other issues, one item that we might take, we want staff to come back to us would be, you know, looking at the triggering events, things like that. I don't know if that's helpful for purposes of discussion. So if you wouldn't. Mind holding that thought that that's exactly what we're going to be asking the council to do. So I'm. Okay. Then once again, I'm just part of this is just to kind of reinforce that if Alameda were to move forward with any of these range of options, we would not be kind of acting out of context of what's going on in a number of jurisdictions. I want to shift very briefly away from tenant protections and just talk about the kind of the supply side that has been brought up. Also this evening about the recognized need for more affordable housing as a way to, you know, sort of address the, you know, the the housing challenges that are being faced in jurisdictions throughout the Bay Area. So boomerang funds have been referenced this evening. And boomerang funds just quickly are funds that that previously went to the former redevelopment agency here in Alameda, the CIC. But with the disillusion of redevelopment now go to the city's general fund. I think all of the council members have heard me say in the past that redevelopment was the second largest source of funding for affordable housing in the state of California. Behind the federal government. When redevelopment went away, that was a huge blow to the production of affordable housing throughout the state and was, as was mentioned earlier and as we heard in Assembly Member Bonds presentation last night, the State has not yet been able to plug that hole in any meaningful way. So therefore, as often happens with big policy issues, local jurisdictions step in and work to kind of address these issues. We have projected that the general fund will receive approximately $16 million in boomerang funds over the next ten years. A number of local jurisdictions, including Alameda County, the city of Oakland, the city of San Leandro, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have all already set aside a percentage of their boomerang funds to be earmarked for affordable housing and staff is asking that council consider giving us direction to move forward with a program that we would then bring back and discuss with council and flesh out details. So I just wanted. To address, to give you direction on that issue tonight. That's one of the recommendations. Yes. So okay. Now, if the council wants to give direction to staff this evening, which is what we're requesting and the council wants to we're staff is looking for as clear and as precise direction as possible so that we then have the ability to go off and craft the necessary legislation and have it really align and be responsive to the the direction that we were given. And that could take some time. So in your packet there is a draft urgency ordinance that would establish a moratorium that's on the way it's drafted. It establishes a 65 day moratorium on rent increases and no cause evictions. The logic or the idea behind that is to give give staff sufficient time to respond to the direction we get this evening to come back to council with with programs and policies that council could act on. If the council were interested in the moratorium, it would require it requires a 4/5 vote and it's a supermajority. It would take effect immediately as drafted. It is a 65 day moratorium that would prohibit rent increases and no cause evictions. Like I said, it would give us time to draft the regulations needed to enact policies for which we received direction on this evening. From staff's perspective, we believe that a moratorium may not be needed if the direction was focused on enhanced mediation or relocation assistance. And then lastly, I just want to recap. I'm sorry, can you clarify that last year? That's interesting. If council wanted to proceed with an enhanced mediation or relocation assistance, could we make that decision tonight? Yes. And when would it be effective? Well, we would what you would do is give us direction, and we would have to go back and try and craft the legislation so that if we came back, for example, at the December 15th Council meeting, you would introduce an ordinance on first reading, second reading January 4th and 30 days later. The ordinance would be effective. All right. So if we had a concern that people were being. Evicted without cause. And we're not receiving this relocation assistance. And our. Do you have that is there. How could you fashion it so that they received relocation assistance? Or we would have to then say that we cannot go forward with a no cause eviction. Or could you have it immediately? So if I understand a moratorium could for 65 days put a moratorium on no cause evictions. And that way you wouldn't need relocation benefits, right. While we were crafting them, because they wouldn't be allowed to do no cause evictions if there was no moratorium. People where we're not, you wouldn't be proposing just cause eviction. You would just be proposing relocation benefits in the event that somebody is evicted further out. Cause so you might not need the moratorium because you're not working towards a No Cause eviction ordinance. You're working towards relocation benefits. But if your goal is to provide relocation assistance to people that are currently being evicted without cause. Far as I can tell, the only way you could do would be the moratorium, because the ordinance would not be effective. If you. Wanted to preclude people from being evicted until the relocation benefits were in place. That's correct. And how many days would it take to have if we had our first reading and then our second reading? If if staff comes back, would staff be in a position to come back at the next council meeting? Now, we couldn't comply with the Sunshine Act, and so we really December 15th would be the earliest and depending on the comprehensive direction we get, it'll either be we predict or project that it would be December 15 or January four. So December 15th could be a first reading. Yes, that's and then January 4th could be second reading. That's correct. Though. And when you do your 65 days from today, where does that take you? January 4th? Once a down the same exact date as the second reading. Thank you. November day. Yes, madam. Just to make sure I heard you correctly. I think I heard you say that if we go down the path of relocation assistance. We don't have to do a temporary 65 day moratorium on rent increases. Did I hear you say that? Well, I'm I'm just saying from staff's staff's recommendations, right. Is that if you were only going to focus on enhanced mediation or relocation benefits, the moratorium is probably not required because you're not looking to put in place a rent control or a no cause eviction ordinance. Okay. And what you're really trying to preclude with the urgency ordinance is people increasing rents and doing no cause evictions ahead of the permanent rent control or no cause eviction going in in place. And if you're not going to go down that road, I may not need the moratorium. I think there's been substantial testimony indicating that. There's widespread community desire to address rent increases, even if on a standalone basis and even if temporary. So I in that vein, and I'm not really seeing relocation assistance as being mutually exclusive with us. I mean, it's a policy decision we have to make. Absolutely. The council could decide to do a moratorium as well as give staff direction about coming back with legislation regarding relocation assistance. That that's absolutely the case. You know, I should just answer the question. And and I think, oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. So the question two questions. We've been faced with the possibility of a moratorium before and we were told 45 days. So can you kind of explain the legal difference between what gets us from 45 to 65 and if it can be extended at all? I'm going to give a really high level answer. And if you want more detail, I'm going to ask Michael. The 45 day ordinances under state law, the 65 days is being proposed pursuant to the city charter. Okay. So different authority. And the other question is. If we do do a moratorium, what happens to people's leases who expire? Or that expire. So if a lease expires and the moratorium included no cause eviction, they would not be able to be evicted for. So they go to a month to month tenancy unless they come to some other agreement. Yes. Okay. During the 65 day period. Amber Ashcroft. So if I understand correctly from the staff report, the one of the main reasons other than giving staff well needed time to craft whatever counsel directs them to do, the one of the principal reasons for doing the moratorium is to protect tenants from those, you know, certainly not the landlords who testified before us today. But I had a sneaking suspicion that anyone who's doing 50% increases probably wasn't going to come here tonight. But to protect people from some sort of reaction to hearing that, oh, this is what they're working on, they're going to come up with a just cause ordinance or enhance the rack. And so I better do whatever I want to do before that goes into effect. So it's a it's essentially a tenant protection measure. That's correct. Thank you. And I have one last slide. And that slide is just to recap the recommendations in the staff report. Our first recommendation is that you receive the Bee report and then you already conducted the public hearings. So we're looking for direction regarding all of the options that I just highlighted, the enhanced mediation, rent stabilization, Jessica's eviction, relocation benefit , composition of the rack, use of boomerang funds. And these are once again, they're not mutually exclusive. And it could be, you know, some all or none. And then depending on the direction that is given, consider passage of an emergency ordinance to protect tenants. If landlords feel like they need to get in and raise rents or evict tenants ahead of any kind of legislation and allow staff to, um, the time it needs to to do its work. I'm. So that concludes the staff presentation. Member Day. Thank you. Miss Potter, if I can ask just one more question. One of the things that I'm also interested in when it comes to a moratorium on rent increases is defining a threshold. Is that because my reading of what staff recommendation is a moratorium outright? So is that correct? Yes. The ordinance as drafted would put a moratorium on any rent increases and no just cause evictions for 65 days. That's a draft ordinance. That ordinance can be modified by the council as it sees fit, and council could adopt a modified ordinance this evening. Thank you. All right. Brody, are you ready to go into the. So it's my understanding staff reports have done that public comment. That's correct. And I would like to add that Vanessa Cooper, executive director of the Housing Authority, is here, Claudia Young from the Housing Authority, who staffs the rent. And Angie Watson, Jim, who's been here from Echo, are also resources. As you enter your deliberations, if you have questions for any or all of us, we are prepared to assist. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So at this point, we're going to continue now with the council. But it deliberation and then make our decision. Member Odie I guess so. I'll go first then. So first of all, I want to thank everyone who came out today. This was a very emotional issue. I mean, the tension between a basic human right and a basic human need of shelter was on display versus the, you know, tension of a property owners to earn a reasonable rate of return from their investment. And some of those property owners, those investments actually, you know, are they're living or are their retirement. So but I think if you if you have to balance and we all have to balance, that's why we're here. You know, we chose to be in this position. I know there was a lot of sympathy out there, but, you know, we asked for this. So we have to balance. And I think when you have a situation where you have people's insecurities about a basic need, whether it be food or shelter, then the scale tilts to that basic need over the need for profit. With that said, you know, I think there are you know, we have to be careful about what we do on this. You know, I saw the staff report and it seems to me, you know, we've been put in this position. One of the speakers talked about it over 40 years. And we've made a political policy decision that we are going to constrain our housing stock. And our voters have, you know, consistently sent people to the council with that philosophy. So good or bad or indifferent, you know, I'm not here to to criticize, but if we're going to make that decision, you know, we have the responsibility to deal with the repercussions of that of those decisions. So that's why we're here today. You know, it's simple supply and demand. You know, I got a C plus in economics, so I'm not going to maybe explain it the best way. But, you know, we have supply constraints, low vacancy rate, housing shortage. What that's going to do is push up price. So we have increased rents. And you saw the numbers. We built 1.49 multifamily units per 1000 population compared to 20.96 multi-family per 1000 population for the Bay Area. So we've put ourselves in this spot and now we have to figure out a way out of it. One of the speakers said we can't build our way out of it. You know, I agree with that. You know, we'll see that political discussion for another day. And, you know, I think also a lot of I heard from tenants the insecurity of housing and the insecurity of having to leave Alameda. And that that's something that, you know, I hear in my day job in Oakland and Alameda and statewide. And it's a national issue. I mean, incomes are not keeping up. You know, incomes not only for low income people, but for the workforce, you know, for the teachers, you know, for the people making 55,000. So while I'm sympathetic to the, you know, desire that property owners make a reasonable rate of return. You know, the real fact is the rest of us are not getting, you know, those increases in our salaries, in our incomes. So that's kind of where, you know, I look at it from a high level view. You know, we have a lot of pressure, downward pressure on wages. And maybe someday we'll we'll take the step of working on increasing those. But we're stuck with what we have now, which is increasing rents. And we saw the slides in the top 20 units, you know, 53% or 54% over the course of the last four years. So that's not something that that's sustainable for our population. But I look at other cities and the mayor correctly pointed out one of the slides, and I say, well, well, what do they do? And you look at places like San Francisco where there's a real strict rent control, and you see this dichotomy where it's either really poor people and really rich people and the folks in the middle are getting squeezed out. So they have a rent control ordinance. Yet the vibrant African-American community in the Fillmore you saw 40 years ago is not there anymore. You see in the mission. And there was big controversy, the ballot measure that that failed yesterday. You see that the Latino population in the mission is also disappearing. So what we are seeing in San Francisco with the strict rent control ordinance of two or three or 1% depending on CPI, is not really solving the problem, which is allowing middle income people to stay in their homes. So that's one. You look at Oakland. Look at Oakland and it's gentrifying faster than, you know, we can see. You know, techies are moving in to West Oakland. You know, Oakland used to be 40% African-American. Now that's dropped 22%. We are losing, you know, our diverse middle class in Oakland. And I fear that they have rent control, too. So if the goal of rent control is to protect the diversity of our city, it's not working in Oakland either. And I look at Berkeley and the same thing. You know, the mayor pointed out they have the highest rental rates of people or units of 50 or higher. So you look at that and you wonder, well, is that been successful? And, you know, before Berkeley did their rent control, you know, there was. Hundreds of African-American property owners. Another gone. Those units were either taken off the market or they were bought out by corporations. Now we heard from mostly land or actually all of our landlords, I believe, were small property owners. They weren't corporate owners. And they all talked about how responsible they are. These are the type of landlords we want to keep in Alameda. So if we do something like Berkeley and we end up losing these quality owners, then I don't think that's going to solve the problem either. So then I look at what type of ordinance might work that that that we could look at. I think we have, you know, two issues. One is we have landlords that are raising rents to over 10% in certain properties or 15% or 20. We've heard some of the numbers. And we have these 30, 60 day no cause evictions that are designed so they can just turn around and rent the unit for $1,000 more a month. So those are the things where I think, you know, if we're going to give direction to council, we should focus. So. This is my starting point, and. Oh, I'm sorry. No, we don't have to. We actually have to. Sunshine Ordinance. Right. So we will need to make a motion to continue pass 11. I can do that at this point. I was going to let you finish your. Well, I. Have probably three more minutes, but. Yeah. So yeah. So at this point though, do we need a motion to continue pass. So I'll move to second. All those in favor of. My. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So. What can we do? And let's look at something that, you know, might not be so extreme but can also have some protection for our tenants. And first of all, I like the idea of, you know, having to offer a lease. You know, I'm not sure if one year is the right length or six months is the right length. But, you know, hopefully my colleagues can kind of weigh in on that one. I strongly in favor of the idea that you get one rent increase per year. I mean, if you're doing every three months or every month, you know that that it has to be once a year. So I look at the San Jose ordinance and the San Jose ordinance. You know, it's arbitration. It's a model of arbitration. So pardon me if I read because I haven't memorized it exactly. But under San Jose's rent control ordinance, rent increases are not subject to a hearing. If they are limited to 8% rent increase in a 12 month period, which is one 8% increase or a 21% increase in a 24 month period, that's one 21% increase in two years. I'm not wedded to those numbers. I think 8% is a is a good number to start at. And I think also, given what we've seen in Alameda over the last year and two, that we consider doing a look back period and saying, well, maybe you get maybe you don't have to go to a hearing if you do 8%. But if you did 25% last year and you want to do 8% this year, then maybe you got to go to a hearing because, you know, cumulatively now that that's a problem. I like the idea of an arbitrator, whether it's the RAC, whether it is a city appointed person, whether it's the city council. I think if there's some. Sharing of that thought with my colleagues. And, you know, I'm willing to talk about that. The problem with that. Yes. If you go to arbitration, then legally it's called rent control. So we are limited to the folks that we can actually help. And it's only, you know, the 70 some percent that are not in single family or townhouses. Oh. I looked at San Jose also has. And when I went to think I think the mayor was also correct in pointing out is that we don't really have the data and I'd like to see ongoing that we that we require landlords to file their rent increases with the city so we could track that data and then we could tell if we are seeing large increases in single family homes, if we're seeing large increases in the top ten buildings. But on the flip side of that. So maybe we'll find out that. Everybody is only doing four or 5% and perhaps this is not necessary. So my thought on that is perhaps we sunset, you know, any type of arbitration ordinance that we put in and that we only let it go for two years. And then we come back and take a look at it because we really don't have all of the data that I think we need to put any permanent arbitration or any permanent rent control ordinance in place. What I'd also like to see and again, my colleagues can can weigh in on that. You know, I think a lot of the complaints we heard from tenants was that they have a corporate landlord. You know, their landlord is an LLC, the owners of Glass Building in Walnut Creek. You know, their landlord is not living upstairs from them or their landlord is not living next door to them. And a lot of the folks that are actually doing good and not behaving badly, you know, our landlords that you can knock on their door, that you know their name, that as one of the landlords said, you can send Christmas cards to. So I think we should consider, you know, exempting buildings of four units or less that the landlord either lives in the building or, you know, lives within 100 feet, you know, in case they're next door. I like the idea of a navigator or an ombudsman on relocation versus just cause, you know, we'll probably going to have a longer discussion on that. I'd like to have staff come back with with some more information on that. The reason I have a problem with relocation is similar to what we saw in San Francisco, is that you're just going to get I call social cleansing. You're going to have. Landline just buying out middle income tenants and re renting and they're just going to pay that out and just have it as a cost of doing business. So if we could find a sweet spot that's, you know, high enough that, you know, it's going to cause a landlord grief if they actually have to pay it, but low enough that all of the tenants aren't going to just grab at it. I think we have to. I don't know what that sweet spot is. Maybe my colleagues have some ideas, maybe staff has some some research. But, you know, I'm open to that. But I really I don't like the idea that, you know, we can just buy out almeida's middle class and ship them to Antioch, you know, for a few thousand dollars. That just that just grates at me right there just cause, again, you know, I think we should be a little more pinpoint and precise in the problem that we're trying to solve. And if the problem we're trying to solve is landlords renting or giving these 30, 60 day notices in order to jack up the rent to a new tenant. And that's what we should focus on. You know, the San Jose ordinance, again, you know, it has if you do this copy of, you have to file a copy of termination notice. But you all have to indicate a signed statement that you're not being you're not evicting the tenant in order to raise the rent. So, I mean, that might be helpful also. And then the other thing about San Jose that I also found interesting was the the timeline on the notice to vacate, you know, depending on the vacancy rate. And we were we were at what, 2.7 or whatever it was, 3%. If you're at a high if you had a low vacancy rate, then if we're not doing just cause, extend the time period. And then if we go back to a higher vacancy rate, you know, we can go back to, you know, 30 or 60 days, but, you know, give people who you are evicting. And if the council does not want to go towards a just cause eviction, you know, I think we should consider extending the notice period. I think you can extend that up to 120 days in San Jose if the vacancy rate is 3% or less so quickly. Just some last few points on the. I hear from a lot of friends that they're afraid to go to Iraq. And I guess, you know, I don't know if I would want to go up there and say I can't afford my rent. You know, I don't make enough money. And your your image is preserved on video saying that for all eternity. So perhaps we consider, you know, privatizing some of some of the Iraq or if there's an arbitration, you know, though, maybe we make it so. Tenants are not afraid to go do it. The moratorium. I think Councilmember Jason brought it up. You know, if if we're thinking of something along the lines of San Jose, where we have an 8%, you know, arbitration cut off, then the moratorium should be on everything over 8%. I mean, I don't think we should have a moratorium for 65 days and say nobody gets no rent increases at all. I mean, I think that's a little extreme. And, you know, we don't have a problem with three, four, five, six, you know, percent rent increases. I think the problem is with the ten, 12, 25. And I'd like to see if we can do a moratorium on, again, you know, be it precise and targeted to what it is that the problem is. And the problem is evicting people, getting them out of the unit and then jacking up the rent to the next to the next tenant. So the cost the cost concerns me. You know, I don't want to have a $4 million bureaucracy in the city like like Berkeley has on the rack. I think we really has a public need to be pay more attention to these individuals if they're going to be even if they just have mediation authority, I I'd be willing to consider, you know, elected body again with the same, you know, two tenants, two landlords, you know, one independent. But again, if my colleagues disagree, then, you know, I'll be in the minority on that one. I think it's important that if we as we go forward and I don't want to do legislation by committee, but if we go forward, that staff engages, you know, both the landlords and the tenants, you know, as we draft that ordinance. And lastly, you know, on the boomerang, I think we should staff should to come back with, you know, different ways that we can find funding for affordable housing, whether it's boomerang, whether it's affordable housing bond. They just passed one in San Francisco yesterday. If we have to join up with, you know, Oakland and San Leandro or the county or, you know, the East Bay communities on the Hill, there's Councilmember Gilani's proposed this in Oakland. And I think it's something that, you know, we could partnership with, you know, after these the infrastructure, finance, revitalization districts. You know, we kind of dismissed that idea when that came up. And the state also put some money in cap and trade as set aside for affordable housing so we can find ways that we can we can access these funds and and use our city as a laboratory of democracy when the governor refuses to act. I'd like to see that happen. Thank you very much. Member Day Thank. You. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to all the residents who came out tonight. If nothing else, the testimony indicates that we are a tale of two cities. One Alameda is of homeowners generally well-off, as the VA study shows, and another Alameda is of renters whose constrained incomes have lagged behind rising rents, especially in the face of excessive rent increases. Without a doubt, it's time to bring our city together again. Over the past several months. The problem I have heard in talking with friends I grew up with here in meeting residents during my office hours. The problem I have heard is that a number of out-of-town landlords have gone off the deep end in charging excessive rent increases. Renters I've been in touch with understand that landlords, especially small mom and pop landlords. Renters understand that landlords need to raise rents now and then people get how the American system works. But the American system is based on fairness. Also, it requires reasonableness on all parts of everyone. Right now, our system is out of kilter. It's unfair that some out-of-town landlord and stick comedians with 20 to 30 and even 15% rent increases. The typical rent increase issued by local mom and pop landlords, if it happens at all in a given year, is somewhere between 4 to 8%. Now it's important to underscore the phrase if it happens at all. This is so because not all mom and pop landlords charge rent increases every year, and when they do, it's typically reasonable . What's interesting is that when you look at the renewed hope document included in the package tonight, persons subject to rent increases responded that typical rent increases. Their typical rent increase was about 5.7%, which is almost the very midpoint between the 4 to 8% range discussed by the local landlords. A number of respondents to renewed hopes for survey also said that they received no rent increase. Which goes back to my point that our Alameda based. Landlords don't always raise rents year in, year out. In researching what constitutes excessive rent increases in Alameda, among other things, I looked to the rent review advisory committee data. And there I found that when renters and single rooms come to the rent review advisory committee, on average it was because of a 10% increase. Renters of two or more rooms went to RC, usually because of the shock of a 20% increase. So the rent review advisory committee data points to the 10% number as a triggering point. I realize some of you are wondering why have a threshold at all and percent or otherwise, why not disallow any rent increases during the 65 day moratorium? But keep this in mind. Our enemy is not the locally based mom and pop landlord. These people have been reasonable fellow. Alameda is doing their part to keep Alameda as one. The mom and pop Alameda is like you. They've played by the rules. And I know many are just as upset as you are about what's happening in our town. So the 65 day moratorium, therefore, in my opinion, should be targeted. It be calibrated on landlords seeking 15 to 20 to 25% rent increases. Those landlords. So for the people who are here tonight and for the people who are watching on TV, I'm reaching out because I need your help. I need you to look long and hard into your cells and think about what I said. On why I think we need to go with a 65 day moratorium. As I laid out. Let the 10% threshold be accumulative as the 12 months prior to the start of the moratorium as well. So that we take into account if someone, for example, raised the rent by 6% this past June, that per this moratorium, they couldn't they can raise the rent no more than 4% more. Or if they already raised the rent by 10% in the past 12 months, then they are not allowed to raise the rent. So let it let the 10% threshold be a cumulative number. Now a number of you will rightly say, but, Tony, if you say no and rent increase is greater than 10%, you would over not. During the moratorium period. Won't those unscrupulous landlords just limit themselves to 9.99% over the next 65 days? I hear you. It's 9.99% is high. Well, at least we, for the moment with a 65 days, has stopped them from charging 15% to 20% to 25%. Is that perfect? No. But we're looking out for renters and small mom and pop landlords who've played fair by the rules while clipping the wings of those who have come to our town to game the system. During the 65 days. This is what I would like. I would like to see the staff focus their attention on relocation assistance tailored to an excessive rent increase threshold discussion for which I'm sure will be rich and robust over the next 35 days. I also want the staff to pursue just cause eviction. And like other council members, I join my fellow colleagues and in my excitement about the boomerang funds and how that could be stimulated to increase the supply of housing. My hope is that the supply would be targeted to moderate income households as well as the elderly. I know many of you who have given so much already, you've given a lot not just in terms of the insufferable rent increases, but to the pain and the family anguish that comes with that. But I'm asking you for your help in making our town a place where renters and small mom and pop landlords know that we have a system of fair play in place for them. And that there will be a new system with rules targeting unfair landlords charging excessive rent increases. Thank you. Okay. Um, I have to go next. All right. Thanks. Off of questions in regards and I'm not. Wasn't quite sure exactly what you would have they thought implement. But you're sticking if you had the moratorium right after the moratorium. But moving on with. But my concern is. I see this as a regional issue. In regards to the we're also an island, but we are on the island. Right. We have a lot of different things we've tried to balance at this point, though. That that aside. The the the excessive that I want to call excessive rent increases have to be addressed. The. No fault evictions have to be addressed. And so what I want to ask is, in regards to Iraq, we currently have. So it's on the tenant to file rack and come to us. Could could we make could we make it so that if if a landlord wants to have an increase above a certain amount, that then it's on the landlord and I act. I would consider the 8%, I believe number three. That's the number we used. And at that point, if it comes to when the landlord comes to rack. If the. If Iraq makes a decision that they don't, they know that one side doesn't appreciate and then they appeal it to council. Can it be binding? Or all. Or does it still this Costa Hawkins apply to that sort of process? Michael Roush again from the city attorney's office. If the if the ordinance redrafted where there would be a a binding decision that would put a certain percentage on it that that would be subject to cost to Hopkins because essentially you're imposing a rent control situation. And if you if that were part of your the council direction in the ordinance, you would then also have to have a procedure in place that would allow a a landlord to seek an amount above that percentage in order to demonstrate to get a fair return on investment. All right. So we have landlords that when we've heard this, that they have legitimate. Legitimate costs. So then they could come to RAC and they could explain why they need to increase whatever, whatever amount that it would be for them to increase above the 8% and have it on the landlord to come to rack and say, we have these costs and thus we we need to increase it, whatever the percentages. And that could then be mediated. So I would be agreeable to making it, but shifting the burden, if you will, to the landlord have it. So that and the percentage I have said 8%. I don't. So far that's you know I in November remember said that then when it comes to rack. It could be so it could be binding or all of them that fall under it that it could apply to and the ones that don't apply to. Then what happens? Right. So what happens to those? Okay. So what I think would happen actually and I don't. So I think then we would be able to start accumulating real data because for a landlord to do an increase above, I would say 8%, they would have to come back. Otherwise, I think then it could be null and void if they didn't go through the process. So they would have to come through Iraq and then we would accumulate data. So we would actually know who is who is increasing above the 8%. And that's how we would find out who these landlords are. And then if in fact that happens, then we could think about a next step. So my preference would be to continue to strengthen Iraq. And based upon every landlord that showed up today and spoke. It suggests that we would not have any landlords come down here and say anything that would be these these other landlords. They would have to come down if they wanted to do it, and then we would know who they are. And I would want it actually, so that it's an owner, not a property manager that comes down. In regards to a moratorium, I'm fine with a moratorium that is for rents above 8%. But it would be and with the average of I think it's actually I'd like to go back at least two years of that if. If they've had if, you know, whatever rent increase they want to do makes it more than 8% on average for the last two years. As opposed to just one year because we have had that, you know, I would be fine with that. And then we have this other phenomenon happening in regards to new costs, parking fees, storage dog fees, all those. I would. Could we include those in regards to rent and that be treated as part of the percentage? If so, any new costs that are being added, I would want those, if possible, to be part of the 8%. Whatever, whatever it is, if it's a new cost to the tenant. In regards to the no fault evictions. I would want that to come through RAC. And again, I, I, I think that I would allow the mediation process. And that could be binding. Right on, everybody. The appeal could be binding on all, and there's no cost to Hawkins on that. So I would want it to go to Rack. And then the AP and I would and I want it to be so that if the landlord wants to. Do any an eviction for anyone that's current on their rent. But then they would have to file to go to Iraq to get that permission. And otherwise it would be null and void. And if they come and they and they file and they go through the process and then they can explain what's happening. Or I can make the decision. But I would not make that be a final decision. I would have it so that then to make it binding. If someone wants to appeal it, then they could appeal. I mean, so if anyone wanted to challenge it, it could be binding at the rank level. If if either side wanted to appeal it, then it would be appealable up to council. My preference would be to and continue to give back as much, you know, strengthen Iraq, continue to do what we've been doing, however, shift the the burden on the landlords for these things that we think are our good landlords are not doing anyway. So we want to see them. This. And then the and then the landlords that are doing these things would have to come through Iraq and then we would see them and make it be the property owner and not the property manager. Relocation assistance if there's a. An eviction for without cause I. For instance, they want to sell. And that's something I think that is happening right now or moving back into their own home. I would like to come up with some. Dollar actually a percentage based upon the rent that they're paying. Of what would be paid. And it could be a formula. Or it could. Or it could. Be. So it could be a form of that includes the number of years that your tenant's been in the home and. The amount of rent that's been paid. It could also go through Iraq and have Iraq decide what they think is fair and be appealable to counsel. But but I do. But if it's without cause, I think that would address some of these issues. I mean, if it's an eviction. Yeah. Cause. Right. And then that would kick in. I think if there's any other issues. So. Okay. And then the composition. I would keep it the same way. To landlords, to renters. One homeowner and continue with the same process that we've had. I don't see the composition of Iraq being an issue. I swear. Thank you. I think we've all understand the fact that Alameda residents have been experiencing excessive rents and these 30, 60 day terminations of tenancy. And that has been on the upswing. What we put into effect on October 1st, I'd like to see it given a chance to work. As far as mediating rent increases. And I do see that there's a hole. And I'd like to add to the ranks role and roles and responsibilities to include a no fault 3060 day tenancy terminations. And in that mediation process to incorporate the. The. Basically the penalty for this is welfare. And I know we've had a council member already mentioned this kind of a bailout, but I'd like to have the mediation process have that as an option. I think that's where where it could fit in nicely in the existing ordinance. And that would be a very, I think, a fairly streamlined activity for staff to put together so that we can have something ready in a quick period of time. The second component that I'm looking at is trying to expand affordable housing without overbuilding. And one of the things I'd like to see happen is that we really push the envelope on our amnesty program for illegal units, illegal residential units, and except for health and safety code violations, we give amnesty in exchange for a deed restricted, affordable unit, just like we do to large developers. That ordinance or code change is going to take a little bit more time. So within the envelope of a of a moratorium, which I agree with people who showed up here, even if it's just the people who showed up here told their story, they need relief. And we can if you look at 65 days now, I think it should be unconditional. And the only condition that should be in our moratorium ordinance is that if some landlord has a extraordinary circumstance, they can appeal it out and ask for an exemption to the ordinance. But I think if we tie a percentage because an 8% on top of it, a higher percentage granted earlier in the year could break somebody's back. And I think that's the rationale for if a more to a moratorium is meant as a cooling off period, it also sends a signal that we're serious about this and that we're moving in increments. I wouldn't hold the staff to providing this amnesty enhancement incentive to within the envelope of of the moratorium 65 days. Because I think that one has to be looked at very carefully with some very clear criteria for what we allow. But I think that one, in the long run is the way to grow affordable housing stock here. And it actually gives smaller owners the same benefit that we've given to large developers. And then because this is a regional issue. And some of this some of the pressures that we're feeling are are not our own. They may have been our own doing measure a, but some of the pressures that are on every anyone who makes a mid-range salary these days are not our own doing. I would like to see additional affordable housing built and we had in our legislation a report up our efforts to increase tax credits. And I think we need to extend that. As I mentioned last night, to the federal level. But even that kind of works around the edge of who benefits directly. And I'd like us as a council to talk to our instruct our lobbyists to contact our representative both on the federal and state level. To explore a tax deduction for rent paid. And that gives that gives the same benefit that those who hold the mortgage have someone who's in the position they have to rent. I mean, it's a matter of fairness because. And and I know people have rolled their eyes on this, say it'll never happen. Well, we're guaranteed that it will never happen if we don't start the process. So I think through the League of California Cities, it's got to be a full court press and it's got to be concurrent with what we're doing here. So that's what I would like to see. And then as we as we can generate the Alameda experience through our park, so it should be monitored. And as far as the whatever we put into ordinance, if we're talking about a sunset, I'd rather see a reevaluation date so that the process continues while we reevaluate, it doesn't stop . So I think if we're going to sunset anything, it it's not sunset reevaluated. And the burden is on us to to decide whether to a successor counsels me. Someone else takes my place to look at how how this is going. And, um, but it continues to operate until it's either changed, modified or kept or affirmed in place. As far as the rack as it's constituted now, I'm all for keeping it the way it is now. And I would actually like to have some really good training for new members and existing members that reflect what we heard tonight on both sides of the coin. As far as boomerang funds come in. My understanding is if the math is right, it's $1.6 million a year projected. I think we need to check where that money is going in next year's budget. And then we make a decision based on on weighing what benefit $1.6 million would give us to alleviate this problem versus the benefit that was decided on when we approved the budget last June. Thank you. Before you continue, so what was your proposal in regards to rent increases? Did you want to keep going through Iraq? Yes. Leave the rack as we did on October 1st or rent as it was. Okay. And add to it. Modify that ordinance to include. The 30 to 60 day termination of tenancy. Not for. All right. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank everyone who's still here in the audience and maybe some are still watching on television. But everyone who came out tonight for all of you meeting with me, talking with me on the phone, your emails, your letters, our hardworking city staff, you've done a lot of work on this issue in the last several months. So I want to start with what I looked at as the overarching goal. Why? Why are we here tonight? Why did council add yet another meeting to our fairly crowded schedule? There are two paragraphs in the draft urgency ordinance that is a part of this packet that answered that question for me and I will read them quickly. Between 2020 13, the median household income for those who rent in Alameda increased by 29%, which has not kept pace with rising rents that increased by 54% over the same 13 year period and has created a growing affordability gap. And Councilmember De Saag called it a tale of two cities between incomes and rents. And given the increased housing cost burden faced by many Alameda residents, excessive rental increases threaten the public health, safety and welfare of Alameda residents, including seniors. This is a growing segment of our rental population those on fixed incomes, those with very low, low and moderate income levels, and those with other special needs. To the extent that such persons may be forced to choose between paying rent and providing food, clothing and medical care for themselves and their families. As a councilmember, and I think I speak for all of us up here, we have a responsibility to our constituents, all of our constituents. I want to hasten to say, though, that I don't want to see landlords and tenants pitted against each other. We will come to the most successful, constructive, productive resolution of this issue that is facing us if we work together. And I think there's room at the table as we move forward to craft the ordinance to bring the landlords and the tenants voices into that process. But I we still have a responsibility to seek ways to address the needs of each of these groups. We don't favor one over the other, starting with the end in mind. What do I want to see? This special meeting and all the preparation that went into it achieve three things. I have three goals. Number one, I want to provide renters a measure of residential security. We've we've heard that term used that people live in fear of another rent increase that might just drive them out of that home, out of this town. A rent stabilization ordinance that enables landlords to obtain fair returns on their rental properties while ensuring that tenants have the certainty that their rents will not increase more than a certain amount per year. And it should be completely obvious that only one rent increase a year. I'm almost certain that we need to say that, but we have had information from ranchers who have gotten more than one increase in a year. And number two, I want to see that we maintain quality rental housing stock and also increase the quantity. So this means that property owners must earn a reasonable return on their investment to allow them to maintain Almeida's aging rental stock. This also means that the City Council needs to look seriously at adding more housing stock, especially affordable and multifamily units, while aggressively pursuing ways to address the traffic. Because that's always what we hear when we talk about more building. But it's something this council has to face. And then the last goal and I am actually lifting this from a letter that I got from a small rental property owner who talked about wanting to maintain the city's reputation as a safe and fair arena in which to live and do business. So a fair arena, fair to housing providers, the decent housing providers, not the ones who would gouge their tenants. And also to assure this fairness to all, I would propose that whatever mechanisms this council decides to put into motion tonight be brought back to the Council for a review. Yeah, the term sunset implies to me that, you know, the sun goes down, it ends. Tax measures have sunset. This would be. A review one year from now, and I wouldn't wait two years because this is something we're trying for the first time. I want to see how it works. We we need to gather data, but we also need to check in and see were there unintended consequences? Is something working better? Something not working so well. But a year from now to come back, hopefully staff wouldn't have to put quite so much time and effort into gathering the data that will be collected in the course of this year. Let me talk briefly about the RAC. What, because it's one of the things we're asked to comment on. I did attend the RAC meeting this past Monday. It was my first opportunity to do so. I challenged a number of them. But there hasn't been Iraq meeting since June because they kept getting pulled from the calendar for various reasons. Here are my concerns. First of all, when we heard testimony tonight from tenants who are afraid to even ask their landlords to make basic needed, necessary repairs because they are so afraid that the rent is going to be raised, there was a stairway that needed repair. The tenant asked for it. She got a $300 rent increase. One tenant told us that she tries to, I'm paraphrasing, but keep a low profile, kind of keep under the radar. How do we realistically expect those tenants living in those circumstances to come before the RAC to face that landlord and say, hey, you know, this is what I want you to do or not do or do differently when at the end of the day, all the RAC can do is say, you know, we really suggest that you do this. And I have to just comment on the RAC and I appreciate Karen Miller sitting there in the front row and she emailed me after the the RAC meeting because this is Alameda and people know what I've done before. I walk out the door and she said, okay, I heard you went to the RAC meeting, but I heard it wasn't a full complement of the board. And you're right, it wasn't. Only three board members were there and two of them, I think maybe it was their first time or they were very new. And I'm someone who works part time as an arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau. I went through extensive training and still have to do refresher training every year. So the first thing is we've got to give our people that have this serious responsibility the the tools to be able to do it effectively. I know we had some long serving RAC members, but we need to equip these folks because we won't adequately serve our community without that. Secondly, we got to get the hearing out of this room. I'm sorry, having these people, it was like shuttling. They would walk up to the podium, the landlord, and she'd say Her piece or the tenant go sit down, Lander goes, have it. When they were going back and forth, at one point they asked, Could we just stand here together? And they were told, No, no, we never allow that. It's a mediation, for crying out loud. You sit around a table, you look at each other, you've got papers, you spread them out. Anyway, I've done an email to staff. They will pass it on. But the more really the most serious thing you have to think about is when when the RAC has no teeth, there are people who are not going to risk without unless we put some other protections in place. There are people who are that's just too great a risk. They don't want to they don't want to rock the boat. So what I would say and then this is the other thing, I've had a number of conversations with very responsible landlords who are represented in this room who were really trying to talk me out of doing anything besides just letting the RAC take their course. And I would say, But so-and-so, you tell me it's not you and it's not the mom and pop landlords doing these egregious things. Why do you think that someone who is and I have the data to show imposing a 30% of 50%, a 20% rent increase is going to come before a body that has no teeth, no power to to impose that that remedy and say. Oh, no, I. You want me to lower the rent? I happen to, like, 20%. I'm not budging. Why would they do anything different? And the answer that came back was public shaming. I'm sorry. I think that, you know, for people in those situations, the almighty dollar speaks louder. So there's a place for the rack. But we have to we have to do more or we're putting our tenants are vulnerable tenants at risk. So what I would like to see is for a staff to work on some form of rent stabilization. I know I've also looked at the San Jose ordinance. I will say that I've heard it said that San Jose's looking at reducing that 8% cap that that might have come about at one time when the Consumer Price Index or the cost of living index really was 8%. But the reason that I might be okay with starting out with an 8% cap is that for those landlords and a lot of them are small mom and pop operators who really have tried to keep the tenant burden down, who have gone several years without doing a rent increase . But the building's getting older. If we were too drastic in limiting what they could increase, they may not be able to keep up that housing stock. So for the first year, if my colleagues agree, I could live with 8%. It's happening in San Jose right now. But what I would say, though, is whatever we decide to do and direct staff to do, we're not a big city. We're not San Jose. We don't have that kind of staff and bandwidth and budget. And so we need to keep our remedies, especially as we start out simple, streamlined. Let's keep our administrative costs low. Although I am intrigued by the idea of registration fees for landlords that they would register, they pay a fee. That fee goes to funding a program that oversees whatever it is we're going to propose. And that's also a way to assure that we're keeping good records going forward. I and again, only one rent increase per year and I want to see vacancy decontrol so that a rent is stabilized while the particular tenant resides in the unit . But when the unit is vacated, the landlord can rent at market rate. And again, this goes to the fairness to both sides. Um, I do want to see a just cause eviction statute. I think that's a pretty big burden to hand to the the rack. And I'm not sure that I want to see council come and decide whether this reason was really a good one. I think you put it in an ordinance, it's spelled out, it's not rocket science because a number of other jurisdictions do it. There's there's reasons. And then for the no fault evictions, I would also want a mechanism to verify that whatever you said, okay. You said that you're moving this family member in. You said that your you know, whatever the reason is, there has to be a way to go back and verify that that happened and there has to be a penalty if the landlord didn't do what they say they would do. And and I do I do believe in relocation assistance, notwithstanding my colleague's concern that it would be social engineering or whatever the term was. I think that there are landlords who will just need to have a unit vacated, and the tenant should not then bear the burden of relocation costs that the moving costs, the deposit that you have to put down on a new and a new unit. So I think that's something that I want to see staff bring back to us. And I actually would be hesitant to limit these a rent stabilization ordinance or to omit buildings of four or less units where the landlord lives there. I think that we just you know, we do this for all of our renters and and even in our mom and pop landlords, there just might be a a bad apple somewhere . So I just and again, we apply these things equally and evenly across the boards. My only concern about requiring that the property owner and not the manager be present is some properties are owned by a corporation. We don't as we saw from the the information in the report, we don't have many out of state landlords, but if it's a corporation, they're going to send a they're going to send a representative. But again, I don't care if they send Santa Clause if. They sit there and the rack tells them what they think they should do, but they don't want to do it. End of story. So anyway, again, thank you to everyone. And then just finally and lastly to staff. And I know it sounds cumbersome that I do think we will craft the best ordinances and remedies if you can pull in the voices of the landlord community and the tenant community or vetted by them so that we make sure we're not just imposing on people. But again, thank you to everyone for your time and effort over these months. As I think the vice mayor and I was saying, everyone's going to leave and happy with something that we did. But what I hope to be most proud of this council for doing is actually taking action for now. It's so easy to slide in to say this is a regional problem. We didn't create this. But you know what? We've got 76,000 people that we answer to, and so we have the opportunity to do something. It's time to step up to the plate now. So let's get going. Thank you. Thank you. All right. At this point, I don't know if. We should go down the list and see where we are, where all of us are. I don't think we have a consensus. I don't think we are. On the moratorium. I thought I heard a consensus on. Yes, cause eviction. Do you want to use the last slide? Least as a list of possible. So this is on page 18 of the staff report, the recommendations. So actually I'd like to go back and remember de SAC, if you could clarify. When were you supportive of the current RAC for rent increases or what was your position on rent increases. For the more for purposes of the moratorium? For purposes of. Policy? Of policy? Well, my my focus is on dealing with what I call excessive rent increases through a relocation assistant assistance program. Because that's what I heard people are concerned about. I'm sorry. People. My concern is about relocation assistance to deal with excessive rent increases, because I think that will begin to cool the market. And I think the policy discussion is what's the triggering threshold? You know. Everything that I've collected indicates that 10% is a reasonable triggering threshold. I think members of the community have indicated or members of the council are looking at something south of that, an 8%. You know, staff can come back and we'll work it out in conjunction with the community renters and the small landlords and any other affected stakeholder. I think my suggestion is not to say what the threshold is tonight, but that there ought to be a threshold with regard to relocation assistance. So then do you support Barack? Oh, yeah. You know, I would have the RAC be the one who would go through that process because as indicated in the report that I put up, put together, one of the things I want to do is give the power of RAC to determine the final relocation amount, whatever the formula is, you know, rely on staff or I've seen models like the Glendale Richmond model. But, you know, maybe there are better ways. Some people say percentage or whatever. But I would like the RAC then to also weigh in. And if it's appeal to council, then then so be it. Okay. So we actually might have some sort of census, I think at least. And the. Three. Of us go on emotion. Well, what are we talking about? What are we talking about? Is that the relocation assistance being. A one tool? Well, I thought it was for. If we're. Okay. Help me understand, Mr. Desai, if we're going to limit. Rent increases to a certain percentage, then doesn't that removes the risk of excessive. Oh, that's because I'm focusing simply on I'm not I'm not working within the rent stabilization or the rent control model. I'm working within the relocation assist because there were five models that were put out there. The mediation model, rent control rent stabilization model, just cause eviction and rental financial relocation assistance. I like I like the last two models and I'm open to the first model. Oh. Vice Mayor. Madam Mayor, on the what I understand what Councilmember de Stokes driving at is. What I would fit into a direction. Two staff who. RFI The Rent Review Advisory Committee Ordinance to include. The 30 to 60 day no cause termination of tendance tendency with the authority of Iraq to assign. Relocation assistance or a tenant that may be displaced by this process? In this process. According to a formula that staff devise. True. But the one trigger event in terms of for me and the other councilmembers that might have might not agree, but one trigger event for relocation assistance is, you know, a certain threshold. If there is if a landlord is proposing to increase rents by 10% or more than the the relocation assistance process. It's the same. Person leaves. After the person who is. You know. Is terminally ill during. That during the process. During the. Yeah there the. Okay. Let's say on January 1st, a tenant gets a notice that her or his rent is going to increase by 25%. The tenant then goes to the rent review advisory board and a exercise. Understand you understand what you're going. To do. So. But but let's be clear. I understand that there's policy discussions as to what is the right triggering event. I'll leave it at that. So. There's also policy discussions and if that's the only thing we want to do. I mean, if if if we're just saying, you know, we should have just caused and be we should have relocation, it still doesn't solve the problem. And I agree with you that it's just it's just two things. I mean, I think it has to be a component that we discuss. And, you know, I'm not quite add just cause yet, but, you know, maybe we come back and discuss things. But, you know, without any any type of finality or, you know, arbitration where there's a decision one way or the other, you know, it's still all voluntary. So, I mean, we're still not giving any teeth and we're still not providing any protections. I mean, it's bad enough we're not going to be able to protect the 20 some percent that live in single family homes. But now we're basically saying, you know, we don't want to have, you know, any protections except, you know, the right process. And we still want to keep that advisory. We don't want to make it binding. And that's kind of where where I'm I'm struggling. Let me address that question this way. In 2004, when we went through the Harbor Island mass eviction process, we the city of council Beverly was the mayor, I believe Frank and myself. Barbara and Barbara, her okay. And Barbara Kerr when we went through the process to deal with a mass eviction of over 400 families from Harbor Island, we went to and we fought for relocation assistance. Unfortunately, the amount that we got was quite paltry. As part of that fight, we also went to the local courts, the state courts, and it was actually Judge William Alsup, who was the judge who presided over it. At the end of the day, Judge Alsup said, okay, you know what, 15 group, the Florida group who was kicking everyone out has met whatever burden that they had to meet. So the tenants who are at Harbor Island and believe we had tenants here that night. And as a council member, I had to say that, you know what, unfortunately, this is America. Things like that happen. We're going to try as we're going to fight as hard as we can. We're going to provide relocations to cool the market as we can. And we're going to provide the relocation, hopefully is as high as it is it can be. And the other day, the property owner, if it's her or his property, and they want to go a different way as a council member. We've got to turn to the residents here and tell them the way that our system works. It's not a perfect system, but at least we can give some kind of some kind of relocation assistance as families go through this kind of a painful, painful experience. You know, I dealt with that back in 2004. I had to say to the families there that, okay, we tried our best, but it is time to move. But now it's possible that we're in the same situation. But now we can we can write that by creating a new ordinance that gives a measure of relief through some kind of financial relocation assistance that wasn't there years ago. Ms. It sounds like you would not be agreeable to a binding decision. A binding. Binding decision? What's that mean? So that's. Trying to give the rack some teeth. And that's what I. Was asked earlier. The binding. Yeah. If we made RAC binding. And so my, my idea of having it be if a landlord wants to increase, make an increase above 8% or higher, then have the landlord come and decide at some point, you know, come to council or it can be binding at the RAC. I would actually like it to come to council if it's going to be binding because we are the true elected officials. But then and then it would only be binding. It's my understanding on the homes that are not. Single family homes. Anything that's not exempted from cost to Hawkins, but it could be binding on those. And then and we have our rack that is made up of two landlords, two renters and a homeowner. You get this in there. Then it comes to us. I know council member Ashcraft can say something real quick, but if I can answer that real quickly, my when I hear you say binding with regard to how I'm laying it out, this this is how to me what mean, what binding means. And it gets hit with a rent notice of 20% or more and it goes to the rack review process and says, Hey you. The city of Alameda and the RAC have an ordinance in place that says that I am eligible for some form of relocation assistance. Rent Review Advisor Board. Brings the. The property owner and the tenant because that's our current. Now current. What's a process they molded over and then it went if the rent review advisory board says, well, we're going to give you what is 100% of the formula, and let's just say hypothetically, it turns out to be $5,000, $1,000 plus two months worth of rent, which is the Glendale model. Let's say the rent review board says you're relocation assistance, because as these guys don't want to go below 10%, they want to stick out their original 25%. You, the tenant, your relocation assistance is $5,000. In that sense, to me, that's binding. Got it. All right. Member Ashcroft. So I would favor an approach that actually gives the tenants protection from that 20 to 30% increase. And this is why the figure 8% actually seems reasonable to me. I didn't just pull it out of thin air or off my table with the way that these cities are doing. When I met with various landlords and landlords representatives, I hounded them to tell me what kind of increase do you need reasonably to make in your rents each year? So you're you're paying your expenses. We get that the economy fluctuates. You need to have to be building a nest egg that reserve for the rainy day. If it's an LLC, a limited liability corporation, and some of them are including some of our locals, there's profits that are distributed. But I mean, you distribute profits, but you still hold back your reserve. And they actually gave me data and nobody had a figure that was two figures. They didn't even get to 8%, quite frankly. So I it seems to me that I don't want to do something that is somehow protecting those landlords who did make the 20 and 30% increases, because I think we have to at least make a good faith effort to help tenants stay here. I mean, they they get that rents go up, they can absorb something, maybe, maybe not some on the fixed incomes, but 20 to 30%. I just feel like that's not doing enough to protect tenants. It's buying them out, buying them off, sending them wherever they can go with that $5,000. I think we need to do more to protect them from what I would consider an egregious rent increase. So let me follow up for clarification, though, which you're proposing that would not apply to all units? Correct. You would have the cost to Hawkins that only apply. It would be subject to cost to Hawkins. It would be subject to cost to Harkins. Here's Mr. Rausch. Well, I think part of the difficulty is, on one hand, we're talking about relocation assistance, and on the other hand, we're talking about a percentage increase and different rules apply to those two different things. So. You can if you're talking about relocation assistance, you don't have to worry about the cost. The Hawkins issue when you're talking about percentage increases, then. Then you do have to be concerned about that. So we're kind of jumping back and forth. That's understandable. But but we need to keep those concepts separate. Thank you for that reminder. You're right. And so I just so if we are trying to somehow skate around Costa Hawkins, I stop and remember that 25% of our renters are in single family housing. Is that what it was? It was 72 or something. But anyway, I think maybe the solutions are not mutually exclusive. They're not they're just simply two different models. And I think the way for me to to. Addressed this issue is basically to say this. As incredibly awful it is for families to be subject to 15 to 20 to 25% increases, as incredibly awful as that is. And that happens in Alameda. This is the American system. So what we need to do is we need to soften it by providing relocation assistance. Now for others, may be the way to soften it is by stopping anything above 8%. There's so there's a difference in the models. I get it. I wanted to go in regards to what you're seeking. If if a landlord wants to or he has costs, then they can go to rack. If they have costs, if they have costs, you know, a new roof or whatnot. But we saw in this in San Jose, then they go to some board and they can get permission for that. Yep. That's the mechanism that you can use that the a threshold number say 8%. And if a landlord could come with showing and this is where probably I would actually favor staff member or some sort of that simply because it gets into a lot of financial data and the landlord has to come forth with the forward with them data that shows I'm doing these repairs and it's amortized over these years and, and this is why I need to increase it this much because they don't, you know, they're not going to burden the tenant with the cost of the new roof all in one year. But you amortize it over however many years, you amortize a new roof. So I think some of that gets a little beyond the scope of of the the rack. But I think that with the additional rental, the registration fees that we could find, either somebody who's already in it's on staff or the housing authority. I think it can be it can be done. So for as far as the additional costs, Mayor, that one, I would yes, there should be a process whereby a landlord who needs to who wants to make a showing of the need for more than the threshold increase can come before some entity. But I wouldn't think that one should be the rack. So would you have a need for Iraq? But I have a need for Iraq. Well, I think that. For. That's a good question. Because if it's. Well, what I'm hearing is you would not. And that's why I'm out. And, you know, which is. Different from the way I would arrive at that may turn out to be, I think in some ways the same. But I would go through a mediation process and as opposed to just. Saying We're not doing Iraq anymore. We're going to. I have an 8% or. I think given the 90 speakers we heard and actually I didn't do the tally, but maybe 50% renters. 50% landlords, I don't know. I would have to say that for a variety of reasons. The process the process wasn't working. And that's nothing against the the volunteers who've served know very faithfully on the rack. But there are other forces in play that are keeping people from getting there. That even attaching the notice of the existence of the rack to your rental increase are not going to address if we don't do something as a council. So I but I, as we were as I was listening to the presentation, that same question was going through my mind. And so at this point, I'm going to say I'm not sure, but I would I am intrigued by Councilmember de Thug's relocation assistance over certain percentages of increases because that would address the properties that don't fall within Costa Hawkins. But I still for the other 70 to 74%, I think we need to protect them from egregious rent increases. And for the properties that don't fall within Costa Hawkins, which you won't rack or you would do is wrong for those people to. You know, that's that's a question that I think I would probably back into when I see what all the other remedies we might be willing to put in place are. His right now is currently okay. And the other thing I'm just going to say, and I said this at the I think at previous council meeting, I actually would like to see the composition of the RAC changed slightly. I'm fine with two rent or representatives. I'm fine with two representatives of income, property owners or managers. I don't think that that fifth person member needs to also be a property owner because again, this is a body that's meant to oversee and make decisions about rents that people are being charged. What if we got a business owner or somebody who was was chosen for that reason? Just because here's the other thing that happened. It just depends on who shows up that night. There could be a quorum, but it could be all three of your property owners because three out of five is is a quorum. So anyway and right now, without some more training to really handle these kinds of media issues we're talking about, I wouldn't feel confident based on what I saw Monday night, and I wouldn't. All right. MEMBER Audie. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I want to go back to one you know, one thing. You know, under the the San Jose model that I was advocating, I would still think we should still have a rack process for those under that 8%. And we could still have mediation if somebody thinks that 8% is, you know, 5% is too much. And of course, we'd have to have some option for the the single family owners, because what I've been hearing is there's a lot of issues with single family homes being, you know, evicted. But this is Mr. Rushton. San Francisco had a a relocation. Expense hike that just got kicked out by the courts. Can you kind of describe that a little? And then I want to comment. On the Ellis act was. Well, just let him. I'm going somewhat from memory on it. I, I think that it had to do with the fact that the relocation benefits were set so high that the court found that to be confiscatory. In other words, it wasn't. Most of the ones that I've seen, that's usually like, you know, one or two times the rent plus maybe $1,000 . And my recollection is that the one in San Francisco was like ten times that amount. So it was like 36 or $40,000. And the court said there's really no reasonable relationship between that relocation benefit and and moving out that it was really just punitive and confiscatory. And I think that's why the the court and I think was the superior court invalidated it. Okay. Thank you. So I still have a real visceral reaction to this this buyout, because if the issue we're trying to solve is, you know, helping tenants feel secure in their homes, helping tenants that have lived in Alameda for a long time. Stay in Alameda. Then putting a value on their tenancy and allowing them to get bought out is not going to solve the problem. In fact, I think it's going to exacerbate the issue because we're going to give an easy way for someone to be, you know, kicked out, basically told, we don't want you here anymore in Alameda . You need to go find housing somewhere else. Here's your 30 $500. Go off and do it. And then what's the result? The result is going to be a they don't get protection from a large rent increase because we're telling them to leave so that person is gone, done, and then B, someone else is going to move into that unit and they are going to get market rate, which is, you know, could be ten, 15, 30, 40% higher. So I, I still I have a visceral reaction. I think it's social cleansing. We're just telling people that can't afford to live here, that have lived here for a long time. We don't want you here. Take some money. Get the heck out of here. And I just have a big problem with that. And that's not the way I see it. I see a relocation assistance, two month rent plus $1,000, which is what's being for Richmond and for Glendale. I see it as a mechanism that allows families who unfortunately have to go through a very painful decision, and it's a mechanism that assist them through that process. It's also a mechanism to send a message to the property owners. It's tailored to the property owners who are charging excessive rent increases because that's ultimately the difference here. The difference here is how we define what the problem is and from there flows. What are the solutions? To me, the problem is dealing with out of town landlords charging excessive rents. In that vein. Once you define the problem that way, then you tailor your your solutions to that. And and I feel like, you know, I can't I think I've said enough. But you define the problem as helping families. I get it. I get it. You know, then you have to have this greater, you know, rent stabilization rent control program in place to help to make that happen. But I believe that at the end of the day. That the amount of rent increases that are happening as as as unfortunate and as widespread as they are, that the relocation assistance is one way to begin to cool the market and make those charging 15%, 20% rent to think otherwise. That's that's my theory going into this. But I think we could in a year already accepting the fact that, you know, somebody is in a bad spot and they're being forced to move. I mean, we could take steps to not even put them in that spot by limiting the amount of increase to a number, whether it's 8%, whether it's 10%, what or whatever, that a landlord has to demonstrate that, you know, they're entitled to that large increase. Or, you know, we could say, you know, we're not going to do 30, 60 day notices for no cause. So we don't put the tenant in that space a year already. In my in my opinion, you know, just conceding that this person has to go and I'd like to find a way to stop putting them in the position where they have to face having to go and have to face looking for a new place and needing a relocation expenses. And I still disagree economically. And, you know, maybe you're smarter than me on this, but if you kick people out. And you're going to be able to charge market rents. And I don't see how that cools off the rental market. Because it makes landlords think twice about having to do that because suddenly they realize that there is an additional cost that they have to think about. But if you're if you're 34. Real quick, if it's 3500, say, 3600, 300 a month for a year, and you could re rent the place for 600 more a month, you know, then. Now I'm going to take the 3600 and kick the person out and I still make 3600. You know, just. So. All right. So I appreciate that. Member Ashcroft. Thank you, Mayor. I want to address both of my colleagues on that side of the dais. So. So, Councilmember Odie, we have a situation with Costa Hawkins where we're not going to be able to limit the percentage rent increase on a single family home. So that tenant gets that 25, 30% rent increase you and it's an evicted it a constructive eviction for all intents and purposes, because they can't afford to stay here. You would be comfortable with saying you're going to walk away empty handed because to do otherwise would be what is it that you call it, social cleansing. That would be okay. So just hold that thought. And then Councilmember de thug. It seems like you're going out of your way to protect those egregious landlords that we've heard so much about that are making higher percentage increases than our local folks even say is necessary. And I mean, if I were sitting in their seats, I think I would feel somewhat offended that I'm not a part of the problem. We thought this was going to be about targeting and going after the ones who are causing the problem. And if I understood a large amount of what we were hearing about when we definitely heard about some no cause evictions, but mostly what I heard tonight was people who were getting these rent increases and didn't know how they were going to be able to deal with them. My first responsibility is to do the best that I can or the residents in Alameda, whether they're renters or their homeowners or businesspeople. And in performing my responsibility, I have to look at the different policy options and I have to look at the facts as they are. We do live in a system where unfortunately prices now and then get incredibly high and for services as important as housing, it happens. We have differences of policy opinions or some. And I get it. I understand, you know, some you know, you want to pursue rent stabilization and rent control. I get it. I you know, it it does put it into play. It does help out families. I don't disagree with that. But I do also think, though, that if we pursued the rent. Assistance path at. That would also be a way to help out families and also to cool the market down. We just have differences of opinion. So we have five people up here. I actually think at least three of us, if not four of us, may be very close. In answering that question, though. First, briefly. I'd actually like to try to focus on coming up with a consensus. That because that's kind of what I was going to suggest. I think we need to we need to look at the two different segments differently. You know, the single family homes, which were limited on what we can do and target tailored remedy for them. And then on the homes that were or the units that were not limited, you know, then I think we can we can tailor a different remedy. If we have consensus. But I think that remedy has to be stronger than simply relocation. Better. Mayor, vice. Mayor. And I think one of the assumptions that. Thank you, madam. I'm. I'm. I'm feeling from the comments. Is that a mediation that happens at RAC has been worthless? And I understand that there's been a number of successes. With that mediation in of with regard to rent increases bringing rent rent increases down. And one of the problems before we jump to the next solution, I think, is what are some protections we can provide for people who are afraid to go to Iraq now? Or as the testimony goes, they don't want to talk to their landlord at all because they're afraid that they're going to get a notice of eviction. So I think that's why it's important to put a mediation process in place at the RAC that allows people who receive that termination of not for cause to have a mediation. So it basically elevates that. And then. Is there. And maybe this is a question to to our staff and our city attorney. Is there a protection that can be provided that will be strong enough such that people are not afraid to go back? So that's okay. I want to respond to that just if I could, because that's what I was thinking. If you shift the burden. That's not the tenant that has to file for permission or or you know, that on this that it would be the landlord that files and then the landlord has to show up, that they would have to come it would come to rec and that would be arbitrated. So I would address your issue of your tenants that say that they are afraid to come. It would put it's just your burden. And that's also why I suggest required mediation. Yes. If you want to do that. And I think that is how you do it because. It addresses that issue. Well, it puts the outcome, though, Mayor, at when the landlord says, no, no, I like my 25% increase. So he was first talking about the no fault. That's what I thought you spoke to first. Yes. And there's also an and again, the I don't know. So if a landlord wants to do a no fault, then my suggestion was that they would then come to Iraq. And they would have to get permission from ROC to do that. And and it can, in fact, have. It could be. So where is the teeth? Right. That. That. But even before that, Ken. Okay. So that was why I wanted to have that way, because it addresses that concern that it's on the landlord. And but it also gives credibility to the work that RAC has been doing that that is not. It is successful for many of the people that come here, but it has never been able to deal with the evictions then. If. So. For the no fault eviction. So then it would give the mediation opportunity in that situation. So I think it could address that at least be the next step. And I think. And. There was a second component that I had, I think that covers the second component is a number of speakers referred to tonight a. They're hunkered down because. They're afraid that they're going to get evicted. And they're not availing they they don't feel comfortable coming to Iraq. And that's your rent increase, right? How do we provide some is there some additional protection to prevent retaliation. Even if it's. Yeah. So. So that was why I suggested if the landlord wants to raise the rent 8% or higher, then they must come to rec. Then it's not on the tenant to file the complaint because the tenant would has concerns. So it addresses that issue. It puts it on the landlord. And Iraq has been, I submit, relatively successful. You have your outliers, really. We want to focus on that. But if you require if if any landlord wants to do an increase of 8% or higher, that they come to Iraq and explain their situation. Then that addresses why it. It forces mediation and that. And pardon me. No. I had actually said to consider having it be binding either there or the next level. But but it supports rack, which I think we which I do support. I would just like to strengthen it and I think it's an intermediate step and I actually think it could be very more successful than rent control per say, because with mediation, it allows your tenant to explain their their issues. And I have actually come to, I think, every rackmount meeting since I've been mayor. And when you watch the process, they do balance and they come up with decisions. And that what I have heard is that. They're missing the teeth part of it that you have landlords that are tenants that. So first of all, there's the fear element. If and how do you deal with more egregious rent increases? That's why you shift the burden to your landlord to have to file, to come through the process. And it's not on your tenant. Your tenant is not raising it. It's actually a determination to your landlord whether or not they want to do that increase, because then they will be coming to mediation. It will be part of the process. And, and then so that's why I was suggesting those nuances to address. But I hear and so if your landlord does have to avail themselves of coming to Iraq, which I don't think is a bad thing because I think rec works, I think the problem with RAC has been that it hasn't had teeth. But if you could get more people to come, then I think you would have more settlements and that would actually address a lot of these issues that you're right, you have tenants that are concerned, they don't come. But if we made it part of the process, then they would it would be it would be a part of the process. And then the second part I was suggesting was that you do add teeth, you make it binding. And I would actually say when it comes to council, because we are the actual direct elected people so we could review it, RAC had done and I would also continue to encourage all of us to attend RAC because then you see it and here it is. But then it would not. I know it would not be a binding for all. However, I think that quite often our settlements do work and then I don't have a problem with member de Saag your other way of handling it if it doesn't for your. For your vacancies or for you tenants that Costa Hawkins doesn't apply to. Then you come up with, if in fact all is going through mediation, done at work. You're right. We still have for part, we don't have to. But you can make it. Of what is it now? What was the word? I was just saying. Flannery. No, no. Binding. Binding. You can make it binding for the others once. It is not binding for then that's when you kick in your and you may want to do it, you know. But that's an option that can apply your formula and addresses those that otherwise would not be addressed. Yes, I a staff question and I mean, pardon me. Did you want to comment? No, I. Just wanted to comment on. If the council hasn't established a threshold amount. That a landlord is entitled to get. Then. In order for anti-inflammatory watch to something above that, there has to be some sort of evidentiary hearing if it's going to be binding at some point. So whether that's going to be in front of the rack or in front of the city council. If you're if you're you, you're going to tell the landlord you don't get your 20%. The landlord has the opportunity to present evidence on that, and there has to be presumably counter evidence of that so that there's an evidentiary administrative record, so that if so, the landlord has the opportunity to say, You've denied me this, and now you have denied me a fair return on investment. So just keep that in mind as you as you go through your deliberative process here, that that if there's going to be a binding decision, it's going to be you know, there's going to be an administrative process involved in all of that. And I also support the tradings for the rec people so that they are more able to be effective. That's actually what I was maybe reading into Mr. Bush's comments is that this is and again, remember, this is a person's livelihood we're we're dealing with if there is an assertion of a taking that could lead back to liability for the city. And so if we're going to. Get into those waters. I really think that's the sort of decision that should be made at the council level, not the right. So that was why I would have it start Iraq. And if they want to appeal it, as opposed to settling it, when it could come to our level. And and again, to analogize it to other other jurisdictions. Typically in that kind of situation, you have the matter heard by whether it's an arbitrator or hearing officer or whatever that person conducts the hearing, makes findings, etc.. And then it can be advisory to the city council who could make the final decision. But then you have an administrative record that you're dealing with. You know, it's it's which is different. I mean, the concept is different than talking about. Requiring the landlord to go to the rack if it's a certain percentage or above. That's a different issue in my mind than saying regardless of what that what that number is. If you're going to not if you're going to have a threshold number above which a person doesn't get an automatic increase, then you've got to provide that administrative hearing process for that person. It can ultimately come back to the Council for a final decision and that the way and many jurisdictions do that. But you need you know, you need a more formal process. I mean, you don't want to be conducting, you know, a two day hearing on something like that. And that's what typically these things are, because you've got accountants, you have CPAs, you have real estate appraisers. They're they're involved processes. And you have lawyers on both sides. And they're they take a lot of time. And unless the council actually wants to do that. They're better off in a, you know, sort of hearing it after it's all done, but not in themselves conducting the hearing. Okay. But you could. Could you not still have it so that we could use rec for the first layer? Oh, certainly. But still have it be if if someone wants to if a landlord wants to do an increase of I'm going to say 8% or higher that they file it. So that so that we end up having more of these hearings. And we would also get our data that would address our data if anyone in our town is doing a rent increase of 8% or higher. They would come to Iraq and we would have real data of who's doing it, when is that happening? And that's something that is missing right now. But actually, it doesn't have to be the rack because there's a registration process whereby every rental property owner is going to be registered and there's a requirement that you before you do a rent increase, you file that with. If if you have a registration program. That's correct. If you don't registration program, then you can put the onus on the landlord to have to do something in order to get the matter in front of the rack as opposed to having the tenant check. Oh, I like the registration program because it also is a way that we bring in some fees to help fund the program. And I so I do think that with the accountants and everything, that's me and also the rack hearings aren't actually recorded. I mean, maybe that could be changed. But as far as building a record, there's it's not a recorded proceeding. So let's talk about this registration part real quick. I o in regards to the registration, you're right. Member Ashcraft then there's fees because you end up with the system. Does anyone have an idea of how much from staff it costs to have a registration process? But it's. But, but that is. What the fees are across the different. What the cost would be to the city to implement that. So what we would have to do to implement a new program if we had a mediation process fee or a registration fee. I'm sorry, the registration fee of rent so that every landlord, when they do a rent increase would have to register it. Right. And then the only one they do. That's three she to speak that's we're talking about right now this is registration if you're doing a rent increase. So when you adopt a new fee, regardless of what the fee is, you have to do a study to justify the fee. So we would have we would depending on the program and what the components of the program are, we would then do a study and the fee would have to be equivalent to what it costs to administer the program. Okay. And to me, that would be another cost passed down to your tenants as opposed to of only requiring the landlord come. If it's 8% or higher, then then you don't add an additional. Most jurisdictions cap the amount of the fee that can be passed through to the tenant. So there is an opportunity to to share that cost between the tenant and the landlord. Okay. So I said let me ask my other council members up here. Is anyone besides member Ashcraft support this registration process? I think I suggested that in the beginning. Also, I'm not quite sure how much we want to charge for that and who needs to bear it. I'd like to have more analysis on that from staff. Any other members that would be interested in that? And just just looking across the board, I have a table with Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa monica and West Hollywood and Berkeley, high of $194 a year. Los Angeles 2451 a year. Oakland $30. So. San Francisco, $29. So let me just find out. I'd like to poll all councilmembers. Would you be interested in a registration process? Every member? Well, that allows us to get data. Yes. Member de SAC this time. No, I, I mean, I'm open to getting information. I, you know, whatever staff has to respond, but I just don't have a seat, see it, feel it, touch it, kind of. Response. Is that something I could direct staff to look into and bring back to us? So I don't think we have a majority. That's what I'd like to be able to ask each council member. Thank you and myself now. So at this point we do not have an interest in that. So I have a question. By vice mayor. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to. The I'm not that I have an opinion, but I just want to say about the fee, what that fee captures. For example, we have roughly 16,000 rental units. That's just an approximation. Let's say you times it by 25,000, that's $25. That's about $40,000 a year. That allows us to capture some of the costs that I'm assuming there is going to be some cost to whatever it is that you are going to be asking us to do. So if you don't impose the fee, that's fine. But just know that that means it's going to have to come from somewhere else. Mayor Yes. Vice Mayor. Comment on that. And then my question, I think whatever we decide to do, we can make a fee that fits that. But rather than talking about a registration system or the purpose of gathering data and and or other, it doesn't fit. It's not fitted to an ordinance yet. So I think let's talk about that. When an ordinance comes on how to implement it. Is that something that's. All we have. We give an ordinance when we give direction, they they should look on how we fund it if. We end up. My question came back to the toothless RAC is. When do we have any data? Any any batting average, if you will, on how many times at the end of the rack process, the landlord walked away and said, Well, thank you for your advice. I'm going to do it anyway. How many times out of total number of. That scenario is very unusual. A handful of times since the end. The the success rate is well above 85% or something over that over the life of the rate for the number of cases that. So I think the assumption that that it's the lack of teeth is causing the rack to fail. I think that challenges that assumption because I think the bigger problem is that people are afraid to come to the rack. That's that's the point. And I'd like staff. I don't have a solution to that, but I'd like staff to look into what kind of protections can we give a tenant who comes to the rack to keep them from getting kicked out? So if I could just maybe weigh in with a few observations based on the discussion, it seems to me that the council could adopt sort of a layering of of options that when taken in total add up to kind of that protection that that's being talked about and what people are are striving to come up with. So for example, when we gave the presentation, we talked about ways to enhance the mediation process and we said that potentially an option was to require an appearance before the RAC if the rent is going to be increased above a certain percent along the lines of what the mayor has been discussing, if people feel like and that would be an obligation of the landlord, if the concern is that people want to fly under the radar, tenants not make waves. And perhaps you layer that with a just cause eviction ordinance so that as you do your deliberations, you may want to look at kind of a layering or taking taking aspects of the kinds of tenant protections in total so that you have a package where it's working together. And that then provides some of the the assurances so that you're not necessarily assuming that the rack is not successful, but you're addressing a problem. Let's let if we set a percentage threshold at which it's mandatory, perhaps that discourages tenant landlords from doing rent increases . More than that, that may be one piece of it. But if you want the ability of tenants to be able to come, perhaps it needs a just cause eviction ordinance to go with it. If you still have instances in which you will have no fault evictions, perhaps you want to layer on a relocation benefit so that you're taking your package in total and you're building your building that way to get a comprehensive package, which then provides that the protections. So that might be a way to to look at this and look at it. I want to repeat myself, but that kind of that layering concept might help put together a package that's just a suggestion . And I'm also I'm also concerned about an assumption of something we just put in place on October 1st. That's when the notices went out. Right. That people have been noticing when there's going to be an increase. It took effect. That's correct. Yeah. So we're one, two, three, four weeks into that and I I'm I'm not sure of the testimony tonight. Which post October 1st and what's pre October 1st and would have. Can we can we look at that to see if there's a difference in that action? There has not been an uptick in the number of cases over the last four weeks. And I think staff is not necessarily anticipating seeing more more complaints. In line with kind of the issue that you were raising about the desire to fly under the radar and not sort of upset the apple cart and some of that. So that's been it's obviously been a very short period of time and everyone's getting used to it. But it it may be appropriate that given that or, you know, recognizing that some of our measures to strengthen the ordinance have been in place a short period of time, it may still be appropriate to build on some of that strengthening. And we're just you know, it's kind of a building blocks kind of thing and that it may that may be an appropriate approach to take or it may be that the counsel says we want to let it work. Leave it as it is. And then let's look at layer. Do we layer on just cause? Do we layer on relocation benefits and still kind of building building that a more comprehensive package. And I really like the framework that you laid out. I don't know if that's enough to move forward under the color of the 65 day moratorium, but if it is, that'd be great. The second thing I'd like to say, if you're going to pursue a layering approach to have to add, because I think there's clear differences between how I feel about rent stabilization and rent control and and how others feel. So there might be a layering with that in a layering without it. But with everything else, there's something to think about. Well, based I think based on the discussion that staff has heard so far, I think if we were to go back without more refined direction, we would be looking at ways to strengthen the mediation process when it comes to the tenant protection piece of this. And and I think we would then look at the just cause and look at the relocation benefits. But if there's an opportunity to give us more, more focused direction, then we we probably can. Member. Thank you. I also like that suggestion. Ms.. Potter thank you for that. But I do think you'll piggyback on to what the mayor was saying. You know, that is of making a binding you are making it arbitration, which is similar to what they have, you know, in San Jose. So there seems to be three of us that want some type of binding protection for the units that were allowed to do that on. We may differ on how you get there and whether the landlord brings it or whether it's, you know, whatever. But, you know, I think that's something we can work out. But the high level concept I think is there that we wanted some binding. So and I would I would concur with that unless. I'm wrong that they are in your. Yeah. Ms.. Potter's the first scenario you put in place the the layering requirement for the landlord to appear but with a just cause eviction ordinance because and to the vice mayor's point I'm not so worried about the landlords that appeared in the tenants that appeared, although I will say on Monday the landlord and she seemed quite lovely but when they she was asked but she come down and her rent increase she very nicely said no, no and no again. And basically she went forward with, you know, just what the tenant was trying to get out of, although it turned out that Ken hadn't been paying the recycling fee for the last two years, but the landlord hadn't brought it to her attention. So that was I mean, it just I but the point being, I'm more concerned about the people we heard from today, and I think we believe them when they said they're afraid to even ask for basic repairs. So I think we need to address that. I really like the idea of requirement for the landlord to appear with just because eviction ordinance and and relocation assistance as well. And then Councilmember Ody, you know, Councilmember DESA, you wanted to also have as well. I like relocation assistance and the just cause eviction, but embedded within it, the relocation assistance in the way that Richmond and Glendale have embedded it. So you know what the formula for the just cause eviction is. You know, I can rely on staff, but I think there are good examples like Glendale. Could it be higher? Sure. But we don't want to be as high as San Francisco because that's not going to pass legal muster. All right. I just want a clarification. The relocation assistance, I think, is with no cause, right? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. But that. Oh, yeah. Right. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. With no, that's within the within. Just cause eviction, you mean. So the no cause is you want to explain that and why that is, right. There is no just cause I think that's under the a confusing terminology. Right. Because in this instance, just cause and no cause are synonymous. And but I do understand that the idea is that relocation benefits would be available if people are being evicted for no fault of their own or for. Yeah, exactly. That's the Glendale model. The Glendale model says if the landlord wants to take over their unit or a family or herself or himself and and then also, I think if the landlord has to move somebody because of a they're doing some kind of major renovation. And then there's a third item. They indicate that under those specific issue instances, then relocation assistance. But I'm also talking about relocation assistance along the line that I've talked about it. Right. We would that we would craft what I'm understanding from the council is craft relocation benefits and a just cause eviction such that the work around not being required to go in front of the rack to defend a rent increase is just a 60 day notice. The idea would be that you couldn't do that. You could not pick someone or. For no cause if their current on their rent and you just want to get them out to increase the rent that that's. You can't do that, right? Yeah. In the language you've been using tonight about what we're trying to solve for. That's what you're trying to solve for, is that people are not being evicted just so that the line can be doubled and somebody else can be moved in. So question on that. If if we bring to the rack 60 day notices of eviction that have no cause. What is the rack do? Decide whether your lack of causes is allowed. I mean, the. Isn't that why you have the specified reasons that you can? That is the typical structure of a no cause. All right. Just well, I mean, seriously, I. Does the does the RAC decide that in some cases you didn't need any reason to evict this tenant in other cases. Well, there's several issues in terms of the RAC. One issue for the most part has always been about rent increase, though that's sometimes separate from whether someone is being evicted, under what conditions. So there's still room, there's still there's still work for the RAC to be done within the context of dealing with rent. Well, Vice Mayor. And I think my intention was that we've heard situations where someone has children that are in school and they get a notice three or four months before the end of the year that says you have to be out in 60 days and. That can be mediated. Even if it was for to put a family member in or to do a renovation, how how how do you help me out here? And I think. Not. No, cause. Councilmember Murthy. No causes. You've got 60 days to get out of here. That's why when I made my. But when I made my. Wish ever it was, it says to include evictions. Hear it, though. The racket here. Any eviction? And if the racket here, if it's a for cause, then they can say, I'm sorry, you have to go to court because you're in violation of state law. Or if it's this situation. Or we're talking about. Time in schools or or other personal circumstances that can be mediated. So I think so. I'm very much on board with you on that. It's just that I wanted the landlord to be able to come, to have to come. If they want to do an eviction, go to rack if unless the tenant is current on rent, if they want to do an eviction for I mean I mean and I actually it's if your tenant's current on rent and they want to do the eviction, then they come to Iraq and then they discuss it and they try to mediate it. And I'm not sure how legal that is because the the state has provided a accelerated process for evicting people that, you know, for nonpayment of rent, a three day notice and you get a five day response and then you get a trial within 21 days of asking. And the same thing, even if it's a nuisance, you get a five day notice and you don't abate. And you know, you got to answer in five days. And, you know, I don't know if we can if we can change that process. No, no, but I'm sorry. I meant if they have their current in their rent and they want to do an eviction. Well, there are other ways you could evict somebody's nuisance, for example. Right. So then they've come to Iraq and have the discussion. But that's a legitimate way to evict people on a five day notice. And then you're kind of tying the landlord. I mean, that's worse than. A and that wasn't included in what I proposed, that if it's if it's within state law, then. Right. State law applies. It's anything short of that. I don't think we have the the bandwidth or do we have the skill set on the rack to act as judges and try to mediate evictions when there is a summary procedure put in place in the law to evict people for cause. Right. And I don't I just think that's the purview of judges, not the purview of the city council or an unelected rack, because at least the judges are elected. So member already you would you have in in 36 any terminations go through Iraq? Well, I like the vice mayor's idea that if you know you're doing a move out or you know you're moving in your kid or your grandmother or whatever, you know, and the timing of that is such that you have the families in school. I don't have a problem with those being mediated. You know, for extra time snowfall. And that is that is no final note because there's no fault on the tenant yet. But, yeah, I'm with you. What are you you know, your question was valid, you know. Well, what do so determining Iraq. The one of the problems we heard tonight is that people are getting these 30 and 60 day notices. I just talked to a gentleman this afternoon who told me that he got a 60 day notice. The landlord had been saying, you know, I can rent this unit for a lot more than I'm getting from you. And so he was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop and have the rent increase. But instead he got a 60 day notice to just vacate. And that's because we allow this in Alameda, because we don't have an ordinance that says you have to have a reason to vacate someone. So to me, I'd like us to actually enact a just cause ordinance, which means you still could do what the vice mayor is saying. You've got the family members moving in. Councilmember decide the to the Glendale model of the San Jose model. Lots of other cities do this but we don't leave open that option that someone and again I'm not worried about all the nice folks who came before us today, but I did hear about this one fellow who actually is a local resident landlord, but anyway, who did this. But I would rather that not be an option available. It's your property and sure, you should be able to. You have the right to get someone out for all those enumerated legal reasons, criminal activity on your property, failure to pay rent, etc. But then if you I mean, there should be and then the other when you want to move a family member in and then I'd be fine with taking that to relocation assistance. But do we really want to leave open the fact that someone could just come in again? This is instead of a rent increase, you can vacate that that unit that way. I mean, is that behavior we want to protect? And to make it clear that. State law allows a landlord to evict a tenant if if you want to move a family member in. Now, obviously, you need to make sure that, in fact happens, that it's not a ruse. But. It just seems that the RAC seems to be set up well to deal with rent increases. And as I think some of you have suggested, keeping that just cause you want to have that provision, perhaps keeping that out of the purview of the of the RAC, because there are certainly ample provisions under state law to deal with that. We would set it up where if you are going to evict the person for cause, we have them report that to the housing authority, etc. so we can keep track of that, have a record of it, but. It seems like the rack has worked well with respect to rent increases and I don't know whether you do them a service by now, increasing their responsibility to deal with this sort of just cause it's just cause issue because you can tie under your ordinance to just to the to the just cause issue with relocation benefits. And you can set that formula up so that it's provided if the person meets the criteria that you decide are is appropriate. Hmm. Do we all like Miss Potter? Yes, because it was. And that was one of your layers, right? Possibly. Hi, Larry. Know the. The notice of termination would not go through Iraq. That's. Not appropriate for Iraq. That would. Be a. Yes. I think conceptually what staff is talking about is that the what we would be looking at by way of rent increases, keeping that under the purview of the RAC, that would be an enhancement of rent, rent increase protections and then layering on separate from the rack process just cause eviction and relocation so that you are hopefully reducing the fear factor and you are allowing people to feel comfortable to pursue the mediation process that we have in place. And by having relocation and just cause you are you are giving those those sort of layered on protections so that our mediation process becomes more effective, that that would be the goal. And if if that is a framework that works for the council staff, feels like we do have sufficient direction to be able to go back and and craft those ordinances. And the only question left for this evening would be how you want to handle the proposed moratorium, if that's something that you want to move forward with. So before you go there, in regards to the layers, would we have a layer where it shifts to the landlord to file, to go to rack? That one, the layers. I mean, if it's it's either automatic or the landlord has to file and I mean six one half dozen of the other mean. Oh yeah. Could be automatic increase of 8% or any, any increase whatsoever. I mean that, I mean. If it has to be arbitrated or there has to be some hearing, then somebody has to bring it. I mean, I don't really. Think. It matters who brings it. I mean, then, you know, I think. That I think that. They made a good. Point, though. That for some landlords, it might even be a deterrent to have to go through that process. But it does. I think that's where. The registration process comes into. I mean, you could say rent increases are not subject to a hearing out there limit to 8%. And if they're not, then the landlord has to apply for permission and then have it be binding. I mean. What about. The how is not is really important to me is the what so if you know. I think someone earlier said but what about if for a particular tenant that 8% would pose a burden? Should that be something? I mean, I had originally thought that we could keep the rack remediation under 8%, but is that not is that not possible? If we put this this number on. The you could set it up where you would say that the right now the rack hears any rent increase and the tenant generates that. You can set it up so that if the rent increase is x percent or greater, then the landlord has to trigger the process. That's not again, there's a mediation process. It isn't going to deny the landlord the right to impose a higher than 8%, but it shifts the focus. So the landlord has to bring it rather than the tenant has to bring it. And you could say that you can. Well, I think you should try mediation on both, but you try mediation first. And then if you don't get a resolution, if it's still above eight, then there's an arbitration but still allow mediation for others. Yes, you can do that then, but now you're really imposing essentially a rent stabilization ordinance as opposed to a non rent true stabilization. But the answer is yes. If you if you say anything above, you know, 8% has to be mediated. But if you don't agree to that, then then you have to go through a separate hearing process. The answer is yes. The ordinance can be crafted that way. Because then because then you have a hearing to justify why the landlord feels that he or she is entitled to more than the 8% that you say at least is is sort of a threshold. But you can still do mediation for underage. Sure. And that doesn't get you into the trouble with allowing the reasonable rate of return that you mentioned. No, because, again, you you but we would bring back to you is is some options with respect to that. And you can decide whether or not you want to set a threshold amount that a landlord would be entitled to. And you can also say, in any event, that has to be mediated if it's less than or more than 8%. There's a lot of things we can provide to you on that, which I think you've given directionally if you're interested in looking at. But to be sure that 8% above which a landlord has to come to a rent review advisory committee meeting, that is a form of rent stabilization. Did I hear that correctly? Not just for not. Not just to mediate it. It would be only if there was some process that said you are not allowed to get more than a certain percent without showing that that percentage denies you a fair rate of return. If you say that extra language, then it is rent stabilization. But it is that if you just leave it open ended as some kind of threshold that a you have to come and be, you have to go through some mediation. So it's just basically saying we're going to do the rent review model, which at this point the there is a threshold and the threshold is zero. Correct. But now instead, we're going to move that threshold to eight. Well, you got to move. If if you went with eight. Sorry, the landlord now has to do it as opposed to the tenant. That's that's the that's the difference. Now, within that framework, though, we're still I still believe we were within the rent review advisory committee framework where the triggering of a person having to come in to the meeting and get mediated, that person, that landlord doesn't necessarily have to. Agree, does not have to agree under at least that the scenario you and I are discussing at the moment. Okay. All right. If it's binding, it becomes stabilization by definition. So if we did that. Well, if you if you if you say that. If you say you cannot get more than X, Mr. Land, Mr. and Mrs. Landlord, you can't get more than x. Then you're into a rent stabilization situation because now you've put a cap on it. Above which the person has to prove that he or she is entitled, that in order to get a fair return on investment. That's why I'm still confused that. Could you still mediate below that? Because. For a tenant. Because you're saying they're entitled. If we put that 8%, then are we saying they're entitled to at least eight? Well, if if the ordinance says they're entitled to eight. The answer's yes. But we don't have to know. We can keep track the same way it is right now. It's just that at that trigger, if it's 8%, whatever number it is, then the the landlord does have to file and go through Iraq. It's not you want to get into the the evidentiary hearing. If you have set some kind of cap, whether it's CPI, percentage of CPI, 8%, 10%, 12%, whatever. And if you say if you want something more than that housing provider, then the burden is on you to demonstrate you need that in order to get a fair return on investment. Now, the cap that you mentioned, you referenced certain mechanics that can be by which you can do the cap, CPI or whatever. Now it's altogether possible the media, me mediating process itself would result in a cap. Right. They could say, okay. Yes. Yes. I mean, you go. I mean, the answer is yes. Let's say the ETS say you had a cap of 5% for sake of discussion. Landlord wanted 10% goes to mediation and it turns out that they reached an accord at seven and a half or eight. That's fine. That's just that. That's the way the system kind of works today. No, no need to go any further than that. The landlord and the tenant has to have agreed on a number percentage and everyone goes home, you know, relatively unhappy. But in regards to making it binding at some point, then that's when it kicks in to the stabilization, if that's correct. If you've. The answer is yes with the understanding that. That governments can set thresholds and above that threshold. And if you're going to try to make that binding, then that's where the evidentiary hearing kicks in. I think the question is, if the RAC, through the mediation process, says it's going to be 8% and the landlord wanted six, but the RAC is saying eight and it's binding. Is that fall into the category of rent stabilization. If they. If I'm sorry. If the landlord wanted. How much? Six. And they went through the opposite. Right. All right. That's right. Sorry. Yeah. Yes. But whatever it is. So let's just say the landlord ends up with something less than they wanted. Yes. And the RAC says, well, you're going to get this. And it's mediated, but now it's binding. Does that. Is that considered rent stabilization? Yes. Again, because. It is. Binding, because essentially you've you haven't set a threshold amount. It's basically whatever. And now you have a body that's been appointed by the city council to say that landlord, you're only going to get 6%. And you have to you have to have some sort of evidentiary hearing that in order to make that stick. That's why typically you try to set a threshold so that you don't have those kind of hearings all the time that people, they know automatically they're going to get either a CPI or you're going to get a 3% or a 6% or whatever. And consistent with what we've heard tonight, that if you set that, you know, you set that percentage at some number that most of the local landlords seem to say, yeah, this is fine with us. Then you're probably not going to have many hearings if what they're saying is true. And I have to believe that. This Potter staff. Actually has a suggestion that you may want to consider regarding the moratorium. So you may want to talk about a moratorium on no cause evictions and no rent increases above 8%. Since you're looking at increasing enhancing the mediation where you would require landlords to come at 8%, that you would link the moratorium to rent increases above 8% . And then you might want to talk about, if you want that, look back for. 12 months. Or 24 months as part of that discussion. So that might be a way that you would want to approach your discussion on the moratorium. We'll talk about that right now. Vice Mayor I would rather not put a figure in because I'm concerned that there'll be a bunch of 8% increases on top of whatever else has happened. I I'd much rather have a, an appeal process. So it's, it's a moratorium. No rent increases? No, no cause evictions for 65 days. If there is a hardship that that places on a. A property owner that suppose they've let the permits for a soft story and their amortization starts in December. They can come in and ask for an appeal for relief. Ask who? Asked the. City council. Well. You know, I think I actually. So following your reasoning, Vice Mayor, the we're going to stop all rent increases for the next 65 days. I'm at the end of that 65 days. Can people go back retroactively and or are they just forgoing any rent increases? Could they go back and say, capture the 4% increase they wanted to? Mr.. Otis shaking his head. No. No. Oh, you you go to react with go to your tenant. If whatever. I'm not going to presume what our ordinance changes are, but. Okay. The same process, in fact, after. But will happen. There'll be a new process with whatever ordinance modifications we make with those layering. To help provide that protection. And I want I want to ask clarifying question, what about additional fees? Because some people aren't. Could this apply to new fees that tenants are receiving or would you want it to apply to new fees? Because that's another thing we were. Hearing staff to counsel. Can you help with. That dog or pets? We're also hearing that there's this. Instead of having rent increases, there's an increase in. Fees, you know, for those things like utilities. Could the moratorium. Or are you proposing I don't know if, first of all, a moratorium could go with these new fees that are. Being charged. And that's the first question. Frankly, frankly, I'm sorry. We were talking about how we could craft the moratorium urgency ordinance to fit what we're hearing you say. So I'm sorry. That's all paying close attention to all of you. I apologize for that. I think if I'm understanding, though, the additional fees that would be passed on to the tenant, isn't that really part of the rent? I mean. I'm not. Here. Well. So we have had you know, we've had tenants come and say that it's not a rent increase, it's a new fee. It's a utility fee is being passed on or it's a parking space. V Or it's a pet fee. Things like that. So I was just asking. How he meant those two. Madmen. You have that power? Yes. You know, I'm fine with the thesis. I suspect it'll be okay to put a moratorium. I mean, if we're putting a moratorium on rent, you know, putting. Us the I. Think putting a moratorium on fees is a natural. I think for me, the question, you know, I know it's beating a dead horse, but I do still believe that 10% is a threshold, but I'm hearing 8%. So I would prefer to have a moratorium on rent increases above 8% and above, because to me, several things. One. You know, I see no reason to penalize the small mom and pop landlords who have who have, you know, done their part to make Alameda a great place. And I think the tenants understand that, too. And that 8% would be cumulative or in the past 12 months. And I say that because it's completely possible that someone had increased their rent by 6% six months ago. So we don't want them to have to. Increase it by 8% on top of 6% because that be 14%. So that's my druthers is to not penalize, you know, almeida's mom and pop landlords. They've done their share. And now, as we're moving forward with with our new groundbreaking legislation, you know, let's let's let's work with everyone. I can go along with that. With regard to this. If I might just add a piece of information, first of all, our definition of rent, we have just checked, we include extra fees. It's all in rent. So I think we're covered. And utilities rent. Yes. It's all included in what is passing on what is defined as rent. Well, it would go into the into figuring the percentage. Right. So it's grocery. So do we have a consensus that we would do the moratorium with the 8%? And we still have the possibility that if somebody gets an 8%, they can go to rack? Well, yeah. But that's that's. During the moratorium. So. So it says that the rack would continue to do during this process. I mean, I wouldn't have a moratorium. If there's like three votes for zero, then, you know, I'll go along with that. But if there's three votes for the eight, then I'll go along. My preference is the 8%. If people want to weigh in. I think I can live with the 8%. I think you do need to strike a balance and. And the moratorium that no rent increases above 8%, including, you know, utilities, parking, pets. But have you for the 65 days until we come back? I mean, is that cumulative for the past year, 12 months as 12 months from the date of the increase? Okay. Yes, it would have to be. Yes. But within the past 12 months, I'd agree on that. So if someone did an 8% two weeks ago, then they can get another 8%. 6%? Yeah, it would make sense if we're considering, you know, that you can only do it once a year. So it can be. Consistent with our direction. Sounds like I'm hearing at least are concerned. Well, everyone would want at this point 8% of four. But but over the past 12 months in. Correct? Yes, definitely. Because there's someone who could have raised the rents 15% or 20%. Now it's 28%. That's why I thought it's much cleaner to go zero. I think of accumulative for 60 or 65 days for someone to really raise the rent between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Or it may have been a regularly scheduled time. So I. Yeah. I. Think yeah, I, I think I'm just planning. Okay. But you're allowed that it's one in the morning. Okay. And so before you and I, I'm going to ask and it's going to complicate one more time before we're talking about averages. So if someone had done, you know, is that then. By. 15% over the past two years? I mean, it's really complicating it. Okay, that's fair. You know, like. Yeah. No, no, no. It's just that we were looking for something else. Yeah. And so, counsel, help us out. Are we. Do you want a separate vote on the moratorium? And then. Oh, you want a direction. Tell us what you want and we'll give it to you. Okay. Reiterate it so it's fine. Okay. So what. What I'm hearing is we believe that we have you have given us adequate direction to come back with an ordinance on just cause. Just cause eviction, rent control, rent stabilization. You know, enhancing. Maybe you better. Yeah. Come to tell us about those layers again. So, um, our staff's direction is to craft an ordinance, most likely an amendment to the existing ordinance that would deal with a mandatory appearance by landlords. If they're raising the rent 8% or higher, that would be giving more teeth to our mediation process. And then a separate ordinance dealing with just cause eviction and relocation benefits. I have. All right. I see. Yes. So I. I were there. Yeah. I don't know that we miss Potter. I think what we should do is two, three scenarios. We can do that. I'm fine with. Okay. Okay. With the binding arbitration in the alternate. So I have a question, a clarifying question on one of your charts. It had had expound row a rack to mediate. No cause the eviction. That was an option. So that was an option. We're not going with. Then it sounded like actually it's not necessarily legal to do that because my preference would still be to use RAC to mediate, you know, cause the eviction. If I think. We feel that that given state law and how state law governs for cause evictions and the rights of property owners to evict for cause that that would be more complicated and really not be helpful and that a standalone that's kind of the layer right a layer on top of the enhanced mediation. So then I'm going to ask on each of these layers that we pause and pause and see where we are. All right, so. Well, I. Yeah, we should. And they should all go together, too, but. Okay. So what's your first place? So what? The. Tip, Ms.. Potter. So if you could do what you want, you're. Okay to go home. Sorry. So if you're going to look at what you're. To start out with. Okay. I think you had it better before when you said there were two options. Yes. So I don't. On each individual component. We should look at the totality of what we're doing. Right. Together. Okay. So. So I just don't necessarily vote, but. Maybe the polling could work like this on tenant protection measures for protections against rising rents. What staff is hearing is come back with with two different scenarios. One, that would be enhanced mediation, which would require landlord attendance at a hearing if they were raising the rent of 8% or more. And then the second step. I don't think it's so much landlord attendance. We already required that in the last modification, it's that the landlord is the one who has to. Yes, yes, landlord. That's what his landlord initiated. We understand. That. That to be the case, landlord initiated or essentially a command performance. Even if the tenant isn't filing a rec, you come if the rent if you're planning a rent increase 8% or higher. The in the alternative we will come back with with an alternative to that which is just the added layer of arbitration if there's not a desire to. To agree to the rent increase that's being recommended by by the RAC. So those are the two scenarios dealing with and increases how to handle rent increases. And then layered on top of that. Well, I thought I understood the mayor want to do a straw poll to make sure that that gets understood. Well. So. Well, we're going to bring those two back. Yes, very similar size. Those two in a separate time. I think you all. I'm thinking I'm I'm hoping that everyone is good with one of those two options. And I. Think that's a good debate that we have to. Have. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that's how we're proposing. That's how we would propose to come back with legislation regarding protecting rent and. Acting tenants against increasing rents. A second layer on top of. That that the first one that you were saying when you're saying arbitration after Iraq, is that binding or non-binding? Right. Arbitration implies binding versus mediation that is voluntary. Okay. So if I can jump into it, to be really clear here, because I know it's getting late, we're all very tired. We're talking about really kind of a rent control or not. One is an enhanced rack where the landlord is required if they want to go and raise the rent over 8% to contact the rack and basically make their case. But it's a mediation. Yes. Not binding. That's option one. Option two is that they can't do it. They can't go over 8% without going through an actual arbitration, and that is the rent control trigger. So that would be the cost to Hawkins rent control. Those would be the two options we. Would bring for. You today. But what I think what I heard is that the arbitration would kick in only if the mediation did not work. If the mediation was unsuccessful, only then would the arbitration kick in. But we. Might want to do some mixture because some. And we would get feedback. Single family homes aren't eligible for the arbitration. So. Right. We would. That's right. That what. Be looking into this. Right. Okay. Okay. So that's that's that deals with protection against increase in rents. Then the second layer is the just cause. And staff would be drafting an ordinance outside of the rec and mediation process. That would be a just cause eviction. Ordinance, and it would also have relocation benefits as part of that ordinance. So that would be. No. And it would all deal with no fault. Of the. Ordinance would not address for I mean for cause you would have rights to evict or cause and there would be no obligation to pay our. Location. Right. Okay. And that come back with that. Yes. And we would come back with that ordinance. Some of us may not be committed to voting for it. Right. But you're going to come back. Yes. Right. I still think we should consider some type of review period, whether it's a sunset or, you know, we take a look at this again affirmatively. Now, you said relocation and relocation within the just cause. Now there's what about relocation outside of the just cause dealing particularly with large excessive rent increases. Because that can happen. In a casting couch situation. Well, no, that can go to everyone. Yeah, that's the relocation. And just cause would apply to all units. Correct. Right, right, right. Right. By itself. By itself. Okay. That's kind of the layer. Thank you. And that could. But the nonbinding. If we did that path, then that could be your layer help. Exactly. For the. Go together. Right. So that. Where. People aren't fearing, you know, people aren't feeling intimidated and that kind. Of thing and they're feeling. Protected. So the person in the single family home who gets the 30% increase could have the opportunity to get or could be entitled to. Well, they would have they would have the ability to go to the rack for mutilation. 30%. And. They would be able to be entitled to the relocation and the just cause protections. I mean, and if we do that, you know, I think we need to also consider as one of the the elements of the package or the layer, the extended notice period. If we do decide that we're not going to do just cause and just go with relocation, you know, have some extended period. Okay. We can come back with that. I send the vacancy rate because if there's a 10% vacancy rate, then. Well, and I think that's one of the things I mentioned when we come back. I'd like us to come back in a year. This is something staff can build around, but come back in a year for review and decide how we might want to go forward. We'll know in a year what the economy is doing, what the housing vacancy rate is, what the CPI is, and, you know, maybe decide. What what. Worked and didn't work. So the existing rack ordinance already requires an annual report to the council. So we should be that should be covered. We should be prepared to do that. Were there any other layers? No. Just the moratorium is the last thing I think that's on your list. Thank you. So. So then. Is this because you want us to adopt this urgency ordinance, right? You're right about. Not making a recommendation. Only if you want to adopt, right? No. I mean, we should do that tonight. So looking at that, and I'm sure I look for page number seven, I'll see him on after your warehouses. That's for section two. I think that's where you would do your increase. Notice an increase in. Rent or. Not to exceed 8%. Something like that. Yeah. You're on page three of the emergency ordinance. And so it says from the effective date of this urgency ordinance and continuing for a period of 65 days, unless extended or until the effective date of any city adopted regulations relating to rent control. Just cause for eviction and or other tenant protection policies, whichever comes first. No housing provider shall. Eh? Well, let's see. I'm not sure. What difference an A or B. Well notice or increase in actually it needs to be shall I think notice an increase in rent or increase rent above 8% per. Year before you continue on there that currently have increases that are kicking in during this time period. A percent cumulatively looking back 12 months. Yeah. They would fall under this figure, right. Over the past. It's. Hmm. I think it's from this. Date or we're doing. Yes. The sum of which surpasses 8%. Yeah, they write. Okay. Or evicted. Or evicted tenant except for cause as set forth in exhibit eight of this ordinance. Because remember, that's one of our tenant protections. We didn't want landlords rushing to get rid of people. So if someone already has received a notice that they're going to have their rent increase in 60 days, it's going to be more than 8%. But that would prevent that from. Occurring because you can't increase the rent. Either. So if they've already given the notice, but if they. Already got the oh, they got this notice. That they can't give you a notice, nor can they. Increase the rent. And that was the next. Meeting they purchased where they'd gotten a notice for eviction, but. It hasn't kicked in yet. Then it freezes also, right? I think that's right. What they're saying is a notice to eviction having been given, but the eviction hasn't yet occurred. This urgency ordinance goes into effect they cannot evict during that period, even after the notice to evict has been served. Well, because it's the language, the language that has. Evolved as opposed to notice. Through to the attorneys, which the language. Says. Cannot evict a tenant except for cause. So, I mean, the notice is the first step, but it's the actual. Well, how about if we say in accordance with law, with state law or with law, and we'll have to check because we don't know right now. Is that that sounds fair. Keep us keep us legal. I think the concern is that if the notice to evict has been served, I don't think we can. I don't think we can trump that. And so the wording there should be on the notice of the notice to evict or whatever the language would be in the state law. And, you know, actually, when you think about what Mr. Rausch is saying, what we're trying to guard against is the landlord who says, oh, the city council's just made a change. I am going to move to evict you. And evict is a different word than, you know, serving a notice. So it. Is. Yeah. That the language will need to be tweaked there a little bit to confirm to conform to what the state law provides in terms of what you have to do in order to start the eviction process. But right now, we any notices that have already been served. I think with respect to the notices that have been served, I don't know that we can undo those. But so that's what we're asking of. This could just say in accordance with state law, so that we're not precluding that at this point and gives you the opportunity to research it. All right. Now, what we're asking. You, we will look into that. But I'm a little skeptical that we can undo that. If if we feel we have the authority to do that, we will try that. But I'm. Southern. The language here would be in accordance with state law, which is what you were saying initially. And I don't think it's in the spirit of what this urgency ordinance is intended to protect. I would prefer to do that because, frankly, if we're going to adopt this now, we have to adopt it and we'll go into effect. So we are going to scribe quickly what you tell us. You're going to adopt it and we don't have time to do research. Right, right, right. That's that's the urgency part of it. So. Okay. Okay. So on section six. So I'll only be effective. The word be seen there. Yes. Be effective for a period of 65 days. And do we have a definition of rent in here that includes then the fees? I think she's. Well. I don't think we have a definition. And we have the definition of rent here so that it's clear that it is include. Now, you did refer to a definition that we have of rent that includes fees. But is that. I didn't see that in here. Reference it. But I. Oh, I like this as defined in the city ordinance. But I actually like the language to be included in the ordinance. So this is very clear. Lifted from the city ordinance. That's a good. We can do that. I have no problem with that either. But I have a question on the on back on section two. So 65 days unless extended or until the effective date of any city adopted regulations. Just looking back at what happened in Richmond. You know, with this include any period under which someone who's not in favor of this could go out and gather signatures to try to bring it to a referendum. Or better. Let's assume the Council adopted a regulation and an ordinance on that goes into effect in February. For example, there's a well, once the council adopts it, there's a 30 day referendum period from which people can collect signatures. If those signatures are collected within the 30 days, then the ordinance does not go into effect. So. So if the referendum petition is filed and the signatures are valid, the ordinance essentially is not in effect. And then the council has a decision whether to put it to a vote or to rescind. Okay. Well, I will say now that if if that is if there is such an effort, then I would be in favor of extending the moratorium until that. Well, I think what we're saying here is, is that let's assume that the 65 days are up, but the the council has not. It's maybe introduced the ordinance and it's perhaps even adopted the ordinance, but it hasn't gone into effect. We would want to keep the moratorium in effect until the new ordinance had gone into effect. So you may have two end of extending the moratorium, you know, some period, some short period of time in order to let those new the new ordinance run its course and get into effect. But I'll just say today that if if this is challenged and it goes to the ballot, then I would be in favor of extending the moratorium until the ballot measure is is resolved. But I don't think we have to decide that at this point. But I'm just. Trying. To make sure that on. The record I want. To. Got it. And I guess I quickly pulled up the definition of base rent, if you all would like it read into the record so that it's quite clear. Can you reduce your base? Rent means the rental amount, including any amount paid directly to the housing provider or parking storage or any other fee or charge associated with the tenancy. And then there's a print other than fees or charges for utilities paid directly to the housing provider, plus that the tenant is required to pay the housing provider in the month immediately preceding the effective date of the rent increases. And would that include pet fees if it. All right. Thank you. Any other feedback? I mayor on a petition for relief from the moratorium. This has an 8%. Holt in it. I'm not going to. I'm sorry when I had it. I'm sorry. You weren't listening? No, I just. I don't know what that meant. I do? Yes. I originally said it should be a moratorium. Moratorium? Right. And that there could be a petition for relief from the moratorium if there was an extraordinary circumstance. Got it. But now it's not really I mean, it's a moratorium. A conditional moratorium. I don't think that. Really. And you're in your agreement. Within 65 days. I think that if it goes beyond 65 days, then that might be another. And at this point, it sounds like you are trying to support that at this point. All right. Thank you. Okay. And secondly, if. We. Have to. Go ahead. Yeah. What the intent of that was, was that if if the let's assume that for some reason the council decided to extend the moratorium for five months. And notwithstanding the fact that you've got a conditional moratorium, 8%. If the moratorium were extended further, we would want to provide a procedure so that a housing provider would have the opportunity to say, notwithstanding your 8%, I needed 15 and I need to have a procedure in place to make that pitch. That's what that is actually with that. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So let's leave it at this. Okay. Any other clarifying questions or questions pertaining to the emergency ordinance? Just one. Member. Can we have the wording read back to us of perfection? I think we're finance. Okay, so section two, page three, section two. Could someone read back the language? Would that be correct, Laura? Got it. Yeah. I'm not sure that they I think they're I think they think they're going to have to craft it added to A and B, right? Correct. So it's not to exceed. 2. To. 8% in the last 12 years. Think 12. Months. I'm sorry. Last 12 months. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, that's much higher. That's why I have to get through this. And that was added to both of them. So it's a notice to increase the rent increase of 8% in the last 12 months or be an increase of rent of 8% in the last 12 months. Is that correct? And then as set forth, were we going to leave and exhibit A, is that what goes there then or is that a state law and. In accordance with state. Law? Okay. So an exhibit is about the just so and then we're not adding any language about. It in the state law and in accordance with state law. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. That's right. Though a tenet. Right. And as authorized by state law. As other. Tax. All right. And then Section six, we were just adding the word, the. Yes member. For. Or does that satisfy your question? I just want to make sure I knew the language I was voting on. Thank you. All right. Any other we adding the definition? Sorry, the the rent. I do want that definition added to the. Definition we added in in the pro life blueprint. First place rent reference, correct? Wherever you put definition as long as it's here. I'm good with that. First place prentiss references. Okay, fine. I think it's section to actually. Say for purposes of this of this ordinance definition of rent is and then. Plug it. Right then. So that being said, I think we could vote on the ordinance at this time, is that correct? So, yeah, I'm assuming that approval of the emergency ordinance. I can. All the any discussion, although some favor. I asked. You now. How many hours is. Next? We already gave direction in return in regards to when it's coming back. That being said, I want to. We don't have any other. Okay. So that being said, I want to thank everyone for being so patient with us. I know this was a. Very late and. Thank you. And meeting adjourned.