AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending Title 28, Article IV of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver regarding the prohibition of discriminatory practices in purchase and rental housing transactions on the basis of source of income. Prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of housing based on buyer’s or renter’s source of income. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-18-18. Amended 7-30-18 to exempt people who rent out a single unit from the prohibitions in the bill.
Lebanese. Comfortable. 686 has passed. Moving right along. Councilman Espinosa, will you please put Council Bill 788 on the floor? I move that council bill 718 788 be ordered published. It has been moved. I need a second. It has been moved and seconded before we open the one hour courtesy public hearing. I do want to offer an amendment that would exempt people who rent out a single unit from the Prohibition Deauville. Council will have an opportunity to ask questions, offer comments and vote on this amendment after the public has had the chance to speak on the amendment and after the public hearing is closed, with the hope that if there are comments on the amendment, that the public is allowed to speak on that before the hearing is closed. So with that, I will move that Council Bill 788 be amended in the following particulars on page six, line 24, after where insert a person owns and makes available for renting, sub, renting, leasing or subleasing only a single unit or where that is the amendment. It has been moved and seconded the amendment. In the in the current drafted bill there is an exemption for a duplex. If you live in a duplex and you rent a single unit on the other side of that duplex. This amendment would extend that exemption beyond just an attached dwelling to if you live in one unit and you rent a second unit, that would also be exempted. This came up for me at a neighborhood meeting in one of my communities that has a lot of long term residents who often have inherited a home from a parent who also lives in that neighborhood. Just have one property that they're renting. They're not really landlords. They have a full time job. They have a family there. They don't have the resources to hire a professional property manager. They're not extremely sophisticated at property management and struggling to manage that property. And so it's extending that instead of saying it has to be attached in a duplex, it is wherever that one unit is at that it would be treated as exempt, but only that one unit. So that is the amendment, if anyone would like to add that to their comments as we go through the hearing on what you think about the amendment, and we will be voting on the amendment after the hearing. So the public hearing for Constable 78 is open. May we have the overview, Councilwoman? Thank you, Mr. President. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. And I think the public for your patients and it's hard being the second or third hearing. So the origins of this bill is, as most of you know, came from community and also a discussion at the Housing and Homelessness workgroup. I want to thank Polly Kyle and my staff who did a lot of the research. There are two simple propositions before us tonight. The first is ensuring that families have access to housing they can afford. We can't just build our way out of that challenge. And so this is a way to expand access to existing units. So that's the first proposition this bill was designed to meet. The second is you should not be turned away from buying or renting a home that you can afford just because of how you pay for it. So we've had a lot of discussion in the process leading up to tonight's hearing about renters. We've previously presented data on folks with disability being turned away from renting, folks with vouchers being turned away. We've also had individuals who have shared stories, either through surveys or with our office, about being turned away because of child support income or because of student loans. On the ownership side, the best practice elsewhere is that these housing ordinances apply to for sale and renter. We did some learning through the process about the for sale side and really this is about turning folks away from even competing for housing based on how they're planning to pay for the house. How does it work? It's first of all, income has to be verifiable. It's not just based on the word of someone that they receive a certain source of income. They have to be able to show verification. Landlords have the right and the power to verify the income to ensure that it's sufficient. That is their decision on what sufficiency is, and then they need to have legitimate business purposes for their decisions. So, for example, if you're in a rental situation, if you take an application on a first come, first serve basis and you rent to the first qualified applicant, nothing in this ordinance requires you to rent a particular unit to a particular tenant. It just means that you have to use legitimate business reasons for making those decisions. You can't base the decision solely on the source of income that someone is presenting on the ownership side. If you are selling your house, same thing. If you take the highest bidder with the fastest closing date, that's a legitimate business reason. Nothing requires you to sell your house to a particular buyer. So what can't you do? We can't advertise. Which happens right now in Craigslist today. I promise if you go on Craigslist, you're going to find an ad for a house that says no one with VA should apply. You're going to see an ad for an apartment that says no vouchers accepted, no more discriminatory advertising. Second of all, you can't prevent someone from applying and competing for housing. And third, you can't deny them solely on the basis of their income. There is a complaint procedure in the bill. It's a bit faster and more focused on administrative revenues remedies. The goal here is that you can appeal to the court house, but this isn't a race to the courthouse. This is about a very common sense administrative investigation. And the goal here is to prevent discrimination before it occurs. So the bill is going to be effective January 1st, and that is intended to allow time to do education, to do prevention, and make sure that we help everyone come into compliance. So there has been quite a bit of discussion leading up to tonight's hearing about administrative questions. A lot of those have focused on the voucher program. Just for public transparency, we've been asked and we've committed to sitting down with any administrators of voucher programs to talk about whether we as a city have tools that we can offer to help. If our peak performance folks, for example, or maybe our technology folks, might have solutions that might help with the administration, you know, federal rules or federal rules. But if there's administrative things we can help with, so we'll be sitting down with any programs willing to meet to to see if we can help with any administrative barriers. Secondly, we've had a lot of discussion and questions about additional protection where there may be damages to a unit that exceed beyond a security deposit. So we were asked and we did Holly, again in my office, did some really extensive research. It just wrapped up on Friday. We just got the kind of memo finished today. And I just want to share with folks, since this is new information, since committee, there are more than a dozen funds that exist to help kind of provide backup protection. They serve slightly different populations. Some of them are just for individuals who may be homeless. Others might cover a broader range of voucher holders. Those that we could get data for at the city level had very few claims. I know we've heard a lot of comments about the risk level here, but the cities we got data from had 0 to 5 claims per year. That was the most there was a. A program that had some higher claims, but it covered an entire state. So so the programs that existed are not heavily used, but they may be very important for the individuals who are using them. So several of the programs such as Seattle were disbanded because they were not used enough. So, so, so not all the programs are still in existence that we researched. I personally and I know others on this council remain open to the proposition that if the fund may be useful and important for individuals, we should keep talking about it. Just as a point of process and legal authority. The Council, under the current city attorneys interpretation, does not have the authority to initiate a spending bill from this dais. So we do not have before us any amendments. We can't amend the bill to do that tonight, but the conversation can continue. So I know there were a lot of questions about that, so I thought it'd be helpful just to discuss that before we take public comment. With that, I look forward to hearing from the public. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right. We have a one hour courtesy hearing, and we do have 22 individuals to sign up to speak. This evening's of. Everyone takes their full time. We will run out of time. So I would ask if you can get your point across and leave some time on the clock. It would be much appreciated to help us get through everybody, I'm going to call the first five speakers up. If you could make your way to the front bench to be ready to jump in and I do apologize if I mispronounce your name. As soon as I call your name, step up to the podium and your time will start. The first five speakers are Thomas Bell, Shelley, Thomas Rocco, Gemma Germano, Gianna Patterson and Maria Furio. Thomas Bell. You are first up and go for it. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to the Denver City Council for taking this issue up with our country facing an affordable housing crisis. And Colorado being. One of the most. Sorry, could you just state your name officially? Of course. My name is Thomas Bell and I live at 2139 South Fork Street in Denver, Colorado, in Councilman Clark's district. And I just want to say that as a single father of two young daughters and a nontraditional college student myself who relies on student aid for my income, I was actually really surprised when I learned about this issue last year, and I was even more surprised to learn that the states and municipalities who have passed this legislation did so mostly about four decades ago. So I'm glad to see Denver finally catching up as we are facing an affordable housing crisis throughout the country. And with our economy being the best economy in the country, people like myself who have grown up in this city are finding it increasingly hard to find access to affordable housing. And I know, Councilman Clark, I sat in your office several months ago with the former director of Hope, Eric Sullivan, and he told us that a solution like source of income, the prevention of discrimination against source of income isn't really viable right now because the prices are so high that the vouchers and things like that don't even cover that. I reject that thinking as a reason for not passing this legislation. I think if we're able to help even a handful of residents of the city and county, then we should do that. So thank you very much for taking this issue up and I strongly encourage you all to support it and not pass the amendment. Thank you. Next up, Shelley Thomas. Hello. My name is Shelly Thomas. I live in Lafayette. I invest in Denver. I have nine rental houses here. This is what life is like as a landlady. You get a letter from Denver Sewer and they say, we've put a camera down the sewer line and there's a problem, the transition from your sewer line to our sewer line, and you have 30 days to fix it. That bill was $4,120 last year. My sister and I own a property together. We put a brand new roof on it. We went ahead and trimmed the tree. This cost a lot of money, but we don't want to be slumlords. We want to be good landlords. And we have small houses 720 square feet, two bedroom, most of them some three bedroom. And then the hailstorm came through and we got to put a brand new roof on again just a month after we put the brand new roof on, that's a 1500 dollars deductible from my insurance. I had 1500 dollars deductible on a multiple of my properties, and that's how they're moving to 1500. So that's a lot of money when all of a sudden you had to put on nine new roofs and you have siding damage, etc. And then this year the windstorm goes through last week and on this tree that we trimmed so that it would be a healthy tree, a branch fell off and hit the roof of the house so we can have another 1500 dollar deductible on our insurance. It's always something someone called a couple of weeks ago and said The sewage is backing up in my house. I can only hope that we can clear the sewer line, 67 year old sewer line. That's why the house is affordable. It's not new. So it only had to spend $10,000 to fix the sewer line. And so you say, you know, this is just one more layer of bureaucracy. Let's go ahead and have me hope to goodness that I don't have five tenants would be tenants apply for one of my houses and I have to say no to four of them. And one of the four that I say no to has a voucher and says, Well, I'm going to go complain. And then I can go to the process of trying to go ahead and say, no, they didn't have the best credit, and if I win or lose, I still waste a lot more time. I'm 52. I'd like to retire in 13 years, but if I can't run my own business and choose my own tenants with all the financial liabilities I already have much less worried about a $5,000 fine for violating your rules. Then I can sell my properties. I can invest in stocks and bonds. I don't have to have affordable rental housing in the city of Denver. So an unintended consequence of making me be a partner with the city of Denver is that I might decide to say, Well, thanks, but no thanks. And when I fix up those houses and sell them, they're not going to go to investor, they're going to go to homeowner occupant, and that affordable housing unit will be off the market. So it's making the situation better for people. You will make it worse. Some of the houses, I think I'll just tear them down and I will build a nice new $800,000 house and I can go ahead and sell that for more money this time. So I'm sorry, but your time is up. Thank you very much, Rocco Germano. Councilman Clark, you did very well with the Italian surname. My name is Rocco Germano, and I'm representing the National Association of Residential Property Managers. It's a trade association where professionals get together with ethics and the know how of doing property management. We we depend on our owners to tell us whether or not they'll accept vouchers. And with the robust market that we have, it makes a pretty sticky situation. I've been through two depressions here in the Denver area. I've been a realtor for 35 years, and affordable housing is nothing new. My dad was born 100 years ago in what was called North Denver or Little Italy. They had the same problem. They were immigrants over here. It was hard to find housing. So it's not that we're, you know, the bad guys in here. In fact, we're here to to say we want to work with the ordinance. And perhaps one of the amendments that was proposed, we very much feel that that's that's more of a linchpin in making the voucher system work. You got to protect the owners as well. And if they have a bad experience, someone exceeds the limit of what their deposit is. They're not really inclined to take vouchers. And I think that's one of the problems. They would be more inclined to take vouchers if we had the city contribute, say, double that amount, because look at it this way. If you double that amount and if they leave the property without any repairs, no money spent on behalf of the city. So, I mean, I'm here to to say the positive things that we can do to alleviate the affordable housing situation. We're here to partner with the community, and that's what we base our our business on. So do take that into consideration. I think that was a wise idea. I go throughout the country twice a year to conventions and I talk to realtors from all over the United States. And there are other solutions other than just, you know, business as usual. I think this is a very innovative idea. And if there is one thing you can take from from my remarks, let's let's explore that. That amendment, double the deposit. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Tianna Patterson. Hi. My name is Tiana Patterson. I am the state and local policy director for Enterprise Community Partners, and I'm in support of 788 because it would benefit all income levels. I think I've visited many of your offices and told you my story of experiencing source of income discrimination. But for those that I haven't, when I was in law school, I had funds that would cover my housing and I ran around two apartments offering to pay six months at a time, pay my rent six months at a time. I went along with my school schedule and I was turned away and I ended up having to get my mom when I was 26 years old to sign to cosign an apartment for me. But what I did, what I haven't shared is that I was in a state of absolute panic for three weeks. That's how long it took me to get an apartment that would accept six month payments and accept a cosigner. And it was just I couldn't understand how I went through taking the LSAT, getting good grades, moving to a new city, not knowing anybody, and then realizing that everything else was lined up in my life except for where I was going to live and study and sleep and eat. And that was about a month before school started. So it wasn't a great way to start off what is arguably one of the most stressful graduate schools to go to, to choose to go to in your life. And there was no option of graduate student housing for law students either. So I think this is just really important to remember that we're talking about thousands of people not restricting it to one income group and not thinking about this only in stereotypes or risks. But sometimes someone had a literal pile of money that they were willing to give you and you turn them away. And so I just think this ordinance is common sense. And I think that to, you know, to put my policy hat back on and leave law school behind for a second. And I, I support this amendment and I support the exception, Councilman Clark, that you've entered that you put forward. And I'd also like to mention that the Neighborhood Development Collaborative property owners, landlords and developers also is in support of this ordinance as well. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Maria Fiorito. And I'm going to call the next five up if you could come to the front bench. Charles MESSICK, Charter Chair, Robert Jim Llorens, John Lucero and Eric Fevola. Go ahead. Microphone's yours. Hi. My name is Maria as Ines Fiorillo. I represent Apartment Concepts Unlimited at 100 Fillmore Street, Denver, Colorado. 80206i am a Denver native. I am a landlord. I would love to accept vouchers, but the problem is the program is very burdensome and it's very tangled and. It's very difficult to. Get through. I hear you talk about that. You want to add more administrative support and try and understand better what's needed on an administrative level. And I appreciate that very much because without this law I would like to accept vouchers, but it doesn't sound like we're quite there yet. I feel like I personally have reached out to Denver Housing who hopes I touch them? Who administers the housing program, the HUD program, and volunteered my time to help work with them to come up with ways that make it easier for landlords to work through the program. I've not been able to get a response back to that. I chose being a landlord as a career. I knew I was going to be in real estate somewhere. My father was in real estate. I chose it because I think it's very important. I feel like I have a really important job. I provide shelter and I provide housing to people. This is a human need. This is one of the basic human needs. And I work really, really hard. To make sure that I do that. Tiana, I would have accepted you. We have a program in our company that if you can prepay six months rent in the deposit, you don't have to show source of income. You still have to meet the other criteria. We work really hard to come up with ways to get people in homes that are going to be great residents and reward them for being great residents. But honestly, we can't renew leases on the voucher program. It takes months to renew a lease. It takes an amazing amount of time just to get someone in the door, to get through the inspection process, to get your. If you make one mistake on the paperwork, they send it back and you start all over. They will not pay you. They will not respond to you. It is really, really hard and it's exhausting because you're already working a lot of hours to get your job done. It's a 24 seven job if someone doesn't have heat in the middle of the night. I worry about that. That bothers me. Every time people pay their rent, they bring in a work order. We have to adhere to everything and take care of them. We want to make sure we can pay our property taxes and we want to make sure that we provide safe, comfortable housing as well. So I guess I'm just asking if maybe you could wait until you're ready. To. Pass this. And I'd be happy to volunteer my time to work with you in any way to to do that. But I just feel like we we need a little more time to put it together so that everyone has the tools to succeed. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, Charles MESSICK. Hello. My name is Charles MESSICK. I'm a regional manager for boutique and warehouse apartments. I manage apartments throughout Denver. I also throughout Colorado. I'd like to thank you for looking into this issue. I'm not really a proponent of the program, but I'm not a detractor either. I am someone with vast experience working with voucher systems. I have managed thousands of units across the United States and still manage properties with vouchers in Denver today. The question that comes up is why do we need an initiative to force landlords to accept vouchers for sources of income? The reason I'm hearing is that there's not enough communities that participate in the program and that people cannot qualify for places to live. And the reasons landlords do not want to participate is because participation requires the owner of the property to suffer from increased administrative burden, increased bad debt expense, increased vacancy and decrease and control of the lease terms. If the owner had the ability to offset these additional expenses, then people of the program would be a more desirable customer. The apartment associations are already taking some steps and working with people in order to try and solve some of these administrative problems. And we are actively working with housing to reduce the administrative burden by streamlining the process. But what we're asking is the city's participation in making this process more attractive for the owners who want to participate. This initiative basically offers the stick, but we also need the carrot. Please consider a couple of things. A 1300 dollars administrative fee is something that we've suggested to be collectible by the landlord to help offset these administrative expenses, perhaps a renewal, a ministry administrative fee, and a fine to offset uncollectable damages after after move out. A limit to the number of units in a building would directly correlate to this particular thing. Right now you have a duplex where one side is owned, but if you have a ten unit building and one person is not in the building, that's a 10% vacancy. And currently the city of Denver has a 96% occupancy level are 4% vacancy. So maybe a 25 unit building or more has to do this. But people with less would not have to suffer from this as much. And then finally, the ability to do variable lease terms on vouchers right now. Voucher programs are for 12 months only and they have to end at the end of the month. And that is not really good business practice for landlords nowadays. They like to do variable lease terms where a person can have their lease end in the summer when they're not moving in. It's now or something to that effect. I think all of these types of things would help actually make it a more desirable program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, chair Robert. My name is Shah Robert and I live at. 2714 East 13th Avenue and Councilman News District. I'm the Family Economic Security Program. Manager at the Colorado Center. On Law and Policy. CCP does research. Education and advocacy on behalf of low income Coloradans. 30 years ago, landlords could legally refuse to rent to families with children, and most. Did, resulting in fewer than one third. Of apartments being available for families with children. It made things very difficult for struggling. Parents of young kids by greatly limiting the available. Housing stock. I was director of the Denver. Women's Commission at the time in 1988. Congress made such discrimination illegal, and it was a very big deal. Congress recognized that families needed access to the same rental opportunities in order to raise children in a stable setting. Stable housing is associated with better. Health and better educational attainment for children. For every 100 families living at 30% of the army, which is roughly 25,000. A year for a family. Of three. There are only 26 available units. If affordable is. 30% of their income. Three fourths of these. Low income families are paying more than half their income on. Rent. This crowds out their ability to pay for other basic needs like transportation. Childcare and food. And currently, only about one in four eligible Coloradoans, who live below. 30% of Amy. Receives a housing subsidy which allows them to pay. A third of their income for rent. Subsidies are so hard to come by. The DHS holds a lottery only two days per year to distribute housing choice vouchers. For those who win one of these housing choice vouchers, they have only 60. Days to find a landlord willing. To accept it or they lose it in a. Tight housing market. Finding a landlord. Who accepts housing choice vouchers. Can be difficult. This bill can make it easier and help families attain economic stability that are that's critical for a family to achieve their full potential. I ask for your support. Thank you. Next up, Jim Lorenzen. Hi, I'm Jim Lorenzo, and I'm president, owner of Cornerstone Apartments, and I also live at 310 Jersey Street. Cornerstone is the largest apartment management company in Denver. Please know we do not care where the money comes from. To pay the rent, we process over $55,000 each month in section eight payments. The source of income is not the problem. Here are the concerns that my apartment owners have. Our normal application process takes less than 24 hours once and new applicant is approved. We can move them into an apartment the next day and they can start paying rent immediately. It takes 30 to 45 days to get a Section eight resident approved and moved in through DHS. This means for my owner is going to lose at least one month's rent to participate in the Section eight program. We manage a 40 unit apartment building with Section eight residents in the Highlands neighborhood. It costs $5,372 per unit per year to manage and operate this building. In comparison for our market rate apartments, we average $4,012 per year top rate. On average, it costs more than $1,350 per year to manage a Section eight apartment. I also serve on the board of the Archdiocese Housing Inc, which provides low income housing across the state. He operates their low income buildings at an even higher cost per unit than Cornerstone. And I guarantee you that the 4100 and excuse me, $4,012 per unit per year that we incur in operating costs, that DHEA and chaff cannot come even close to operating their properties. If we experienced damage in the apartment that exceeds the amount of the security deposit, we can hold a market rate resident responsible. With a Section eight resident, we have no recourse. My question is how can the city in good conscience require an apartment omer owner to participate in a government program that costs a month's rent at the beginning of the process, adds more than 1350 dollars during the course of a one year lease. And then in the event that the resident causes excess damage to the apartment, they have absolutely no recourse. This is not a source of income issue for apartment owners. This is a cost issue for us. And this audit ordinance needs further study before it can be passed. And I would appreciate your support on that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, John Lazaro. Thanks. Councilman John Lazaro, 2195 Decatur Street. I'm testifying tonight on behalf of the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, is the largest local realtor association in the state with over 7000 members. We appreciate Councilwoman the commission's work to promote fair housing and for her willingness to reach out to us. When she made the decision to have the bill apply to for sale as well as rental property. Realtors have a long commitment to fair housing. Having worked at the national and local levels and every amendment to the law at the federal and local levels. For more than 100 years, realtors have subscribed to strict code of ethics. This code includes a commitment to provide equal professional services regardless of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin. And as of 2009, sexual orientation and in 2014, we adopted gender identity. Realtors are proud to lead the way toward greater equality and housing opportunities. And earlier this year, we urge Congress to adopt fair housing protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. When my parents purchased their first home in 1956, they could not buy in the neighborhood they desire to live in, even though they could afford to. Their experience inspired me to be a fair housing advocate. My entire career as a fair housing instructor at the Denver Board of Realtors and served as president of the Colorado Community Housing Resource Board, which was a nonprofit and fair housing watchdog for HUD, including protection regardless of source of income in fair housing is important, especially in this competitive and more expensive market. Please note that in some circumstances, some properties do not qualify for certain types of financing, such as FHA or VA. As such, many sellers agents include in their listing notes that these properties are not eligible for either of those programs. This is not income discrimination, but information that's included to assist the buyer and the buyer's agent in homebuying process. We were initially concerned that the ordinance would prevent a seller who was presented with multiple offers from taking the offer that was in their best interest. Specifically, they wouldn't be able to take a higher cash offer or traditionally financed offer over FHA or VA. However, after extensive conversations with Councilman McKinney and the city attorney's office through Councilwoman Kinney's it, we determined that nothing in this ordinance prevents the seller from taking the offer that's in their best interest. Because of this fact, the Denver Metro Association of Realtors is in support of the bill this evening. Members do have concerns, as you'll hear a few more about the landlords side of the ordinance. So we respectfully request that the city carefully monitor and report back on the number of sources of income discrimination complaints that are received on the rental and also for the resale site. Again, thank you for your time and commitment to promoting fair housing. We too are committed to this notion of want to encourage your support of this ordinance. Thank you. Next up, we have Eric Zavala and I'm going to call the next five up, Marianne Thompson, Chelsea Thomas, David Roybal, Chris Lopez and are connected. Hello. My name is Eric Sevilla and I live in Lewisville, Colorado. I have a few rentals in the Denver area and I would just like to point out that. After I leave here tonight, I'm going to be making some calls to tenants that are applying for a house that we manage and as sole proprietors and hardworking individuals . This is an important aspect for us. I know that there's I'm not in support of the bill, by the way, but I understand and I appreciate the concept and the attempt to try to bridge this gap. But in no sense is there any discrimination against people individually as far as good people being able to rent properties. This is about a level playing field of having to be forced to do business with the city of Denver and have a third party on a lease, which is now the city of Denver. Because not only are you signing a lease with this tenant that you're meeting and greeting and having a future relationship with for the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months. We now have a silent partner that's being forced on us, which is a rental authority that's going to have to come in, do inspections on the property, which is, in my opinion, a violation of privacy issue. The $5,000 fine that is proposed here is a fairly astronomical charge and. The and many of the landlords that are out here, I know that there's just probably this assumption that it's all these big conglomerations and big corporations that are running these apartment buildings. But there are a lot of us individuals that stay up and work until ten, 12:00 at night just to make ends meet and provide good housing and take great pride in doing that for people. And it's not about. Discriminating against to where people get the income from. This is about the level playing field of the extra work that we have to do. If we have to start taking vouchers, if we're forced to, because we're accepting this responsibility of scheduling extra inspections, losing last time, I doubt somebody is going to be able to be around for me to call on some kind of a government staff at 9:00 tonight when I have questions about how to get this done. There's a difference in how small businesses operate versus government entities. And with all due respect to you, volunteering and doing what you do to promote this great place that we live in in Denver, I object to the way that this is currently written. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Mary Ann Thompson. Hi. My name is Mariana Thompson. I represent Denver. Homeless out loud. First and foremost, I want to thank Robin Carnation each and every one of you for bringing this needed subject to to the table. I experience homelessness from 2012 to 2016. Now, I had a voucher and I was discriminate Section eight voucher and I was discriminated. I did not know about fair housing at the time because I had no one to help me through the ropes. I do not know that. Oh, someone could just turn me down because. Well, I think that this one bedroom would fit more of a couple. But that's not what you said when you turned around and you had your advertisement to same thing with AP old age pension. I ended up with breast cancer. I was in transitional housing, so I ended up being forced on. To make a long story short. Folks, money is money, right? Whether it's turnip, whether it's A&E, whether it's OJP, whether it's SSDI, whether it's Social Security. There are people. Right now on the street. With A&E pending SSDI. It takes almost four years or more for them to get their SSDI. Most of them because of mental illness that I have volunteered with. So we have. People on the street. I get it that we don't have enough housing. I get that. I do get that. At the same time, what I don't feel that anyone should be turned away for housing based on the source of income. Just like Robin said, if it's legal and it's verifiable, what's. I mean? I rent it many times privately. The same. Same thing goes. You. You have to bring in your paycheck stubs. They verify your income. What's the difference between that and a a A&E or AP? Anyways, I just want to say that we are discriminating. Just like years ago, people did not. Have a roof over their house or could not live in a neighborhood because of the color of their skin or their gender or whatever. Let's make this a let's pass this and make this another way that more people can have a house and have keys. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chelsea Thomas. Good evening and thank you, council members. I've heard a lot of different perspectives tonight from some small investors and also larger corporations. I own two and five, six rental houses and I live in Villa Park along with them in Lopez's district. Speaking at this to you guys, from a very small perspective, I find the the current wording very worrisome. I own a share of multiple houses, six total. But even if one of those if I rent it out and I get multiple applicants and I accept the best tenant for the property. My main concern is what if one of those people that I sadly had to turn away decides that I discriminate against them based on their source of income when that wasn't really the issue at all? What are my recourses as a small landlord with very little financial resources and any kind of large backing? Who's going to stand on my side from the city's perspective, or is it going to be the city trying to defend the person that they think was discriminated against instead? I think that there are some unseen consequences here. Small investors like myself who work for myself and for my family. We take a lot of pride in what we do. We really care about our houses and we really care about the people who live in them. We have some great tenants who actually moved from one house to another because they just like working with us. Sturgess I think it's a really complex problem and I'm glad that you guys are trying to work on it, but I think that it does require further study. We're really not there yet. There are huge questions and I've heard some of them voiced, I'm not going to repeat them, but I appreciate all the research that you've done , Councilwoman. I still think that there's more work that needs to be done, especially with smaller landlords who have some different perspectives, perhaps than the larger corporations, even looking at the larger entities. I will say that just this weekend, my sister, who owns one of the houses with me, my younger sister, she said, hey, do you want to buy my share of the house out from me? Because I don't want to deal with this. I'm scared of what's really going to mean in the long run, and I'm not sure if I can handle it. I can't handle the pressure and the stress. And I, I basically said to her, well, if it's really going to be that stressful, maybe we'll sell the house completely and buy a house in another city and county where we don't have to worry about it. So, again, talking to this unseen consequences, decreased housing supply, I think maybe people have mentioned. If this is a cost that the landlords have to take on, it's going to also mean increased rents. And because we're going to offset that some way, it's not just about us making money, it's about us offsetting the costs that we incur. So please, please, thank you for your time. But I think this is this requires a little bit more thought and maybe even some more input from some of the people that you've heard here tonight. Definitely willing to work with you if you need somebody for that. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, David Roybal. I don't see here anymore. Chris Lopez. All right. Are us connected? We'll be connected. Yeah. Hi. My name is Brittany Catalina. I'm a resident of Denver and I'm an owner of Be Connected, which is a startup business that focuses on the gaps. Focuses on the gaps between the public and private sectors that affects people's ability to get into housing. We do this specifically through education and streamlining services. I hear a lot about the HUD processes, the reasons why owners can't work with voucher holders. And one of the things that our business is doing is specifically working on those gaps. A background does come in from HUD. Also, I have lived experience. I grew up in project based housing too, so that's where my passion within housing comes from. So anyone who wants to talk about some of those issues that are affecting owners ability to take some of those voucher holders, our business is very much decreasing those number of days and we're starting to track that so we can combat some of the things that are coming through. But anyhow, one of the gaps to service that our business has looked at and feels like is a huge issue and barrier to people. Getting into housing is a source of income. This disproportionately affects people with disabilities, elderly students, working class sectors, veterans and other verified incomes. In 2016, the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities did a study on Colorado, specifically looking at the Section eight renters, not the supportive housing vouchers that we see, not the state vouchers. What you see so specifically with Section eight, renters are closely to 30,000. Section eight renters. Specifically. These renters where 30, 34% elderly, 25% adults living with disability, 7% of adults living with children and 5% of adults with disability who also had children. In addition to our state providing. Just over 15,000. Units within project based housing. Specifically bring these up because I feel like one sector is putting a lot of effort in. We're spending a lot of money into housing. We bring it up. We cannot build out of this issue. We have to challenge it. Currently, we are 172,000 sorry, 23% of Colorado's renters are 30% am. I am below. Currently we are 127,000 units short. We cannot expect us to build our way out of this. Instead, we need to educate ourselves and challenge the current issues that are happening within housing. I believe that it has to come both from a public and private sectors, and we can't just continue to build. We have to provide avenues for access. And one of the ways is very much bringing up who are these renters? It's marginalized renters. It's your students. It's not just S.E. We also work with marginalized renters. We work all the way up to 60%. Ami, every day we're getting questions. We're tracking that so we can start to challenge some of the biases and things that are coming up and provide some studies. So thank you. And we are in support of 788. Thank you. Next up is Suzanne Thomas and then I'll invite Aubrey Household, Kim Hilton, Robert Fischer and Debbie Wilson to the front bench. And Suzanne Thomas, you're up. Hello. I'm Suzanne Thomas. I live at 32 six West Eighth Avenue and Paul Lopez, this neighborhood, Villa Park. And I'm here to say that it seems like you're trying to solve a problem with the wrong approach. The problem is with vouchers, they're difficult to use. They cost a lot of money to the landlord. You say to somebody, you have to take them. I make $45,000 a year cash flow, offer 15 rental houses. I do not own them free and clear. My youngest mortgage is two years old, is going to be 28 years. I'll be 80 years old when it's paid off. The other one, the oldest one, is 12 years in. I'll be 70 years old when it's paid off. That's when my cash flow will increase. In the meantime, you're asking me to take a voucher that I may not get rent for six weeks. On a project it's renting for 1400 dollars. That's almost $3,000, up to $3,000 I could not get. If I multiply that by two or three houses a year, you're taking away a great portion of my income. And you said, well, that's just what it costs to do business in Denver. So what if I choose not to do business in Denver? Does this help the problem of housing or does it make it worse? Now, part of the reason I don't have a huge income is because I do have affordable houses. One house I purchased, I've got a gentleman who 75 years old, he's lived there 30 years. I gave him a lifetime lease for $350 a month. And yes, I take students with student loans, but I do not want to be in a situation where I'm facing $5,000 fine. I don't want to be a situation where I'm working with the government as my partner. I don't want the additional administrative hassle. I already work late at night painting houses, making them cute for people. It's not going to do tomorrow night because I'm here tonight at this meeting and I want to say you need to solve the real problem and you say that we can't build enough. And that may be true. But encouraging landlords like me to leave the city of Denver or to build big houses that are not eligible for the programs is not going to help. I do recommend that when you look at the to use zoning, I talked to one lady at a meeting at a library and they said we don't want to allow landlords to build a use behind their houses because too many of them would do it, would get too many rental units, it would annoy the neighbors. And I understand totally why you wouldn't want to do that in most of the neighborhoods in the city of Denver. And I don't know if Paul would agree or not, but Villa Lopez, I mean, Villa Park, we've got a lot of houses that are 600 square feet, two bedroom houses on 6000 square foot lots. And I think you might want to approach this in the sense that if as a landlord, I was allowed to build a second small rental, I'd rather do that than have one giant expensive house. But if I build that second small rental, even if you allow it and say, no, I have to take vouchers and maybe I get the rent and maybe I don't. Maybe I just build a big house and sell it or rent it instead. And that doesn't help the problem. It makes it worse. And that's what other people have mentioned tonight. We are small business owners. We're not rich. We don't have a lot of cash flow. And this exemption for one house, I appreciate that. But for me, that won't do any good. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Ari has told. Good evening, councilmembers. My name is Aubrey Household, and I'm the advocacy manager at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, and I'm also a Denver resident. And I'm here in strong support of this ordinance. Tonight at CCH, we house about 3000 families each night, and that is through our own properties, as well as through our partnerships with landlords , through the community. We work with hundreds of landlords to get some of these tenants in who have these nontraditional sources of income like vouchers. And there might be some fear there. And so what we've actually had to do is create a position at the coalition called Housing Navigator, and this person has had to work specifically what these landlords to build relationships, kind of dismiss some of that fear that's there and some of those stereotypes that exist and get some of our clients in. And our landlords have had really great experiences. They keep coming back doing this year after year. And one of the things that we haven't talked about tonight, and that is some a high point for a lot of our landlords, is that in many of the vouchers that we work with, aside from Section eight, we work with about a dozen. And many of those have wraparound services that help keep people housed successfully. And so if there is an issue, there is somebody there that is able to help remedy that right away. So that's something that keeps people coming back. I also want to mention that we conducted a survey in January of Colorado residents, primarily in the Denver metro area, and we asked about source of income discrimination. And what we found was that of tenants who said that they had been discrete or that they had been rejected for rental housing. 47% said it was because of their source of income. So we've heard from some really well-meaning landlords tonight, but this is a huge problem and we can't ignore it all across Denver. And this body has recognized the seriousness of the housing crisis. Denver has done a lot to invest in some tools to address it and get people into housing, tear down some of those barriers that we have. And this bill just ensures that we're able to fully utilize these tools and those aren't going to waste. And I just want to mention that we are in support of the amendment and to exempt just one unit, but we don't want that to go any further. But one unit we think is fine and we're also in support of the fine for landlords who may incur more damage. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Kim Hilton. Hi, everyone. I'll make this quick. I know it's been a very long night, so I'm just going to read. And if I don't look at you. Guys, I apologize. I know we're all getting tired. My name is Kim Helton. I am the CEO of Ego Summit Property Management were based in Centennial, Colorado. We manage over 700 single family homes in the Denver area. We have discussed why we are here today with our owners and found the majority. Say they will sell their homes to avoid. The fines if forced to take vouchers without major improvements to the current current. Voucher programs already in place. If sold. These developers would likely. Gobble up these family friendly. Homes at sale and convert. Them to high priced. Condos for the. Upwardly mobile professional. Some improvements. Examples that are needed are quicker payments at start up to avoid lost income for months. After new move. In quicker responses from. Caseworkers when problems arise. Protect the owner if the resident damages the home, have more penalties to the resident. Who is on the voucher and cover. The loss. Beyond deposit, enforce and improve the policies you have. Hire more staff. Train the staff to be consistent under one procedure, straighten. Strengthen your infrastructure. This has nothing to do with the person or how they get the money. It has to do with the programs in place that do not protect. The owners at all. When problems arise. This would be a loss to Denver and to our company. We would charge an additional 20% per annum for the extra staff compliance and inspections pricing would then. Be based on Denver and non Denver. Properties. We are putting the cart before the. Horse without first looking at. All of the problems. You might then find the owners are not the sole cause of what you consider discrimination claims. We need to keep. This voluntary and. We can address these concerns fully without. Rush. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Robert Fisher. Good evening, council members. My name is Robert Fisher and I'm an advocate with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. I'm here to support council bills. Seven, eight, eight. I think this bill would be good for Denver, Colorado, and it also would ensure that persons with a source of income, limited resources, income would not be a barrier and accessible and accessing affordable housing. Denver has experienced a rapid growth in population. Rents are rising and neighborhoods are without an adequate supply of affordable housing. A 2017 report by the Urban Institute called Denver and the state of low and middle income housing states that rental cost burdens for low and middle income families are 46 to 82% of their total incomes. This report also states that the new housing units being built in Denver are for residents of low to moderate incomes or those of 50 to 120%, and by those who are 50% to below 30%. I am I there's no affordable housing for them. I think this bill would help them a whole lot. This population is being displaced and becoming homeless. More than half of the displaced people are 55 and older. Many are families. This bill will prohibit the discriminatory practices on the basis of income and give all those who choose to live in Denver. Denver a chance to participate in all aspects of life, including affordable housing. I am 60 years old. I have multiple disabilities. I've been displaced and I live in my car because I'm below 30%. Am I? I would love to have a place, but you know what? It doesn't seem to be possible in Denver. I am on an anti placement policy network and I'm working alongside Councilwoman Robin Keech and Councilman Brooks. Denver is about one of ten cities selected to participate in a network of advancing strategies that will halt the forces that are pushing low income people, marginalized people and people of color out of the cities. At the same time, this network is creating the conditions for our cities and communities to thrive by developing new and innovative ideas by path. Sorry, Mr. Fisher, but your time is all up. Thank you very much. Yeah. Next up, Debbie Wilson. And I'll invite our last two speakers Andrea, Shira Boga, Fleur and Andrew Hamrick up to the frontbench. Go ahead. Good evening. Members of the council. My name is Debbie Wilson. I'm with the law firm of Springer and Braden Wilson and Pontius and I live at 3193 West 36th Avenue in north west Denver. And I'm here because I heard about this source of income proposal. And I am very much an advocate for affordable housing. I represent many thousands of landlords and tens of thousands of doors in the Denver area. I reached out to my clients and just said, Hey, what do you think about this source of income legislation? And I was deluged with dozens of phone calls and emails from my clients going and mostly my smaller clients. I have to be clear in a panic saying city council is not going to really consider this or think about passing a mandate, forcing us to take vouchers. And they, you know, went off into a litany of horror stories. But I think one of the things that well, I just want to say this right away, all the speakers have made excellent points, but I have a lovely client who takes cash vouchers, stashes dealing with the VA, with our soldiers and sailors that come back with mental health issues, disabilities. And he has become because he wants to help those that group an expert at navigating the complexity of HUD and the Veterans Administration and BASH And he takes the vouchers and he has kind of a boarding house and has all these wonderful people in there and some services to help with mental health issues . And if you pass this ordinance, it will destroy that program, because then he would have to take anybody with any kind of source of income, and he would be prohibited from saying, I want to focus on this group and help our soldiers and sailors. So sometimes the unintended consequences of some well-meaning legislation has some real devastating effects. I have clients that deal with CCH and they love them. I mean, the programs she just spoke, they have some good people at the program and they will take the vouchers, but they won't take DHEA and DHEA. The THEA programs and HUD are complex. DHEA does wonderful work. And Mike, many of my clients deal with them, but my smaller clients, you know, they have maybe ten units or less, really struggle to understand the complexities of HUD, of the program dealing with the front end costs. We've already had some people testify that, you know, you unlike conventional housing, you don't have to take your your unit off the market while you're screening and going through the leasing process. But with Section eight, you have to and you're often taking it off the market for a month before you get approval. And the inspector out there and that's the realities of this program guessing, just saying $1,000 a month is a rent. That's $1,000 out of pocket and that person may not even pass. The approval process. And you're out that money. And so the smaller landlords go, wait a minute, I, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But your time is all over. Thank you very much. Thank you very. Much. Next up, Andrea. Chair above the floor. Hi. My name is Andrew. As you do, what I've learned has really good, good job. I'm the lead housing organizer for 9 to 5 Colorado. I was living yesterday in Councilwoman Black's district, and I was moved to Councilman Espinosa's district. So congratulations. And so we're a grassroots member based organization that works on policies to lift up women inside and outside of the workplace. In the for the past few years, we've been working on housing. Specifically, we did a survey between 2015 and 2016 of almost 10,000 tenants to identify the biggest barriers. We didn't specifically ask tenants about being turned away for source of income, but we did collect anecdotal stories of of people being turned away. And not just for vouchers. Just a reminder, this is not just about vouchers. People are being turned away for a lot of different types of income. One of our members who's not able to be here today, Nicole, as a housekeeper, told me this, I have Section eight and cannot find a place that accepts that. I also have experience with both my child care support and student loans being denied as usable income. Me and my kids were practically homeless. Homeless because I was a single mom finishing my degree and wasn't working, so nobody would accept my income. I had a credit score of 803. My student loans and grants would have qualified me along with the child support, and I had a willing cosigner. I was turned away left and right. I was consumed with looking for a place. Aside from the many application fees, it was a nightmare. Currently in Colorado there are no limit. We have very few rights and so if we're talking about leveling the playing field, we should really think about actually creating more rights for tenants. And we ranked 43rd in terms of how tenant friendly our policies are. On a recent study on a website called Rent Cafe, and this is not this would not mandate people to accept anybody with a voucher. If people don't have the right credit score, if they have a background, if they don't make enough money, it's you. Landlords would still be able to turn those people away. It just gives people a chance. And I mean, right now, the decision really is, are we going to do more to prevent homelessness and pushing people further into poverty, into situations where they're unstable, don't have jobs, or are we going to help those folks and perhaps put a burden on landlords that may or may not happen depending on if if vouchers even are come about in their in their units. So I really think I encourage you all to think and prioritize our homeless population and folks looking for housing right now. Thank you. Thank you. Last up, Andrew Hamrick. All right, that concludes our speakers. Are there questions from members of Council Councilman Cashman? Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not sure who to direct this to. I'll ask my colleague, Councilwoman Connie Chung. If you don't have it, we can ask someone else. How many vouchers are there? That would be part of this program. So there are just under 6000 housing choice vouchers that are issued by Denver Housing Authority in Denver County and more than 5000 of them, in spite of the stories we're hearing tonight, are housed in Denver. So 12%, about 700 or so, are unable to find housing in Denver and have to go to other counties. They can report their their voucher. As I mentioned, there were probably a dozen other programs. Some of them are very small. We administer a couple of them through our partners or the city funds a couple of them through partners. So there's not I don't have I was unable to find a total number of all the voucher, specifically when you add those other programs in. But the housing choice voucher program is the largest. Thank you. My other question to Mr. Guerrero, would you mind stepping up to the mic? We hear a lot about the problems with dealing with with DHS and getting paid. And it takes too long for people to be able to move in. Can you address that, please? Yes. Good evening, everybody. Good to be with you at this late hour. And obviously, I always enjoy talking about the our voucher program or any of our programs at the Housing Authority. I'm Ismael Guerrero, the executive director of the Denver Housing Authority. And just a couple of points since I have the mike, too, to share about the program. I think, as Councilwoman Kennish mentioned, we are the largest housing authority in the region. We actually administer about 6700 vouchers, currently only leasing up about 6000 because of the current funding shortage from HUD. So we don't have the funding to be fully leased. We are second largest voucher administrator in the state. The Colorado Division of Housing actually administers more. But in Denver, we have the vast majority of the vouchers for over the last ten years, the housing authority has been ranked as a high performing program. Our Housing Choice Voucher in the Sea Map program, the Section eight Management Assessed Assessment Program through HUD, has ranked our program as a high performer, meaning we're in compliance, meeting all our deadlines and monitoring reports. So at a national level, we are a high performer in that region, in that area, and also on an annual basis, we work from anywhere between 2520 800 landlords, private landlords in the city of Denver who choose to participate in the program. So we have a large number of landlords, private landlords that we work with on an annual basis. I think we are always open and looking for ways to improve our operations, the efficiency of our program and to ensure that we provide good client service to our residents as well as good service to our our landlords who are one of our only or precious relationships that we manage and value in the city. Among the things that we have done as part of our continuous improvement program. Just to in response, some of the concerns you heard today, we have been working on a way to streamline our initial this process and currently we can do from initial issuing of a voucher to lease up as quickly as two weeks. We've improved the way our our inspectors go out. They have 24 hours to schedule an inspection. When they go out there, they bring their they lease with them so the lease can be signed and executed once the inspection is completed. There are always, you know, challenges and initial lease up or initial setup if it's a new landlord or a new tenant. But we're doing very well at that. A two week process that we are committed to. Not every lease up goes out smoothly. Unfortunately, there are extenuating circumstances and that's why, as we were hearing the feedback today, we'll be looking for ways to continue to improve that. Some other things that we've done is to ensure that most of our I think all of our landlords at this point are on auto deposit. So we cut checks weekly and we can process checks and deposit payments on a weekly basis to landlords as they get set up. And then we've also been focusing with our tenants institute of what's called the Goldstar program. So that's one where our tenants, before they are issued their voucher, have the opportunity to go through an orientation program and really how to be good tenants, what the expectations are from landlords, what it means to rent a property if they haven't previously, and how to ensure that they can maintain their tenancy once they do lease up . And so those are just three examples of things that we're doing. But as I mentioned, we're always open to additional improvements that we can make in our processes. I believe that you are. Why does it take two weeks to get someone moved in? Why does it take that? Why does it take two weeks? So that that goes from the time that a tenant. So, again, this is unfortunately and as you heard, it is a program that comes with some administrative oversight and administrative requirements. It is. Many of the program requirements are HUD regulation. So we don't have a lot of options there. Among the probably the biggest delay in that process, the two key steps are the housing quality inspection that has to be scheduled and the unit has to be inspected, pass inspection as part of the process. And who inspects. That? The Housing Authority? Our staff. Yep. And again, we've instituted a policy of 24 hours from the time we're notified that a tenant's ready to move. Has selected a unit to when we make contact with the property owner. Then it's a question of scheduling availability till we can get in there. A second step is the reasonable rent calculation that we have to do to ensure that that unit that the rent that's being requested is reasonable given comps in the area. So those are sometimes two additional steps that would otherwise have to be followed. Sure. On an ongoing basis, once a client moves in. How long does it take to generate the monthly rent. We pay on a monthly basis? It's automated, so once they're in the system and set up, the checks are deposited into the landlord's account on a regular basis. Thank you, Mr. Guerrero. Thank you, Mr.. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I think your microphone. Can initiate some of the speakers this evening said that this law would require them to take people who had Section eight vouchers. Can you please clarify that? Yeah, it would require. Them to consider them where they had adequate income. So the vouchers typically have a fair market rent value estimate. Of what kind of rent? Think of it sometimes it's called a hunting license, I think. You can go look for an apartment with a 1100 dollars rent, or you can go look for an apartment for either a 1300 dollar rent or whatever it is you're authorized for. And so if you you have to consider those individuals, you wouldn't be able to put an ad up on Craigslist that said no vouchers need apply. But, you know, if you had a $2,000 apartment in, the person only had authorization for 1100 dollars. Obviously, they would not be eligible for that unit. You could tell them that you would, you know, whatever the conversation would be. But so it's about being considered. It's about a chance to compete. It's not about a requirement that you have to take any particular tenant. Okay. So just wanted to clarify that. And then I know that several people are concerned about fines. And, you know, everyone we heard from tonight is a small business person that owns a small some rental homes or small apartment buildings or something. And I've heard from people in my district in that same situation. And so can you explain how those fines would work? Because personally, I also would be very terrified of a $5,000 fine. So can you please. Thank you. In fact, it's a very narrow fine if you you guys, I think, have the ordinance in front of you. But it is only applicable where one of two conditions is met. The first is that the individual was refused housing and there's no replacement unit available. Right. So if there's you know, if you have a, you know, multiple units and you refuse them a unit, you went through a process, you were found to have refused the unit. And you're willing then at the end to offer them another unit, then that's it. There would be no penalty or where there's an order to stop discriminating. Right. So maybe there's been multiple cases of discrimination, the or the advertising. Again, it comes up the department issues an order and says you may no longer turn people away who call you and say, you know, hey, I've got this thing. Can you can you take me? No, no, I don't take that source of income. You have an order that says, stop doing that and you violate the order. Those are the only two circumstances where the fine applies. So if you have a first time instance where this occurs, there is no penalty unless you're unable to make the person you know, give them access to the unit. And again, that's at the conclusion of a process whereby there's been both a department investigation as well as the potential the landlord has the right to choose a hearing officer and be heard. The one other thing, if I can sneak it in real quick because it hasn't come up previously, is that the ordinance allows the individual who's involved in a complaint to withdraw the complaint at any time. That's intentional in order to encourage the potential for mediation of results. Right. So the goal here is that there's a lot of pathways, very narrow circumstances where a fine applies. And it's really where you've disregarded in order. And who does who? Who would one complain to? What agency is this? So this is an amendment that we're running tonight to the to the Denver Anti-Discrimination Ordinance, sometimes known as data. And it is administered by the Human Rights and Community Partnerships. So they have an individual who is in charge of taking complaints. Has been doing it quite a while. And they all already take complaints against for all the other types of discrimination that are in our ordinance. So they have some experience. We will get them more training during this lag time before there is an affected data so that they can see this particular training for this particular method. Okay. Thank you. And I have just one more question. Okay. So Mr. Lorenzen was here earlier, but I think he left and I had a letter from him, as I'm sure we all did in our mailboxes. But he referred to a normal application process takes 24 hours. So this is probably for you, Mr. Grant. He says once a new applicant is approved, they can move into the apartment the next day and pay rent. It takes 30 to 45 days to get a Section eight resident approved and moved in. But you just got through telling us it takes two weeks. So this is not the standard. And then I believe Debbie Wilson referred to if someone has applied. That you have to take it off the market. Is that correct? So two points there. One, I think, to Mr. Lorenzo's earlier comment, certainly in today's housing market, where in our city the high cost of housing and the low supply, I know and you know, we have experienced that when a unit becomes available, there are easily ten applicants the same day, you know, knocking down the door, trying to get that unit because there's such a short supply. So certainly understand that today units are being rented very quickly to, you know, same day people are coming with their check because they need the unit, as I mentioned earlier answer to do an initial lease up with us. It does take we've got a process that we can do it in two weeks if everything goes, you know, as as planned. And we can get the inspections scheduled quickly. In particular, the the the the off market question, I'm not sure the pilot exactly there it is certainly once a unit has been a tenant, has identified a unit that they want to lease and the landlord has accepted that tenant for that unit. That's when we received the notice for tenant. Thereafter, rental requests for tenant occupancy. And that's what kicks us, kicks off our process. So it may be that during that two weeks to even the first month, while we're getting the unit inspected and the initial payment process, that unit does have to be held for that tenant because the commitment has been made by the landlord that that's that that unit will be available for them. So that's after the landlord has already accepted that tenant. Yes. Okay. So back to you, Councilwoman Canete. If. If if the landlord wanted, if it was available, as Mr. London's paragraph says, it's available that day when two people apply and one person can start paying rent the next day, and one person is applying with vouchers. But it's going to take two weeks. Can the landlord accept the tenant who can start paying rent the next day? This is where I have to be honest, where decisions based on specific facts as a legislative branch, I cannot comment. Right? So what I can tell you is that the investigator in this case would look at all those facts and evaluate whether there was a legitimate business reason for the decision or whether the decision was discriminatory. And so that's the training they'll get. That's the training that all of the other states and cities that do this will provide. We're going to, you know, do some cross training and all that stuff. But I think that, you know, I just can't theorize as to what an investigator or hearing officer would rule in a particular case . Okay. Cause that's pretty, pretty fact specific. I'm sorry. Got it. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman, new. Council is just following up on that question of you have two equal or three equal candidates. They all have in common the Section eight, you have verified income and they're all qualified from the income level. The landlord can choose whoever they want, right? Yeah. I think that it may be helpful to use an example, let's say with gender, for example, you know, if you have three folks who apply and two our men and one is women, it's not illegal to rent to a guy. It's not you don't have to rent to a woman. What you can't do is turn the woman away because she's a woman. Right. And so that analogy, I think, is the best way to kind of then go back to the income thing if they're using legitimate business reasons. Right. They don't have to rent to the voucher holder, but they have to be making it for legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons. So this is about guaranteed opportunity. It's not about guaranteed outcomes. Right. Okay. So the listener does have the freedom to choose on a legitimate business premises. Candidates have a longer employment status. They've been in employment as long as they could be a legitimate reason for that. This person's better. Okay, just an example. Let's just go to we've had a lot of small homes being used as examples tonight. So that situation there where you have multiple candidates, we're in that same situation. Right. So that small business owner with a single family home they're renting really has a great advantage in that situation. They're not they shouldn't feel at a disadvantage. Right. Because they have multiple and for legitimate business reasons, they can choose whoever they like, whether it's Section eight or not. Right. Yes. I mean, as I understand your question, the ordinance, the same answer applies by. Manager. Small but smaller, large, I think the same answer. So you have a large where you have multiple units that are vacant. Okay. And then you then you have, you know, four units that are vacant, three candidates, one Section eight. Then that Section eight candidate will really be able to get the one of those units right. There wouldn't be a strong business reason to not allow that person. Right. Again, I'm not I'm not going to make legal conclusions for for a department that's going to administer it. But it sure sounds like it'd be tough facts if you if you said, nope, I don't have a unit and there was a vacant unit, that would be a tough act to overcome in an investigation. Was real clear. So if you've got multiple candidates you the landlords really know the disadvantage that the seemed like to me. So, Ishmael, let me ask you a question around this, this whole issue of getting approval. Okay. So you say a resident gives the landlord 30 or 60 days notice and you have a candidate that comes in . Could you do a pre-approval before that rental unit is vacant so that landlord will not lose any money? You understand what I'm saying? Yes. Can you can you say if the landlord says yes, I'll read to you, but I've got to get approved and get it all, all taken care of and ready to get payment. As soon as that the person leaves and you're housed here. Is that is that possible? So the. It's trying to think through our process. I think the important thing to know is our families who have vouchers are effectively pre-approved in terms of eligibility, income, background. You know, we do a basic criminal background check before they're issued a voucher, so they're effectively eligible for the for the program. What I'm talking about is the inspection and the comparable right area that sounds like that's going to take the most time. But if you've got enough time to do it before that apartment becomes vacant, then landlords not going to lose any money. Right. And I think the only there is hesitating is just thinking through procedurally or operationally how that would work. And the challenge could be doing the inspection of a unit while it's still occupied before the prior tenant has has moved out. It's certainly something that we would be open to exploring. And I think as councilwoman offered earlier, you know, working with with other agencies with that kind of process improvements to see any and every way that we can shorten that timeline to pre approvals to ensure that the that the landlords are not losing any as they say a vacancy lost because of the time it takes for the tenant to be able to move in. And if a place is inspected and does it have to be inspected again and again for every new person in U.S. aid that has to lease? Are you going through the same process for every one that there's the leasing that you did, whether you inspected it six months ago or not? So there are currently we have to inspect every unit on initial Lisa. HUD has allowed us. Now there's some streamlining happening within the HUD housing choice voucher program. One is biannual inspection, so we don't have to inspect the unit every year. We can go to a two year every two years before it has to be inspected again. And then on larger properties are on when way our project basing vouchers or committing a number of vouchers to a property, we can do a sample inspection. And that's primarily on new construction, however. So the HUD rules are shifting a little bit to be more streamlined. And that's why I hesitate a little bit, because I know there's some statutes that have been changed, but HUD has not issued the regs, the regs and how that's going to be implemented. Like you could do. Some of that pre-approval will be a lot easier because you're not you know, you're not putting out any money until actually the person takes hold of them. Yeah, exactly. And we are also encouraging some of our tenants who are issued new vouchers to lease in place, meaning if they already are in a rental unit, to consider working with the landlord to lease that same unit rather than look for a new unit, just certainly because of how tight that current housing market is. Okay. Thank you. One last question, Councilman Kennish. I was really surprised to hear that the other cities or the the actual usage is so low. And actually, you said Seattle discontinues further one of the reasons what happened. What what are the reasons for that? Well. I think one of the facts that wasn't shared very clearly tonight is that every landlord is allowed to and still encouraged to use a security deposit. And so it's the best way to protect themselves from damage. And so if landlords follow that best practice and they have damage to their unit, that is the first place you go to get reimbursed. These funds in other cities only kick in then after. So if you have damage that exceeds the security deposit, that's when you would go to these funds. And I think the short story is that there aren't that many cases where the damage exceeds otherwise. Landlords would have done claims in these in these programs. And and so, you know, I think it doesn't mean it never occurs, doesn't it? But it just means that for whatever reason, either the security deposit is covering folks. The other thing that got shared tonight that I'm a little I just want to correct the record. There was a statement made that there's no recourse if you have, you know, an issue with the voucher holder. And I just want to share the fact that nationally and I don't know if numbers are different nationally, a third of voucher holders are working, which means that they have wages in addition to their voucher. And among so a third are working. Who are the rest? While the majority of the rest are seniors and disabled folks, most of whom qualify for SSI. You know, some of these other there was our sources of income in addition to the voucher. So if you do have a situation where you have damage or something, you can go after, you know, go to a collections agency or go to a garnishing of of income sources. There are some other recourses available. So I don't have data on how many landlords in these other cities are using those other methods. But but there's only a small percentage of voucher holders who are who are probably are homeless residents who may have zero income. Most the vast majority have another source of income. Along with their voucher. So there is some other income to go after if you have an issue with the tenant. Not saying it's easy to collect, but it's also not easy to collect from folks who cause damage, who don't have vouchers. So we'll just just make sure I understand I didn't quite understand. Your answer to the first question was because they actually didn't have people that were using the program whatsoever. No. They were just people who were using the program that that were denied. Yeah. Let me just give you a few examples. So there were 90 households eligible and three claims made in Portland, Oregon. There's just there were 299 households eligible for another program in Portland and 333 claims were made. That's over the course, by the way, of seven years. So these numbers are over multiple years, over different funds. So in Norfolk, Virginia, they had 12 claims over five years, six claims over four years. So so I'm just, you know, so they had households in these programs. Okay. I'm just. Going. To say because you're talking about claims, right? I was just talking about the actual people who actually were accepted and rented apartments. Hundreds and hundreds of people getting apartments. Okay. Less between zero and five landlords a year making claims against the fund. So that's just a different story. You have a lot of utilization, but really a few claims for problems, right? That's that that is with the data we were able to collect. Thank you very much, David. Sure. Thank you. Councilman new Councilman Lopez. Thank you so much. I think my question was was answered with when I when I came the age, when I made sure just how many of those calls do we get about with folks who have that delayed payment? And how frequent is it? How often? Is this systemic? And if it is, I mean, what are we doing to address and fix that problem? I don't have exact data for you, Councilman. I can tell you, as I said, we have we have, you know, over 2000 landlords we work with who choose to be part of the program annually. We we do annual surveys of our landlords to make sure we understand where the the issues are and, you know, try to find continuous ways to make improvements to our program. It's never perfect. And and we've historically had a high utilization rate of our vouchers, meaning, you know, 98 to 100% of our vouchers found landlords to lease to them. I think obviously the last decade or so, with the high cost of housing and the rents accelerating astronomically, what's happened more and I think really the focus of this ordinance is about families having choices, more choices than they currently have in a tight market. But I'd be happy to look into that data and get back to some of those specific numbers. And I want you to repeat that. 98% utilization. Historical. Yeah. So in 1998, percent of the vouchers we issued were able to find actually 100% in more normal housing market. We're able to find a landlord to lease to them. Do we know what that is now? We're currently at about 90%, both because of the the higher rents we're having the pay per voucher. As you can imagine, the news out of D.C. continues to be pretty grim in terms of the funding levels. So our budget for the voucher program has been decreasing as have been our admin administrative fees. So we're only able to utilize currently about 90% of the vouchers that we would otherwise be able to. And it's I mean, my question is more towards and. I would I would do. Absolutely appreciate that. Mr. Rivera. My question, I think, ma'am, kind of was because how many times are we getting reports that folks who are participating in the program aren't being able to get a response from DHS or anything when it comes to that income that should have been coming back in, that that cashing in, that voucher, making sure that their bottom line is taken care of as a landlord. The last thing we want is as we I mean, move something like this forward and essentially, you know, go after discrimination, be able to take take that out of their right. The last thing we want to be doing is stumbling across our own feet. Yeah, absolutely. And that's I understood your question. And as I said, I don't have the data for you. I can speak anecdotally that it's not it's not a high percentage of the calls that we get. Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Councilman Lopez, Councilman Espinosa. Ismael. Rather than just sort of doing pre inspection when it's sort of hard to access and whatnot. Couldn't we just have a a gap program, a sort of pre HUD program where, you know, if you're going to do an inspection, if you can do a 24 hour turnaround inspection, the inspector will know whether that unit can be brought up to HUD standards and whatnot, so that maybe we could actually do a a move in that meets our city requirements. Until that, you know, with some time I mean, to cover that time before while the unit gets brought up to HUD standards and then and had the voucher go into effect. Could we do something like that? And it's something we'd be certainly willing to explore. Okay. Because I think then even during that time, you could sort of make sure that that that tenant goes through your Gold Star program, you know, so you're sort of sort of a win win. They're getting in quick. The landlord Lord doesn't have a vacant unit. They're getting trained on how to be a good tenant and their guaranteed source of income will be valid. So then I have a question for Robin. Was there any in if it came through email, I apologize. Was there any addressing my concern that I articulated in committee with regard to the language in here that it's directed towards application for rental housing? But we had there was a concern about VA loans on purchases. I'm not sure I understand your question. When this was first discussed in the Housing and Homelessness workgroup, we did only have it applying to rental housing because we couldn't kind of come up with this scenario or any facts. We had survey data and other data that we are having problems on the rental side. When we put the draft bill out for public not public comment but yeah, public review. We put out a public review draft. Then we started to get some calls from some realtors and some folks who'd had the experience with the for sale side being told, you know, you can't even compete for this house, we won't even talk to you. And so that's what prompted us to go back and make the ordinance. The rest of this ordinance, remember, is about all forms of discrimination, and it applies to all housing, rental and for sale. So we thought, okay, well, that's why every state and city has the supply to both. So we went back to that default. It now does cover for sale in rental. So does that answer your question? So we're not concerned that we feel that this language covers discrimination against a loan source. Yeah, there is a chapter in here that is specific. Let me just find it real quickly. It's the housing section here. Transactions in real estate, property exhibiting, listing, advertising, negotiating, agreeing or transferring, whether by sale, lease sublease. So the this is all language we're not amending. This is all language that's already in the ordinance. So if you read, you know, what we're doing along with the clauses that are already in there, it is our view that that that is covered. It also later on in that I guess this is page five. One, two, three, four, five, page five. You know, to refuse to lend money, you know, to make available for purchase acquisition. So so I think it does. I will just add, though, to to some folks who say, well, hey, I've got a property that's not eligible for VA loan or FHA has some condo complexes, for example, that they refused to buy. The ordinance has a specific exemption that says if there is any applicable federal, state or city law or regulation that makes the source of income not legal, you don't obviously have to take it. So that's in our bill to make sure that we're not trying to put folks in a double bind. So that situation that was the concern wasn't a discrimination problem. It was a program problem. Right. Or else we would have just cited this existing code and said, actually, you need to follow up on this. Right. Because the veteran veterans I don't know if military status, I'd have to look back at the ordinance and see if military status it might be a protected class. But the VA loan as a source of money was not covered by the current ordinance. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then lastly, Ms.. Patterson, can I ask you a question? Since you were the first person I ever spoke about, this ordinance in your work started this whole thing for me. I just would like to know why you support the amendment. The the one. Time I saw. Something because it's I did a lot of best practice research, as you know. And this exemption is in line with what we've seen other states in the city's doing much, too. Councilwoman, can you just point. So one of my concerns and I would maybe you can tell me what your research says about it, is that the lament that is prompting one unit owners is essentially the same sort sort of lament that you get from people that own multiple units. So why would that make a difference, especially if some of these single units are in affordable areas? I was actually I was going to take you out to see Councilman Clark, but I was actually swayed by his counsel, his experiences in his district. Yeah. Okay. So then this is to you, Councilwoman Clark. So the experience that you articulated in your district was something akin to a constituent who had a somebody a relative pass away and their property then turning over and becoming a rental for their next of kin or whatever. And, and that being a, you know, they may not have the means to to maintain. That is a I mean, I don't know. My concern is, is that, you know, you could have a situation that complies with the law where you have a duplex, where one side is occupied by a resident, I mean owner and the adjacent unit is occupied by their tenant. And that would be a situation that would be exempt. Where but then if the owner dies and the two units then become willed to somebody, to a family member and no one moves in to that unit, the two units would be Eliot mean would be not exempt because they're now both under one owner and in but if but if both halves so you have a duplex where two units the rental but if both houses are owned by separate renters that's again okay. Two to 2 to 2. Can I jump in? Yes. I think I think that what it comes down to for me and for hearing from my residents in the Valverde neighborhood, is that when you when you have one. And so it will take it out of that specific example. But when you have one house that you're renting, you're not really a sophisticated landlord. You're not going in paying a property manager. You're not, you know, reviewing multiple leases. And and in that world, there are a lot of different instances that could lead to you having that one property that don't make you a sophisticated landlord or somebody who has a lot of money to spend on a property management firm, somebody who can navigate a system that is more paperwork than just putting something to market and renting it. And, you know, yes, you could have someone who passes away in a duplex and now you inherit a duplex. You could have somebody who lived in a nine plex and passed away and gives you the whole nine plex, but you are automatically then dealing with multiple leases. And so for me, that threshold of having a property that you're renting versus having multiple leases that I do think that's different. You do step into a role where this is more than just a property that you're renting and you're dealing with more of that. So that seemed an appropriate threshold. So then explain to me what the difference is, right? If you're if somebody passes away and leaves you one property versus ten properties, why is that any different for you on what your obligation is to renting it out? Because again, I think you can manage one property without being a sophisticated landlord with a professional property management company. I think if you've inherited a ten plex, you can't. And that does take a level of sophistication that then makes navigating a system through vouchers doable without that extra burden of of because you can say, hey, I have ten different units. I have a diversity of income. I have I have to manage multiple leases. And so I can take on managing a level of sophistication that I can't when it's just, you know, my one lease, one place. I also think that the bill as written says that if it's a duplex and you live in half of it, that that one rental unit that you're renting because it is connected to your house is exempt. But if you were to own the house right next door to you because that's where your mother lived and they are not physically connected, then it draws a distinct distinction there that is not logical. And so if we're going to exempt, you know, a duplex to say you have one rental unit, but it happens to be connected. But if that house is right next door and it is not a physically connected, then you're not exempt. I think that's also kind of trues up with the existing exemption that is in the ordinance for the duplex. So I like it better if we just for all practical purposes, we ignore the scenario that was presented, which is that, yes, you can have an unsophisticated owner that actually owns two properties, their home and another property. But the idea that somebody would would leave you a property and then you are now burdened. You know, you're you're making the distinction that somehow you have to you know, if you get multiple properties, you have to then become sophisticated or you're you're somehow different than if you were just given one piece of property. And and I don't see that. I mean, I think you're you're almost unfairly treating the person that gets multiple properties will to them as opposed to a single unit. And and so I think personally, if we if we'd had if this had come up before tonight, I think what we maybe want to do is do an exemption for, you know, 12 months after, you know, somebody was deceased or something like that. So that property owner could get sophisticated on being a landlord if they're going to choose to be a landlord versus just unload the property. I think you're getting hyper focused on one example. I do think there's a difference between saying, hey, I'm going to run one ice cream shop and I'm going to run an entire franchise of ice cream shops. If we if we there is a different level. And I do think that there are a lot of people, whether it is an inheritance or they are trying to do what some of the small landowners in here are doing. I do think there's a difference between taking that step and maybe it's the house you used to live in and you decide to keep it when you move in instead of selling it to build wealth. I do think there is a different level of what you're prepared to take on when you have one of them than when you have multiple. When you have multiple, you do step into a different space that you're operating a bigger business than if you are one. But I won't pick it. I think, you know, we may just need to agree to disagree on this, but I apologize for that one specific example tripping up. But I do want my colleagues to recognize that if you're if you're in a if you're in a position to own two properties, that chances are you're you're sorry. I'm being reminded that we are in question. So do you have any more questions or you can add your comments when we get to the comment period. But if you have any more questions for me, then let's do that now. Are we going to have separate comments on the amendment versus the fine? Yes. Great. Yep. Okay, so y'all good for now. Yeah. Councilman Flynn. And thank you for the reminder. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to follow up first on what Councilman Lopez was getting out with Councilwoman Kennedy. Something that hadn't occurred to me, but in the inclusion of for sale property, I'm just wondering how who would be the party doing the to discrimination. Because the one time I sold a house when I moved out here 37 years ago, my realtor, my representative just brought me the money offer. I have nothing to do with evaluating who their lender was or whatever. So is the lender potentially the person who could be charged or complained about for discrimination or how does how would that work with for sale versus rental? So pardon the lawyerly answer, but the ordinance talks about persons. And so we have the city attorney's office clarify who's a person and a person in our city code could be a corporation association. So there's a broad array. So I think it would be up to the way that the complaint process is written is that, you know, that you ask the person to identify any persons who were involved and then it would be up to the department to determine who who did it. So. So maybe the realtor never told them that the owner that they told someone on the phone, don't bother putting in an offer versus, you know, the the owner. So that would be up to the department to investigate. And the ordinance is, you know, the way that person is interpreted should cover regardless of whether it's an individual or a company or, you know, whatever the entity is. Okay. That seems very murky to me, as opposed to the clear cut, you know, the leasing agent doing it as I can't imagine the seller of a property getting that deep into the details of where the buyer is going to get their their money from. So I don't know realtors if any of them are still here. John has left. Yeah, but I will say I will say this. There were we found no documented complaints involving for sale in our research. So it appears that most of the complaints show up on the rental side. So there's not a lot of case law. There weren't a lot of controversies. There weren't a lot of media coverage. We just couldn't find much. So I don't know that it occurs very often. Okay. That might be why it's murky to me. Mr. Guerrero, maybe you could also I buzzed in after you started talking about some numbers, and you said that typically in in prior times, you are 100% of voucher holders would be able to find accommodations. And now maybe 98%. Is that what you were saying? No, I'm sorry if the numbers were confusing and I just go back five years ago when rents were a little lower, our HUD funding was a little higher. We were able to lease up 100% of the vouchers that we administered, about 6700 vouchers currently in the last year we were in what's called a shortfall situation, meaning our budget authority was ran out before we could lease up all the vouchers we had available. So we're currently utilizing 90, about 90% of the vouchers we have available. And that was the second question I have. The 90% figure you quoted was it wasn't that 10% of voucher holders couldn't find accommodations that you could not fund 10% of of the total vouchers that. That's correct. Thank you. What was the 98 number then? I think you said 98%. Yeah. Historically, we've run that 98 to 100% utilization. Okay, that's all. Do you know how. Many 6700 voucher holders are now housed? About 6000 in the city and 700 in the suburbs. Is that what. You said about. No, I think Councilwoman Kennish had the right numbers. We have about a little under 6000 current households leased under 6000. Just under 6000 in numbers fluctuates. We're in a lease up mode right now and about 12% or so, 10 to 12% are currently leasing outside the city of Denver. Of those approximate 6000. Okay. What was the 6700 them, as I just said. 6700 is yeah. I figured about ten years ago. Currently with HUD, the Housing Authority has 6700 vouchers that we administer. However, our ability to lease those up is subject to our budget authority. All right, I get it. Okay. How many voucher holders are unable to find accommodation? Of the do they expire at a certain point? Like, do they have so six months that. We've had to put time. So his per HUD and and in our own internal policies we put limits on once you are issued a voucher, how much time you have to find a unit. And we've gone we're currently at 60 days. So once you are issued the voucher, we want you out there looking and trying to find a unit that's available immediately. And I. I'm sorry. And I understand. And the the the success rate of those families who are finding units to lease up. Say that again. I'm sorry. Of the of the once the family's issued a voucher. I don't have the data for you and the percentage that are able to find a unit in that 60 day period. And the percentage that are not. Oh, okay. That'd be really important to have, because, again, I'll. Be happy to get you that. Help to judge. How how big is the problem that we're trying to solve here? Mm hmm. Ah. 100% of people who get vouchers, finding units. And if they are, why are we doing this? Yeah, as I said, I think at times we have had I think it's as much a question of choice in terms of which units and in what neighborhoods they're able to find those units. Right. By, you know, currently it's landlords who are choosing to participate in the program, which means that certain area, certain neighborhoods may have more exclusions or not be accessible to families where you are. And we have and this is part of our challenge with the funding is we've raised our rental, our fair market rents so that our vouchers are competitive. As competitive as can be in the in. This market is higher. Cost market. Yes. Right. And I do understand the choice expanding the the available choices. But if 100% are nevertheless finding accommodation, I would like to you say you don't have that figure offhand, but would you be able to get that before final next week? Absolutely. I'd appreciate that. All right. Thank you. That's always present. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I have two questions. The first one is, while since you're there, let me just ask you, what is the average length of time that it takes someone to get approved for a voucher? Not once. Once they've once they've come through your doors. But there are people who have tried year after year after year to get approved, to be on the list, to then finally get a voucher. And then once they get one. This is part of the challenge they're dealing with, right? Yes. So do you have any of that? Well. I can tell you that. So we do. We open up our registration for the housing choice voucher on an annual basis. We've averaged or have seen numbers as high as 25,000 families apply or register for the lottery in recent years. I think this last year we had just under 22,000 households submit their interest card in a 48 hour period. Are they limited to just Denver residents? That is open to any. It's an online registration, so anybody is eligible to apply. You do have to apply. Anybody is eligible to apply. And it's at an annual basis. Certainly the past several years we might issue 500. And in a good year, maybe a thousand vouchers to that to the families who've applied. Okay. So the demand far exceeds the accessibility? Yeah, without a doubt. Mm hmm. I want to follow up with a question to my colleagues. So I'm done with you for now. Thank you, Councilwoman Kinney. Have you explored any sources that potentially might be available for the fund in the data you shared on other cities was very enlightening to see that it's really a safeguard for the landlords, but most of them are more than likely utilizing the deposits for addressing the damages to their units, and particularly when they exceed the value of the deposit. That's where a fund would be very helpful. So can you just speak to any potential sources in Denver that might be available or maybe even foundations, national resources, whatever? Yeah, we had not gotten very far. I will say that I did ask OED to look into sometimes they have you know, I don't want to say weird, but, you know, odd little funds that have restricted uses that might just kind of be waiting for the right thing that fits the niche. And so I did ask them to look at their smaller funds to see if any of those might be a fit for this. Obviously, there's the housing fund if it's deemed to be eligible. I had not yet gotten to the point of asking the city attorney to analyze it for eligibility, but my guess is it would probably be eligible. And then there's the general fund, so. So we hadn't gone down that road, but. So that would be a next step, assuming this would pass tonight to then look at what kind of resources might be available to create a fund so that. You know, I think we'd probably see a similar situation where the vast majority of the people would be, you know, respectable, taking care of the property, happy to just be in housing. But there are those just like any other renters, not limited to low income folks or somebody on a restricted income that tend to not take care of somebody else's property when they rent it. And I've heard, as I shared in committee, some horror stories about people who rent their home out as short term rentals, who have had their properties destroyed by folks who rent it out just for, you know, a weekend or a couple of nights. So anyway, that would be a next step. Yeah, I think we would have to engage with the administration because we'd be doing this, you know, heading into budget season and understanding so that that, you know, if that's the will of this body, we will happily continue that conversation and see what the options are. I would say this, though, I think part of the reason Seattle discontinued their fund is because they had money sitting there unused and felt like it was better to put it where it would be used. So I think any fund we would have should be very modest because the data just doesn't support a large quantity of funds being set aside. We I didn't mention it specifically. I'll give you all this memo that we just finished today. But you know, the metro area, MDH II, Metro Denver Homeless Initiative and the Metro Mayors funded a fund specifically for veteran vouchers. It also was underutilized. They are redeploying the funds because they didn't feel like it was appropriate to leave them sitting there unused. So if we do do anything, I think it should be very modest because you don't want to take funds that could be doing something to directly house someone today and set them aside. So so I think that that's my only thought is this is if we do this, it needs to be probably pretty modest because the data just hasn't shown this large demand. Okay. I just want to express an interest in in this particular piece, because I think it is important to have something in place for those extenuating circumstances where damages might far exceed the cost of a deposit. So thank you. Those were my only questions. All right, Councilwoman Black, your backup. Thank you. I was going to ask the same questions as Councilman Flynn asked, but just to verify, you are going to get back to us and let us know about the 10% that aren't finding places if they are, because people are not accepting vouchers or accepting applications from people. Without us. I'll be able to offer my assignment as I took it was to get back with the number of families who are issued a voucher, but they're not able to find a unit to lease. We don't have we don't get information about why they were not able to if how many applications they may have submitted, we'd have to actually go out and talk to those families individually. And so we don't have that data available, just a percentage that are not able to lease up in the time period that they have. Okay. Well, as we move forward, I think that would be really important information to have if if this does pass. Mm hmm. I think that we need to get that kind of feedback from people. And I know you have a study, but. Yeah. I was hoping to get more information about that, but anyway, thank you. All right, you all done? All right. Seeing no other questions, though. The public hearing for Council Bill 788 is closed. We're going to start with comments on the amendment or then vote on the amendment and then we'll move on to the bill, either as amended or without the amendment. Based on that, Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to be abstaining on the amendment tonight, although the the rules for conflict of interest are fairly narrow. I believe that any appearance of impropriety. And so this this amendment could benefit my my personal family. And I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to take a position that might be perceived as a conflict of interest. And so I'm not opposed to it, but I just don't feel like it would be appropriate. So I'm going to be abstaining tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennedy. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. And Councilman Espinosa, you may be surprised to hear that. I'm going to ask the same questions that you were asking about. And I talked to Councilman Clark about this earlier today. I don't know where you draw the line, where someone you've called someone owning one ice cream shop or someone owning a franchise. These people who are sitting here at 10 a.m., I don't think they own franchises of ice cream shops. They own a couple places. Think your name, Suzanne. She says she makes $45,000 a year and is painting and making her business. Yeah, right. Right. At any rate, I don't think I don't know where you draw the line between. As Councilman Espinosa said, it's it's. You don't have to comply if you have one other place. But what if you have to? What if? What if I've got somebody in my district who owns a garden court? The original garden carts from the fifties that have, I don't know, five or six little apartments around the garden. And they live there. Why would they have to comply and somebody wouldn't? And if the point is we want to avoid discrimination, then then nobody should be exempted from it. So I'm having a really hard time with the line that is drawn. Is that a question or comment that you want me to respond to? I mean. To me. Yeah, I would just say again, I think that there are other cities who have done this. They have drawn a line and it's not an easy line to draw. And maybe there is a better place to draw that line where other cities have. I think one is as low as you can draw that line and there are other cities that have drawn it higher. There was no proposal on the table except for the bill already has built in an exemption for one if you're in a duplex. And so for me, for us to draw the line on one, but only if it happens to be connected to where you live in, was not the appropriate place. I took the next half step to say it is one across the board. So I guess I would argue that if you're torn on that, then we should probably be considering an amendment to take out the exemption on the duplex as well, because then that is a line that is less logical than one across the board. But any other questions? All right, Councilman Espinosa. And just to reiterate that, I just if we're saying that this process is onerous and difficult for anybody, why is it okay that I mean, why why create an exemption? And yeah, you know, it's either good for everybody or it's not good for anybody. And and and so if it is a struggle and you're saying essentially acknowledging that by virtue of the amendment, then maybe we need to fix those problems. And I think we only create a give us some sort of cushion by alleviating the mean by by by not imposing the problem on everybody. And so I think you're probably if you if you if you go ahead, remove it from the duplex, but then maybe you're going to you're going to get in a situation where the city needs to step up to the plate on any real legitimate problems that persist in and exist. So I just I don't I don't I'm just I struggle with that, you know, sort of acknowledgment that this is a difficult thing for one person with one property, but it's not a difficult thing for one person with multiple properties. It's a weird distinction to me. So for that, with that, I won't be supporting the amendment. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Flynn. I think, Mr. President, I will support your amendment and I see the logic behind it. And for small operators, in fact, I would I would have supported it if it had exempted and say several or up to a half dozen for small operators, particularly in an environment where we just heard that every 100% of the vouchers that are out there are being utilized. There is a big difference between small operators who have a unit or two or a half a dozen or a handful and cornerstone management and some of the entities that do wide scale property management, there's a huge difference in their ability to handle the paperwork and their ability to carry the losses for up to a month and a half before they get their first check is magnified greatly over some of the folks we heard who manage one to or six units. So I think it's very appropriate, particularly since the since the the bill was authored with an exemption for a single unit that happens to be a duplex. It makes perfect sense to say that at least one unit that is separate should be exempt as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn, Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. The only comment I wanted to make is just to reiterate that vouchers are a small part of what this bill is about. Right. And it's about student loans, and it's about the. Veterans benefits. It's about so many other different sources of income. So I will be supporting the amendment as I agree with that. It's a reasonable half step. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Cashman. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I really like the bill. I think the the the I wanted to thank Councilwoman Committee folks. Just to remind you, were just doing comments on the amendment so we can vote on the amendment and then we'll move to the comments on the bill. Write the amendment that what? I'm sorry. Threw me off, ma'am. I don't think the amendment does much, much damage. It's hard to draw that line, however. I'm not. Worried about the one unit that somebody is renting as an impact to the whole. I think there's a lot more out there where it's actually company policy and it's a lot. I mean, those are folks that control a lot more units and just one. So for me, I mean, it's it's something I can live with. I don't think it's it's necessary. However, if it if it does achieve a level of compromise, if it does identify, hopefully, the folks that you're intending to alleviate in the building, great. But I. Support it from now. All right. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. It's interesting to me that by exempting anybody, we are assuming that it is a difficult process to use some kind of voucher. And I do appreciate the thought that we're not talking just about vouchers. We're talking about VA and other things. So making an exemption means we assume this is going to be a difficult. Job for anybody who is renting somebody, something but we haven't heard yet from at least the H.A. is how difficult is it? Now I'm going to support it too, because I'm assuming it is difficult, but if we find out that it's not difficult and that perhaps people aren't being turned away for their source of income, then I also would be asking, you know, why are we doing this in the first place? That being said, I would suspect that if we here if we learn some more data. From Mr. Guerrero that we could make other amendments by next week to include maybe four or five of the places that you rent instead of one or none. I suppose there's opportunity for amendment next time too. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. All right. Seeing no other questions or comments on the amendment. And that's a reminder. We're voting on the amendment on the bill as a whole. Madam Secretary, can we do roll call on the amendment? Black, I. ESPINOSA Yeah. Flynn I. Gillmor I. Cashman I can each abstain. Lopez. I knew. Ortega. Sussman Mr. President. I am secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. I just want to make sure all the numbers are here. Nine, ten, 11. Nine eyes when they went. Abstention. Nine eyes one day on abstention. Council Bill 788 has been amended. Jasmine Espinosa We now need a motion to order published as amended. I move that council bill 17 mean council vote 18 0788 be ordered published as amended. It has been moved and seconded. Now comments on the bill as amended. Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to everyone who testified whether you were in support or opposed. You've been here a long time and you've offered your heartfelt words and they are appreciated. I want to again thank my staff member, Polley, who did all the research, the community folks who brought this to our attention. I want to thank the apartment association and the realtors. I reached out to both of them when I started working on this to make sure that you all had a chance to be heard and you really took it seriously and engaged date for being here. My colleagues on the Housing and Homelessness workgroup were small but mighty, and this really grew out of a conversation about what more could we work on? And also the Administration and Office of Economic Development and Human Rights Community Partnerships. The mayor's office spent time helping us think through some of the pieces. So and also I just want to do a shout out to my state representative, Leslie Herrod, who kind of brought this bill to the attention of the state with her work. So we I think that a couple of things that really grounded me in taking on this bill. The first is that there is no one single silver bullet to any housing challenge that the city faces. And so if you accept that as a reality, the way that you have to do this work is you have to take each opportunity to grow your impact. And so today a number of us were with the Globeville area, Sentia community, doing their first investment for a community land trust that will probably result in dozens of homes, dozens or dozens. But a small number eviction fund that all of us contributed to is going to help a few hundred people. The new units that the city is building and preserving are helping thousands of people. And so you have to start adding up each of these things together. And then you look at this bill and you think there are additional households being helped. And so cumulatively is how we have to count our work on housing. You can't count any one, bill, and say, here's what we've done. You have to cumulatively count. And so that's what this is about. It is also about the idea that there are barriers that we can lower and there are barriers we've talked about most of the night for individuals. Right. We've talked a lot about renters. So I'll focus there and I think about, you know, the the testimony tonight that this isn't just about low income renters. You know, women who experience divorce might experience a change in their income. And child support is what allows them to be able to afford housing with the number of bedrooms they need for their kids. And they may not be low income, but they need then come to qualify for the housing. And that's so this can touch people at all incomes. And it's not just about lowering barriers for individuals, though. One of the things that we know is that communities end up with a more diverse housing base when people have mobility. I'm in a number of conversations with Councilwoman Ortega, and the question comes up from communities are we really building an integrated city where folks with different incomes live throughout the city, or do we just put affordable housing in one neighborhood and we put it in that neighborhood over and over again? Well, if we're serious about that answer, if we're serious about saying that people should be able to live in a variety of neighborhoods in our city, maybe near the school they want to go to or near the job that they work at. This is one of those ways, and the research shows that this creates more mobility for families. And what is mobility provide? Right. I just want to draw the fuller picture because we've done these outlines tonight. But the fuller picture is the mobility provides access to maybe a better education, maybe to the better school, maybe less transportation time . So rather than that, 12% of voucher holders, 12% of voucher holders. Who are. Living in another county, maybe they're away from their child care providers, maybe they're away from their elderly parents. Maybe they're spending that time on our highways creating traffic. But all of these types of impacts that we all start to get affected by, right? So this isn't just about the individual who gets that choice and the individual who gets that mobility, but it's about the community that they're part of and it's about the ways that our community works more functionally when people can live where they need to. So that's the story we're writing tonight, the story about additional impact, the story about opportunity, and the story about saying that people of all incomes should have opportunities to live in a variety of neighborhoods in our city. So tonight's only our first reading. But it. Is an important milestone. And so I am so pleased with the engagement folks have had. I, I do want to caution I hear that we're going to have more debate about this threshold. And I will say this. We had a lot of public process leading up to tonight, and the idea of an exception was not floated at committee. It was not floated in some of the workgroups where it might have had more chance. If folks are planning to continue that conversation, I would ask you to reach out to Enterprise and the coalition and some of the folks who spoke here tonight and expressed concern about widening that door. I think that, you know, they deserve that engagement. And I would caution against raising the threshold higher. And so I believe one is is not unreasonable. But I do believe that starting to grow that door then creates a situation where people who do have a profession of managing homes and have the ability to study the rules. For me, the one person exception is someone who's maybe less likely to know about it because they don't do very many leases. They're less likely to maybe know that the law exists. If you do this as a living, then then your ability to learn about the rules and follow them is greater. So it's about your capacity? Not for me. It's not about the vouchers. It's about knowing what the rules are. And I think that that capacity, if you're doing this as a profession, you really need to know. So so I would caution against that. In the week that comes, I would encourage folks to to talk to those who express concerns about it today. And I want to thank those of you who have expressed your support so far and encourage a yes vote on this bill tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman each. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I am in support of this bill. There is absolutely a need. There are so many people in Denver who need a home and no one should be discriminated against for any reason. My biggest concern, as I think I've heard expressed tonight, is the burden on property owners like the people who are here tonight. I understand that there have been other opportunities for people to speak up. This is the first time that I've heard a lot of these stories and I really feel for you all. So. As I said earlier, I have a real mental challenge with where you draw the line. And so I would like to talk about that more, but. Councilwoman Kennish, I'd like to know that if we pass this, that we can gather data for a year and see how it goes and see, you know, work with DHS. We heard from people that they've had issues with payments and timing, and we're getting different information. And I would really like to see in a year if we could have a task force with stakeholders like the people who have been sitting here for 5 hours, as well as tenants, and just look at it and see if we solved the problem, if we caused a problem for these small business owners. So I would really like to talk to you about having some kind of commitment doing that. And my final comment is, I agree, we need mixed neighborhoods. My district has a lot of apartments that accept vouchers, and we have a lot of nice amenities in my district also. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Black, Councilman Flynn. Thanks, Mr.. President. I want to thank Councilwoman Kennedy and the task force and the community that that drew this up, because I support the inclusion of these nontraditional financial resources in the calculation of a person's ability to pay rent, even though they're not really income per se, necessarily, but because it's right, if you have the ability to pay the rent, that's what matters. But this bill addresses only half of the equation. For me, it's not balanced against the risks that are being shifted to the property owners. It gets us only halfway there. Many localities have adopted source of income anti-discrimination laws. Not all, but many have balanced the added risks that it shifts onto private property owners, many of whom are small operators with only a few units. By establishing a risk mitigation fund, Seattle may be defunding its program, but the state of Washington's legislature created a statewide risk mitigation fund two years ago that covers all the cities in the state, including Seattle. Such a fund. Doesn't diminish your legislation, Councilwoman, I believe. In fact, I believe it complements it and helps it be more effective and makes it work better. It helps get units back on the market faster and it helps increase voluntary compliance. And I would encourage. I appreciate that you're continuing to engage and to consider that. And over the next week, I will reach out to some of the stakeholders that you mentioned. It provides it does provide a recourse for landlords whose property suffers excessive damages, but whose former tenants paid substantially through vouchers or child support payments or student loans or financial resources from which landlords have no recourse for recovering those damages and that little real income from which to pay damages. This isn't good for those individual property owners, even if only a few. Even if only five claims were made in in Portland for those five individuals, that could be devastating. That could be their lifetime retirement investment. If it were a single unit or if it were just a few units that they own and that they're managing. And so I think that fund, it's good for turning around vacant, affordable rental units to the next tenant because damages can be repaired sooner. Any tenant, any tenant can cause excessive damage to a property. This isn't about alternate sources of income. Any tenant can cause damage to property. I see one of them. Our landlady's nodding her head. In fact, I could probably point to homeowners who aren't taking care of their property very well, as a matter of fact. So this isn't about the source of income. It's about the ability of the property owner to to get whole and turn that property around and get it back on the market quickly. So who causes the excessive damage isn't the point. It's the fact that tenants, most tenants who have W-2, wage income landlords have some pretty good recourse through a court judgment and perhaps garnishment. But this bill places the risk of potential substantial financial loss on the property owner, while leaving the owner with a diminished ability to recover those damages. Without a fund, a landlord cannot recover damages from a person's child support. Or a housing voucher or a student loan. Data from the cities that have these funds show they're not frequently used as the councilwoman read. I think that's a very good thing. I think that bodes well for us establishing a fund with a very small amount. But for those, as I said, for those few who do suffer those extensive damages, it could be it can be life altering and very, very bad. I had a constituent in my office last week who heard about this, and he had a $20,000 repair bill after a tenant. I see more nodding of heads, a $20,000 repair bill from a tenant who had left significant damage to systems in the House for a small operator of a handful of rentals. A fund, even if it's limited and capped, can be a lifesaver for that person, especially if it's that person's retirement, if that's their nest egg for retirement. But even more, a risk mitigation fund can ensure that rental units return to the market faster, be available to new tenants sooner than if a landlord is stuck with drawn out costs and repairs in a city with an affordable housing shortage like Denver. This would help us. Thank you to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless for expressing openness to a risk mitigation fund. If that were in here, I could support this. Mandating landlords to participate in what has historically been a voluntary program. But not offsetting the added risk is an imbalanced approach that I cannot support tonight. I do respect, Councilwoman, your continuing consideration of a fund to balance this program and I support the includes the inclusion of vouchers and other nontraditional financial resources. We might not be able to initiate an appropriation on our own tonight or next week, although I would dispute that. And we have we've exchanged some emails on this, if you haven't if you couldn't tell by now over what council powers are. But we can create the program and funded in the 2019 budget, since this ordinance is an effective until January 1st. If this bill were amended to create a risk mitigation program, I would vote yes. But because of what I see as an imbalance transfer of risk without it tonight I have to vote no and hope that maybe we can address this next week on final. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I grew up in my my whole life here in Denver, and I was a renter for a very long time. My family were renters for a very, very, very long time. I always. People ask me, how many times have you moved in your lifetime? It's in the throes. I used to. I lived all over my district, rented all over from one duplex to the other. And the hard part was sometimes I never really understood why. Because both of my parents were working. All it took was for my dad to have an accent sometimes. Sometimes even as a city councilman just a few years ago. This is just buying a home. All I had to be was Mexican. And going all around our neighborhood and being told no. And of course, I wasn't throwing my name out there and saying, well, I'm the city councilman. I'll do something, you know, nothing like that. It's just the fact that. No discriminatory practices. And if that's just that, that's somebody who. Can pay the rent. There's only sin is just my last name. Imagine if you had that coupled with. Of how you think about folks in this city, the working class in this city, and especially people of color. We're on the ropes. They're on the ropes in our own city. And for folks who are struggling to find it, to be able to find a place they have a place to get a voucher to be in this program is a feat in of itself. The be so fortunate to actually get in the program, be able to use a voucher to actually find a place. Is a feeding of itself and then to be turned away just because of the source of income. That's heartbreaking. And nobody in here is accusing anybody of all you all in grouping anybody together. It's the practice that should not. I mean, it's the practice that, uh, that this language and that this question in front of us that this bill is prohibiting. It's the practice of discrimination. Plain and simple. If you don't discriminate, you don't have an issue. If there are I mean, if there is a legal question, as long as it is a legitimate reason. As is as with the language as it. If you're acting in good faith as a landlord or and there's a legitimate reason and you're going by with the rules and the laws going to now reflect what's in other cities, then you should have nothing to worry about. I supported the amendment because I get that. I get the logic there. I could understand it. There's a little bit of a balance. But at the end of the day, we wanted to go with this language and I agree with this language. I support this bill going after discriminatory housing practices. It's just not right. And there are some bad apples out there that ruin it for the bunch. But at the end of the day, discrimination should be prohibited in this kind of manner. It's hard enough trying to survive in Denver. It's even worse when somebody is closing the door on union. Just because. They don't like the way you're paying. Or what you're paying with. So thank you for the for taking this up, Councilwoman Kenny. I'm glad that Denver is going to join the ranks of other cities that are that are visionary with this. And, you know, to afford to live in a lot of our U.S. cities is becoming a challenge. Denver's not alone in that. But we can do something about it. So thank you. I appreciate that. Count some Canadian folks in the community at this point, these folks that showed up tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Espinosa. The and the problem with 100% of the vouchers being used is it's a drive until you qualify. Scenario and and thousands of those vouchers are being Denver vouchers are being used outside of Denver. And so it's not enough to say, oh, they're all getting used when they're not they're not being used by Denver residents. They were here. But now they can't they can't live here. The. The problem. The real problem I have with the and this is a good problem to have because I represent Northwest Denver, which is the area that has been rampant displacement and gentrification. And, you know, this is the poster child for that problem in Denver before it got to Reno. And five points to the degree that it is now is that I have huge sections of my district where an ADU is allowed as a use by right and they're not getting wildly built. There's not just this huge boom boom of 80 use getting built in those areas where they're allowed. But I do get constant requests to add edu ability in areas where they're not allowed because those are the areas that are most desirable and the highest property values. And the argument that is always made is it will increase affordability. You know, let us do this because we can solve Denver's affordability, affordable housing problem by by letting us take high value real estate and put some small units on it. There's some logic there, but at the same time, it's like anything else. The market goes where the market goes, and if it's a very high desirability area, it will still command the same dollars per square foot, which will be high. There will be fewer of them. And and they'll be smashed into areas that are desirable. And those other areas where it's already allowed that are not as marketable will continue to languish. And that's okay. That's market is what the market is. But now what we did by basically saying one owner, one unit is we've now created a real nice comfortable carve out that that you can actually build that. ADU That's supposed to address affordability, but you can discriminate on income on it. And that is. Why? It doesn't make any sense to me. I get somebody doesn't have sort of the wherewithal or the practical, you know, the understanding of it. And maybe it's a burden if we're saying it's a burden. But there are whole sections of the city where it where the people have stars and short term rentals and stuff like that. Counter to what our rules are. And because it's largely profitable, even with higher taxes and they have the means to figure it out. And we just lumped everybody in and that's fine if we're building wealth. And that was our that's our sure that's our goal. But this isn't affordability. You know, this is about, you know, nondiscrimination are towards fixed I mean, towards certified income sources that are. That are I mean, it's an affordability there's a strong affordability component here that we just we just we just discriminated against based on the number of units that you own. And so that's I mean, that was that prior prior thing. But it is it is part of my frustration with this going so far, but not going all the way. And but I did want to talk about the fact that people you know, the complaint here was that this is going to drive up costs and costs will be passed on to the homeowners, I mean, the renters and whatnot. Well, this body has made has done a lot of things to boost the desirability of the city, the livability of the city, all of which drive up rents. And owners don't line up in here and say, hey, stop improving the city or we'll have to raise rents and capitalize on that increase in value. You know, I will argue that in my time in office, we have seen a far more substantial increase in property and rental prices because of the things the city is doing right. Then this bit of legislation is going to do for for existing property owners. And the problem is, is you are right getting this right, too, and getting it more right if we had made it applicable to everybody. Also improved this city as a whole. It's a problem. Part of the reason why Portland is harder and Seattle is more expensive is there getting it right for a lot of people? And so it is going to be a fund later on and that's going to help drive prices up. And it is a big problem because they all can play against each other. But guess what? You, the property owners, multiple units are still going to be the big winners. You can cover your costs. You can cover your expenses if you incur them this way. You have the ability and the latitude to do that. Or you can, you know, exit. You know, you can figure out your exit strategy. It's not a it's not a terrible time to sell right now. And so, I mean, it is a terrible time because your values are going up. So I wouldn't do that. But, you know, it's so I just I'm I will be supporting this measure, but I am not you can tell I'm not happy because we have real housing. Real multi, multi bedroom family size housing problems in northwest Denver. And we are losing families like they're going out of style up there. And the only way we can replace them is seemingly to subsidize heavily projects. And that is coming out of your pockets as well from your income taxes and your property taxes now. And those are very expensive units to build as opposed to just housing people with subsidy or other certified incomes in existing units and using. And that's a sustainable model that's in tons of embodied energy in those in those properties. And this is a more aggressive approach to this bill and a stronger push for a fund are the better way to do this. And I thought we were near perfect on the bill before it was amended. And this is the situation. We replaced the near perfect with the good, and I don't quite get why we would have done that, but we did that nonetheless is still better than where we're at today. So I will be supporting it. Thanks. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman. No. Thank you, Mr. President. I'll be supporting the bill tonight. And I think it's all again, like you said, it's all about the recognizing all sources of income to make housing available. And as much discussion as we've had about homelessness, we know that housing is number one. It's always housing first. And if we can help people get off the street to fight homelessness, to give them a break is well worth it. Just to listen to the stories that are just heartbreaking of folks who finally get off the street and find a house housing, whether St Francis Inn or any or any other kind of like Colorado College for the Homeless or anyone is just they're just so proud to be have housing off the street is it's a great great thing we're doing I think one thing we did, you know, we got a real light shone on the Denver Housing Authority. So you've got a great opportunity here to to produce some data. You sort of set a standard in two weeks tonight. And so, you know, it'd be a great to Councilwoman Black hit the nail right on the head and to do some reports, provide some data, do some evaluation of how the process works so that making it as efficient as possible. The other thing I found disturbing, too, is, is the 6000 and the 6700 vouchers, you know, it's all you know, just because there's no funding for 700, I just worry about giving false hope to people who get approved. And then there's no money there for housing. And I know it's not your fault, it's just the HUD funding issue. But I just worry about that. And I also say I don't think enough attention is given to the story about the 22,000 that apply for vouchers that no one can even crack the surface. So I think that's something that's troublesome to me, but at least I'm supporting tonight. Well, I think this bill will help a little bit. And and I. Appreciate Councilwoman Kinney's work on this bill. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman. New Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I certainly support this bill with or without the amendment that was passed with or without any kind of a fund. And I'm open to considering the funds that have been discussed, but I'm troubled the more I think about it. We have one of the most difficult businesses to succeed in is the restaurant business. And we have hundreds and hundreds of people have put their their life savings on the line for restaurants. And don't say I'm leaving because it's too tough. Dry cleaners, boutiques, auto repair businesses all put their life on the line to make their contribution to our city. So I'm going to continue to, as I said, consider the arguments that I'll hear from my colleagues about the wisdom or lack of it for a fund. If I was a landlord, if that was my chosen line of work, I'd be thrilled if someone mitigated my rest, my risk. But like I say, I mean, look, find me a small business around Denver. Please find me a small business around Denver that wouldn't say the same thing. Please mitigate my risk. I don't know who who has who gets those funds. So why should we put. Tax money. And I'm asking that question, and I'll be glad to hear from any of you as the week goes on. We can't take it now, but please contact me and let me know that, because it's troubling me right now. I was fine with the concept. I spoke with the councilwoman about it through the week, but as I'm sitting here thinking, I'll also need to justify to those other businesses around the city why we're not mitigating their risk because they make an equal contribution to our life experience in Denver. And I know affordable housing is important, but grocery stores sell food and restaurants sell food, etc. etc.. Made my point. I'll be supporting this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. I'm happy to support this bill, too. And I want to really thank. Councilwoman Canete for taking the leadership. On it. But then also the the three women that came and talked to me from Enterprise, Colorado. Coalition for the Homeless and 9 to 5. You sharing your stories and your passion and advocacy. Thank you so much for the work on. This and I look forward to following the data and really understanding a little bit more what a reserve. Fund would look like. And B, I share Councilman. Cashman's concerns about, you know, if this. Is your chosen business, if this is your chosen. Source of income, there are certain risks that go along with it. And, you know, we talked a lot about vouchers, but really at the end of the day, I. Want to look at this from a. Very high level and Colorado is an out at will employment state employment is not guaranteed. And so a lot of the sources of income that we've listed in this bill are more stable, more guaranteed. Than an hourly wage job. And so I'm happy that I'm going to be able to support this. And we heard a lot of individual stories, but I think of the. Thousands of folks and especially families with. Children who. Have these sources. Of income and have been turned away, voucher or not, and have been discriminated against. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I'm happy to support it. I would not be in support of increasing additional units that would be exempt. I understand the one off unit, but. Anything above that, I would be concerned that. We're we're hurting the very folks that we're trying to protect by guaranteeing that they won't. Be discriminated. Against for the different sources. Of income. Thank you, President Clark. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore, Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I also want to say thank you to Councilwoman Canete and members of the Housing and Homeless Committee and all the organizations and individuals that engaged in this conversation. I think all of that input has helped shape what we have before us tonight. And I just want to add that I, I do support us having a fund. I would not call it a risk mitigation fund as much as it being a, you know, a I don't I don't agree that we should have a fund that should be available to every landlord to participate in the program. But if we have someone whose property has been destroyed in excess of their deposit, then that's what the fund should be for and we should have a cap on that. So that's what I would love for us to explore by having some, some resources available for those extenuating circumstances. Because I think the vast majority of people who are desperate for housing will do everything they can to take care of it and be happy to have a roof over their head. You all know, I serve on the board of a nonprofit housing development organization, and I see both sides of this coin. You know, the challenges of being a landlord, but also meeting the demand of people who are low income that really need housing and struggle to find it. And we provide housing for people that have vouchers as well as others, because we serve a mix of income levels. And so I understand and sympathize with the the challenges and the impact of of being a landlord, which is why I think having a housing fund to assist in those situations that I just explained would be really important. I also think that the counseling that's being provided by DHS for folks that come in that are looking for housing, the nonprofit I sit on does homeownership counseling, you know, for people that want to purchase a home. And oftentimes these are folks that come in as renters that also want to be homeowners. And wherever we can provide that counseling, I think that's extremely helpful. I think the counseling on the side of the landlords is equally as important to ensure that as somebody wanting to come into the program to understand what the procedural steps are to make it easier is extremely important to make it smooth for everybody, because we want this to be a seamless operation for both the people seeking housing as well as the landlords willing to participate in this program. So I will be supporting this tonight, and I think the amendment was a good one. I would not support it going beyond that either. So thank. You. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Espinosa, the hours late, these people have stuck with us. You're back up. After having expressed how you're voting, I would implore you to be a speedy as possible. But you're your backup. I just want to let people know that I am going to the stupidly. I don't know the answer to this question, but I will be following up with city attorneys and whatnot to find out if if you own each separate property under separate LLCs, is that separate owners or not? I just don't know. So I just want you to know that going to ask that question things. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. I just want to really think, Councilwoman, for your leadership on this, the Housing and Homelessness Working Group, for all of the work, all of the people in this room, both for and against, who've been a part of this process and taking time out of your lives to sit with here with us for over 5 hours tonight. This is what makes our process work. Thank you for being committed to it. Thank you, Councilwoman. I'm very excited to support this tonight. And with that, Madam Secretary Rogoff. Can each I. Lopez. All right. New Ortega assessment. Black Eye. Espinosa. Flynn now Gilmore. I. Cashman. I. Mr. President. I. I'm a secretary. Please close the voting and announce the results. Ten Eyes One Day. Ten Eyes one day. Councilor Bill 788 has been ordered published as amended. Final consideration will be Monday, August 6th. On Monday, August six, 2018. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 688, designating 2900 South University Boulevard, the Walshaw Park Cottage, as a structure for preservation, saying no other business before this body.