Report from the Alameda Rental Housing Community Discussion Group and Request for Council Direction Concerning Various Proposals.
Good evening. I'm Debbie Potter. I'm the city's community development director. And I was going to do a brief introduction to this item and then turn it over to Jeff Canberra, who is going to report out on the community process that he's engaged in over the last three or four months. So this issue of examining the impact of rising rents in the city of Alameda came out of the city's process of adopting its housing element in the summer of 2014. And there were a number of groups that were interested in seeing the housing element reflect a policy on the impact of rising rents. And in lieu of including that policy in the housing element, the City Council directed staff in July to to study this issue and come back with a proposal on how to how to respond to the issues that had been raised in the community. And staff did come back to the Council in September of 2014. And at that time, staff made a recommendation that the Council appoint a seven member task force that would be charged with answering four questions. And the four questions that the task force was being recommended to look at were the following What is the state of the residential rental market in Alameda? What have been the impacts on rental rates, supply of rental housing and the physical condition of rental housing in jurisdictions with rent control? Stabilization ordinances? What changes, if any, need to be made to the city's rent review advisory committee? And what changes, if any, need to be made to the Alameda Municipal Code relative to residential rental housing? So those were the questions that staff was recommending. The seven member task force be charged with exploring with a report back to the city council with recommendations based on that analysis. I'm. Staff's recommendation was made to the council. There were representatives from the community that were suggesting and recommending to the council that an alternate process be put together, which was a community engagement process, to bring together the various stakeholders and have a community wide discussion. And ultimately that is what the Council. Determined it would do and it deferred and set aside staff's recommendation in lieu of this community process, which Jeff Canberra had volunteered to lead and has been leading for the last three or four months. And this time he has concluded the community work that he has undertaken and he is prepared to present to the Council the process that that he guided and the recommendations that came out of that process. So with that overview, I would like to turn the podium over to Jeff, who will present to the Council regarding the effort that's been underway these these last several months. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Potter. Mayor Spencer, members of the City Council and city staff. My name is Jeff Canberra and I am the community facilitator for the Alameda Rental Housing Community Discussion Group on September 16th. I came to the council and asked for the opportunity to to create an interest based community discussion regarding rental housing issues. The objective of this process was to establish a structure where the city's tenants and housing providers could work collaboratively to develop solutions to rental housing issues. Drawing on their own experience, research and resources available from other jurisdictions and organizations. Tonight, the group requests the City Council to direct staff to evaluate six discussion points and work jointly with the group in order to create an accurate and complete data recording process to document unreasonable rent increases and provide a neutral and supportive forum where tenants and housing providers can come together and collaborate and arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome. It is not the intention of this group to in any way have these discussion points be developed into provisions that would function as rent control. Tenants and housing providers have expressed the interest to remain actively involved in all stages of the refinement of these points and to work closely with city staff. Tonight's update will involve three presentations. I will briefly describe the process used to develop the six points Angela Hawk about of the Alameda Renters Coalition will provide a tenant perspective. And Don Lindsay, one of the city's major housing providers who has been actively involved in the Alameda housing market for many years, will provide additional support. We will all return to the podium to respond to questions from the council and then turn it over to the city staff in order to continue. The Community Discussion Project involve three public meetings. The first meeting was a tennis tenant focused event where tenants were allowed to present their concerns to the public. Renewed Hope read comments that were received with requests from the sender to remain anonymous. Comments range from specific examples of tenants experiencing significant rent increase. Two examples of maintenance issues and fear of being priced out of the rental market in Alameda due to rising rents. The city's Rent Review Advisory Committee informally presented six areas they were considering for future discussion. These six points were not recommendations to the community. The second meeting was a housing provider focused meeting, where individual property owners describe the types of expenses that they were facing and that these expenses were increasing due to government regulation and voter approved taxes. Owners and managers of the larger properties indicated that over the 8 to 10 year return figures were very low and at least one housing provider indicated that their practice was to take reasonable rents annually. The RAC again presented six informal areas of inquiry and once again I will emphasize these were not recommendations coming from the RAC . Based on the two public meetings and several individual tenant and housing provider meetings. The most pressing issues involved the need for an accurate and reliable data collection point to identify individual situations where a small number of housing providers were noticing significant rent increases and developing a method for informing tenants of their ability to have a rent increase . Case heard by our Rent Review Advisory Committee. At this point, the project focus its efforts on the community's presenting problem and concentrated its energies on addressing these two issues. In the individual tenant and landlord group meetings, participants focused on improving the existing mediation process offered by the RAC. The suggested suggestions coming from the participants. Improving the city's current mediation process coincided with Iraq's areas of inquiry after getting support from both tenant and housing provider groups. A focus group of tenant and landlord interest was created to vet the six points and get authorization to distribute them to the larger groups and eventually to the community. The six points are discussion. Point one involves the failure of the tenant of a tenant and housing private provider to participate in a hearing in good faith. Discussion point to requires mutual participation in the hearing process. Discussion point three requires that a notice of option to participate in Iraq hearing be given in writing with any notice of a space rent increase over a specific defined percentage. Discussion point four would prohibit retaliation for exercising a legal right to Iraq. Hearing discussion point five provides for an expedient hearing process in cases where that would be necessary. Discussion point six. Would establish a minimum rent increase amount in order to participate in a rack hearing. The focus group unanimously approved points one through four for the release to the larger groups and to the general public. Eight out of nine members approved point number five, and there was no agreement on point number six. And it is my understanding that the parties on their own are continuing to have discussions centered around that point. I think it is important to note that the focus group did not directly represent any individual or group opinion or position. However, the group members were representative of the various tenant and housing interests that we believe we have in the city. The third meeting was held on January 7th involving the presentation of the six discussion points that originated in the public meetings and were reinforced in individual tenant and housing provider point of view meetings held after the public meeting. These six points are not to be considered direct recommendations to the City Council. They are presented to the Council in order to get authorization for staff to continue to refine the six points if authorized. A meeting with staff could be set up in the next several weeks. Ms. may talk about we'll be presenting shortly. I want to make sure that everybody's clear that she'll be presenting and then she will introduce Mr. Lindsey. He will then address the council. We will be able to come back up to address questions and then we will be turning it back to staff. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor and City Council. I'm back. My name is Angela Hawk About. And I started the Alameda Renters Coalition last September. Our membership has grown to nearly 400 members, many of whom are afraid that they could be pushed out of their homes by sudden high rent increases at any time in the current legal climate and just have 30 to 60 days to find alternative housing. There isn't enough diverse, affordable housing in Alameda. This limited supply means that some landlords are raising rents as high as they can, and some landlords are using exorbitant increases to push out existing tenants to raise rents even higher. This is unfair to renters who have little recourse under Alameda Law to stay in their homes. Earlier. We did have a lot more renters here, but there were families here. And as it's gotten too late, they've had to leave. But there's some of them represented, right cases where there were 20, 47% and even 30% increases. And over the last year, during 2014, 40 households felt the need that their rent increases were so high that they made the application to the Rent Review Advisory Committee. That sounds like a lot of people to me who feel at risk of losing their homes. I'm sorry, could I just have you reiterate, did you say last year 40 people made retirement, have filed. 40 households made applications? Maybe not all of them were heard by the RAC. Maybe some of them were negotiated before there was a meeting. Okay. But there were 40 households that actually approached it and had maybe some of them are also from individual buildings where there are multiple units within a building and they all presented at the same time. But they still represent individual households. Okay. Thank you. We recognize that this doesn't resent represent the majority of housing providers in Alameda who make reasonable rent increases and take good care of their properties. However, these exorbitant, exorbitant rent increases are still a problem that the city must address. Jeff Canberra's rental housing discussions have educated the community on the issues at hand. Renters and housing providers were able to join together and discuss each other's challenges. It turned out that many Alameda landlords disagreed with the exorbitant rent increases that pushed families out of their homes. At the same time, it was clear that renters understood the need for reasonable rent increases. This mutual understanding built a strong foundation for renting and property interests to discuss possible solutions. We hope to continue these discussions in good faith. As a renter and Landlord Alliance organization during this period of discussions, the Rent Review Advisory Committee presented details about this, their process and offered some ideas that they thought might make the rec more effective. We were able to discuss these ideas in several focus groups and exchange different points of view on what was feasible or not. Jeff Canberra has just presented the results, the six points that will strengthen the Rent Review Advisory Committee. We believe that they are a starting point for city staff to explore exorbitant rent increases and study solutions that have already been vetted by a public renter and housing provider. Focus group. We hope that such measures will discourage housing providers from making these 20, 30 and 40% increases. However, still more work needs to be done. More data needs to be collected, and more serious study is needed on how to prevent these increases in the first place. I hope the city will take the time to review how other cities have tackled the problem and find additional ways to ensure fairness in the rental market. A stronger rent review advisory committee will tell renters that they might have a fair chance at staying in their homes and will tell the landlords who make such increases that they will have to answer for them on public record in front of a civic body city council. I hope you will direct city staff to review these proposals and offer a report back to City Council within six months. The Alameda Renters Coalition would be more than happy to work with city staff as a helpful resource. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Thank you. And I just want to clarify for everyone, this is still part of the presentation. And that's why she was allowed to speak more than 3 minutes and. Now, Mr. Lynch, you may continue. Madame Mayor. Members of the City Council and staff. My name is Donna Lindsay, and I've been in the real estate profession in Alameda for a few decades. We'll put it that way. I have been involved really from the beginning of this process with with Jeff and I, I, I have a few comments on it. I have been totally supportive of the process. I think it was wise to. To get people involved that as Jeff did, that are directly involved either as a renter or as a provider or a manager. And I think that was it kind of we kind of got to it in a hurry with with those kinds of interests being involved in the process. They were true stakeholders as. As we're called. And. And I think through the process that we've all become more aware if we haven't been aware of. You know, the problems that exist and some of the. Details as to kind of where we where we are today. We have explained, I think in in great in detail of the the business of owning and managing renting apartments. It's business like anything else. We've been confronted with rising costs, of course, and we've been involved in changing markets. And there are those here that I'll speak to that. So I won't go into a lot of detail on that. Alameda has a lot of diverse housing stock because, as we all know, the owners consist primarily of alum Edens. And I think that's really important. We care about Almeida. We like owning property in Alameda. And we believe in just the. The idea of fairness, and we definitely frown on excessive rent increases. That's that's not what we're about. It's it's not fair. It's it puts a tremendous burden on a resident to get a huge rent increase. And we're we're totally against that concept. We as a community because we care and because we're special, we're different. We can we can work through these issues, through this mediation process. The the process has worked. Generally, there have only been a couple of cases that have been brought before the council in the last couple of years. It generally generally works well. I've gone through the details pretty, pretty carefully, and we've got history that goes back to 2008 or 2007. I think there were years when the rec didn't even have a case because of the market. And you'll hear more about that as we. Continue to talk this evening. The idea of strengthening the RAC is the we feel the best solution. The word should be out there that the RAC is available. And, you know, if if an increased notice is given, there should be information that tells the resident if that if they have a if they have a problem with the increased it, that they can appeal it. That that's one of the main things that the first thing that we agreed upon is the RAC should have a higher profile and there should be no excuse why I didn't know the RAC existed. So that's that's very important. I think it's moving forward. I think it's extremely important that that we continue to talk to and promote the idea of reasonableness with with all property owners in the community. I think we're we're good at that. I think we need to work to. Kind of fact, I talked to and Angela Angela this morning about this of of forming a coalition of owners and managers and renters alike. Let's form a group and continue to work on these issues and head off the issues really before they get to the RAC stage. We've got eco housing that helps and they've been doing a great job in solving some issues before they get to the RAC. Let's let's add an additional layer of people in the community of owners and let's, let's talk to each other if, if increase comes in and, and it can't get resolved right away, there's nothing better than one owner talking to another owner and saying, hey, this is not the way we do things. So I think that's something we can develop and improve upon. We have great resources in our management companies here. We can work with residents who have a particular problem. That's that's what we do for a living. We we rent properties and manage properties so we we can help relocate. Relocate people. Let's let's let's move forward. Let's strengthen the rack and make it more visible. You'll have you'll have a better way. Of. Assessing. You know, if if if there's a problem, there'll be no excuse for not knowing about it. It'll be there in a year from now or so. You'll have a better understanding of of what's going on in the rental market. Again, just in closing, we're really good and working together. And let's let's move, move forward doing that. Thank you. And at this point, I'll need a motion to continue the meeting beyond 11 seconds. All those in favor. I thank you. Now, honestly, past. So. QUESTION So did anyone have clarifying questions? We do have speakers on this item that. If you do plan to speak on this, please submit your slip. You know, do I have any questions? But I was going to defer to allow me to go first. I've I've got a couple. So this is probably for both our landlord and tenant representatives, if you would. And I, by the way, I appreciate the your involvement, all of your involvement, the three of you. And I should quickly disclose that I met last week, I think it was with Mr. Lindsay and a group of landlords at his offices. And prior to that, a day or two prior, I met with Laura Thomas of Renewed Hope. So I'm trying to, you know, hear all sides of this issue. Thank you all for your work. I know, Mr. Lindsay, you said that this process generally works well, that the RAC process, it's out there when you can get people to talk to each other, that generally works. But I also read in the comments in the report that Mr. Cameron submitted that and I think it was Laura Thomas of renewed hope, said that she had some tenants who in fact chose to remain anonymous because they were concerned with retaliation. It sounds good to say, well, just talk to your landlord. But I think we could all imagine a situation where you felt that talking to your landlord would be the worst possible thing you could do. So how how would you how would you deal with that? The the the issue where some tenants are just afraid to speak up and talk to their landlord about an increase to try to negotiate on their own. And the other thing, and this was one of the five or six points that are proposed is that well, and also I would just throw out my opinion that it's not exactly a level playing field, because obviously the landlord owns that building and the tenant needs a place to live. But the requirement is the same. Each has to show up or they can't avail themselves of legal processes. But under the proposal, all the landlord has to do is show up at the hearing. And then, as we discussed at Mr. Lindsay's office, they could still impose a 65% rent increase because they showed up at the hearing. So if you could maybe merge those two concerns and Angela, you look ready to. James so ready. All right. One of the reasons I started the Alameda Renters Coalition was because there wasn't enough support for renters in this marketplace to empower themselves to use the services that are available to them. I myself endured a $450 rent increase in 2013 that forced me out of my home, and I had to move in with my mother in law, where I currently reside at Bay Farm Island. And when that happened to me as someone who was a good renter and had periodic every year $75 rent increases, and I had gotten a $75 rent increase that year to all of a sudden in August, four months after my initial rent increase to get an additional $450 rent increase felt like a slap in the face. I felt little recourse. And when I investigated the rack, investigated eco housing, I really didn't get a lot of support. And I felt that it might not be kind of me to try to air my my problems in public. And fortunately, I found the strength to negotiate with my landlord so that I could afford to stay in my apartment for a few months before we could make the arrangements to move in with my mother in law. But in that process, I was very much alone, and I felt like this was my problem, this was my fault , that I had no one else to help me. And so out of that, after realizing on all the different social media for Alameda that really there wasn't a lot of public support for renters, that an organization needed to be started to provide that support. And so what we are trying to do and in the process of doing we're an infant, we've only been around since September, is to provide education and emotional and practical support to renters. And that is part of a hopefully a larger picture involving Mr. Lindsay and other housing providers in Alameda to work together to. They have an amazing process where they all talk among themselves. They don't like these exorbitant rent increases. And I'm pretty sure that when somebody makes those rent increases, they hear about it. And I think we can all work together to bring renters to the table, to take advantage of the services that they have and make them more educated consumers as well. So I think that if the city staff comes back with some of these recommendations to make a stronger crack, it will be part of a larger ecosystem of rental housing, and especially if we're working together, cooperate. Lee. Where we can try to decrease these exorbitant rent increases. I mean, there are other problems as well. I'm hearing from renters that even 10% rent increases are difficult for them because they're happening that high year after year. And at this point, because rents are so high. 10% can represent represent hundreds of dollars. And so I'm hoping that we can engage the housing provider community to find ways of easing those rent increases, because we recognize and we understand that significant costs are included as part of taxes, as part of improvements to units. But, you know, what does it say about the provider if they raise rents so high that a person can't afford to live there who has made the investment of living there for year after year? And in this market where there are few rentals available, it is nearly impossible to find a replacement housing within 30 to 60 days . And I was just lucky. I was lucky that my mother in law has lived in Alameda since 1967 and that she had a house for me to go to. I was the best case scenario for that housing provider, and there are people who are definitely not as lucky as I am. And that's why I'm here and that's why I'm started this organization. Thank you. Two quick questions. Did you want to respond, Mr. Lindsey? Sorry, Mr. Lindsey. Yeah. Let's see my comments. If if if I were a resident here and I got a 25 or 30% increase, I wouldn't keep it a secret. Somebody is going to know about it. That's that's sort of my attitude. And if the racks available, I'm going to go to the rack and get it resolved, or I'm going to sit down with it with the owner and try and get it resolved. I'm going to go to echo housing and try and get it resolved. I can't do that. I'm going to go to Rack. If I can't get it resolved there, I'll go to the council, which has happened, what, two times in the last two years in this whole process. So that's my answer to the first question. I'm not going to keep it a secret and worry about retaliation, which is not legal anyway, and it's not right. But I'm not going to be kept secret. That's the second question. That the landlord just has to show up and then can raise the rent any percentage. Yeah, well I don't see those cases at the rack and I've, I've looked through them pretty carefully for the last couple of years and someone comes in with an increase and it gets resolved pretty typically. Well, remember we discussed the Benton. The Benton. Well, we we all know about Benton Street and we all know about Park Street. Those were two different cases that they eventually worked out. Okay. But those those are not. Those are not good. But, you know, we have, what, 16,000 rental units here. And I think percentage wise, it's pretty much new. But I'd just like to address one other thing briefly. There was a case last week. No, two weeks ago. Iraq had seven residents who appeared objecting to an 18% increase. And the owner who lives out of town came in and basically said, no, I'm not going to deal with you. And he left. And that was the end of it. I did talk to I did finally get to the owners after the hearing, although I left a message for them before the hearing. And long story short, a couple of days ago, they agreed to go to the 10%. So it peer peer pressure does work and it's just being involved and working on these things. So that's that's a comment I have on that. Thank you. Any other clarifying questions. To two brief ones? The recommendation is that we enhance or strengthen the process. Can you briefly tell us what the process is now? As quickly as that. Maybe that's Miss Potter. Yeah, I think that. Yeah. Well, just. Just quickly. I think this doesn't really. Matter that. We do have 16 speakers and 3 minutes. That's 48 minutes. I'd like to get to them. And two and one of the speakers is David Perry, the chair of the RAC and another RAC member this evening. But quickly, we have on the housing authorities website there is a rent increase complaint form. If you feel like you've had a rent increase that you want to have mediated, you fill out that form. Staff will take it in and it will. The RAC meetings are scheduled as there are cases that the RAC meets once a month. It is a voluntary process. The tenant and the property owner are invited to come to the meeting. Both sides present their. They're their side of the story. The rack makes rack members can make suggestions about think of this, think of that. And often times most of the time, they're those recommendations are taken and the two parties agree to to go with what the rack has recommended. And typically the rack encourages rent increases that are 10% or less and encourages folks to increase their rent annually so that you have less likelihood that you're going to get a large one time increase. But Rack does not deal with maintenance issues or fair housing issues or anything else. They deal with rent increases and staff can refer people to echo housing. You've heard mentioned several times and other resources that are available to deal with fair housing and maintenance and other kinds of issues. And if it's not result at the rack, what happens? There is an opportunity for if the property owner or the tenant wants to pursue it, to come before the council and staff. Typically the recommendation is to ask council to write a letter to the property owner upholding the recommendation. The council typically votes to uphold the recommendation. A letter is sent and typically those that request to uphold the rack recommendation is not complied with. Because if it's going to be dealt with, it's going to be dealt with. Well, in our experience at the at the RAC or as Mr. Lindsay was just talking about the case that was just heard two weeks ago and following the meeting, the property owner reflected on the recommendations that were being suggested and subsequently decided that they made a lot of sense. And the other question, maybe this is for Mr. Camera. You know, I see a lot of signs in here with some big numbers. You know, can you can you share with us how many tenants came to you throughout this process and said, my rents were increase like over 10%? And can you elaborate on some of that? Was it three people? Was it ten people? Was it you know, so there were some serious challenges with just getting tenants to contact me. My name, phone number and email address were in the papers multiple times, and when I did get somebody that did actually call me, the very first thing that they said was, Can I be anonymous? How do I even get involved with this process? Because I am fearful of retaliation was the number one reason that people gave for not wanting to be involved. And I think that is part and parcel of a few, very, very few bad examples. Benton being one of them, which was the very rare, I think, situation that the council had to deal with, except it also went everywhere. And so now that sends a message, I think, to tenants that if we don't have a process that's that is effective, then they don't have any recourse. So I will I can guarantee you that was the issue that I had to face, which was why it was difficult to get people together. Fortunately, between MM Renter Renters Coalition and Renewed Hope, there was like a safety area where tenants could go. I wasn't even invited to some of the meetings, but the information that came out of them then did come to me. So how many was there? Six over 10%. Was there five or 25% or was there three? I mean, how many people anonymously or that care to identify themselves? So for the people that came forward at the tenant meeting, there were probably maybe 12 to 14 that actually came and either spoke or sent emails in and their increases were in what was the average. And sometimes they didn't I don't have that statistical data and but I think if you look at the rack records for last year, that will give you some insight into that, some of the types of rent increases that tenants were facing. I'd like to move on if we can, and start calling on speakers, please. Thank you very much, David Perry. Then I'll be royal Robert. And then Eric Johnson. Thank you. And I really appreciate everyone being so patient. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council staff. I'm David Perry. I'm the current chairperson of the RAC. This is Royal. Robert's, my colleague is also a member of the RAC. Debbie pretty much answered, you know, the question you had. We both we and staff thought it might be helpful if we gave a very brief overview of what the RAC is and what it does to give context to what is being presented by the task force. And the only suggestion would be, please don't be redundant. I have a lot of other people. Consist of five members. We are not advocates. We all we all have a background in legal backgrounds or real estate backgrounds, background in landlord tenant law, a a passion for mediation. I think we all share that. We had, as was stated, we had spoken and given informational presentations at three of the public task force meetings at which we presented ideas we had batted around informally but had not, you know, drilled down into or made formal in any sense. Some of those ideas have been taken up by the task force. So in order not to be right, I won't be redundant. But I will say that we do support the task force's request that the City Council direct staff to further evaluate those proposals. Thank you. Thank you. One thing I would like to add and thank you for your time is the committee consists of of those five members, two of them are renters. Two of them are landlords and one is an independent homeowner. And those aren't advocacy positions. Those are just to have the balance of the make up of the people that are on the committee anymore. Thank you. One further face to this thing, something. I had a 20% rent increase a few months back. And sorry get you continue. To give another face to this. I had a 20% increase a few months back and my landlords know I'm on the rack. So there you go. Okay. I did not bring it before the rack. And Madam Mirror to indicate I've been in discussions with the city attorney about this matters as I do rent out rooms at my place helps pay the mortgage. I inquired as to whether that constitutes a conflict of interest to which the city attorney had indicated it does not. Given that this discussion is a discussion matter that will affect the public generally. So there is no specific effects, positive or negative to me. It's a fact that generally, which I am a member of. We can share those comments later. Let's continue. The two gentlemen are finish. Thank you very much, Eric Johnson. And then Garfield can cross and then Doyle Saylor. Thank you very much. Mayor Council Staff Good evening. My name is Eric Johnson and I've been a housing provider in Alameda for about 30 years. I hate to admit that, but I'm responsible for 366 apartment units from one end of the island to the other. They're well-maintained. These are limited partnerships primarily. And so they have many owners. And so I'm a general partner and a managing general partner, and those owners are here in Alameda. And I think that's typical of the dispersion you see of of housing providers here in this town, which is unusual in my experience. A lot of ownership in in in the town. Here in the community. So one of the things I wanted to do is look back ten years and look at the end game on these 366 years. So you get a better picture than just the last 18 months of what's going on here. So I went back and looked at 2004 income and compared it to 2013 and come see actual results or accounting is done outside by third party accounting. DCH Phillips City, a well-known accounting firm. They do the bookkeeping, too, which is unusual. So these numbers are our numbers that I don't have any control over. From 2004 to 2013, we saw a steady and typical fall in the purchasing power of the dollar. So we saw the dollar fall 23.3% in terms of purchasing power. You're well aware of that. Doing your budgets, that affects us. Very starkly as well. So in order for the rents to cover the property's expenses rising at this rate over these ten years, nominal rents would need to be 23% higher ten years later, just to stay even. You know, in theory now our taxes went up higher than that. Water bills went up higher than what's, let's call CPI, a nominal benchmark. So collected income for these 366 units overall has gone up 27% in that time period, barely above the 23% of the CPI. So when corrected for actual dollars after subtracting from inflation and I realize this renters look at it effective real rise was about 4%. Over those ten years, 4% over ten years, so point 4% annually over those ten years. So that's what the rental markets look like to people like me that are trying to do the seismic work, repair the sidewalks that we now have to pay for, that the city no longer pays for fix earthquake damage. It it seemingly never happens. We've adopted the international building code for roofs, so no more flat roofs. We have to pitch our roofs. If we replace roofs, that's going to double the cost. So all of this makes it very difficult to maintain sustainable housing. That's what I'd like you to think about when you think about apartments and in your town, do you want sustainable housing? This stuff is old. It's 50 to 70 years old. It's costing more and more to maintain. My thanks to Jeff. I told him this was going to be like herding cats, you know? Ex Speaker Ross Garfield. Ken Cross. Hello, Mayor Spencer. And City staff and city council members. My name is Garfield Cairncross. I've been in Alameda since the base was open. I worked there ten years. I transferred to the United States Mint in San Francisco as a civilian metal finisher. I'm a federal employee. 30 years. I saw lots of retirement. A ceremony today. And, you know, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to be able to retire because of these incremental rent increases that I've received over the past three years. There's a trend of. Receiving 10% increase as the flat rate. Whenever there's a market surge, this becomes an issue here. From what I understand, the RAC was able to provide a one year stay on rent increases after I had received a 20% rent increase. But I didn't know about the rack. And I found out about it through a very ambitious, uh, proactive renter in my complex. About 30 of us showed up that night, and then a rent crisis was publicized. That's what the term was in the press. So, you know, I'm just wondering, you know, is is it going to keep going up? You know, do I have to live in, you know, some small space and pay. Just as much or. More and sacrifice, you know, my health needs. You know, I have to pay for transportation, you know, and. I just don't know what's going to happen next. But I feel a little a little safer now that this study has has been put forward and is in the process of evaluation by. I hope that it becomes in the process of evaluation by this committee or excuse me, by the city council. And I can say that I'm very thankful for for having the opportunity to to to stand before you and ask for the implementation of these six measures that were brought together after this. Merging of tenants and landlords. Thank you. Thank you, Doyle. Sailor. Hi there. Madame Mayor, I want me to city council members. My name is Doyle Saylor, and I'm a Alameda renter. The media likes to tell us the San Francisco Tech workers are pushing up rents, trying to take advantage of lower Alameda rents. I dispute this claim. The National Association of Realtors figures for the year November 2013 to November 2014 for the San Francisco Bay Area. Housing unit sales declined by 20%. But the prices. Went up by 27%. That price rise and housing is not tech workers putting pressure on existing sales. It is speculators pushing prices up as sales decline. Recognizing house flipping is coming to a halt. The same speculative groups have switched their recently purchased stocks to rental income and similarly set prices higher. Additionally, informal interviews with individual property managers report as much as 20% of rental units they manage are being held off market to further enhance price gouging. It is speculators, not tenants, raising rents sky. High. Thank you. Thank you, Jason Buckley. And then Jon Sullivan and then Ken Laban. Hello, Mayor. And Council and staff. You've got me way past my bedtime, so I may be a little cranky, but, boy, a couple of things I wanted to address. One is that, I mean, even with the fact we're looking at 10% increases, which for struggling families whose income is probably pretty stagnant, that's that's a lot. The whole process has kind of been a little frustrating as the Iraq. Really has no teeth. And I don't know what the solution would be, but I mean, I would like to see the RAC get a little bit more reformed. I'd like to see it maybe have some kind of enforcement. Yeah. I'm exhausted. I'm sorry. I'm done. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Mayor Spencer and members of the council. Members of the staff. I'm John Sullivan. And I've been. Operating. I'm an owner operator of 200 units here in Alameda for over four over the last 20 years, really back about 15 years ago. And we had a market, general market like we had no where the rents were going up. And I at that time representing the Rental Housing Association and CAA and some others got involved in getting together and getting a good rental mediation program going for different cities. San Leandro, Alameda and the. The unincorporated area of Alameda County served three different jurisdictions through different programs. Really? So. So. Naturally, being involved with that stage event. Stayed involved and witnessed the negatives, the ups and the downs and so forth of the mediation programs, how they worked. And they're all outlined really. They're all captured pretty much on that first document on the top of your your list there. So I would like if you would, you know, peruse through that. Now, today, I really feel we have an excellent opportunity to form a kind of a model mediation program here in Alameda, having the benefit of watching how these other programs work over the last 15 years or so. As you know, as long as we learn from it and make appropriate adjustments to suit, you know, our situation and so forth, and a little back up material that would be. And next, I guess behind your program, they're behind your the initial one. And this would be. We had, you know, we always have the question of why. Why can't we, you know, give 2%, 3%, 4%, whatever every year? Well, it's not possible. And the reason the market really dictates that and this what this came from, not me, from another landlord who wanted to show the fact that there's many years, many years when there's no possibility of giving a rent increase. And it shows that in some of these there if you want to browse through them and and it shows the average rent increase over year 15 and to a ten, ten year period. And they're anywhere from a look here for 3.9 to 2.43 and before this bring it out on an annual basis. So the fact is we have to. To really acknowledge the fact that we there will be highs and lows. So the tenant does benefit one day when they're in the low times. Now, one other item that we haven't really one other item that we haven't really addressed, and that is that there are the extraordinary increases of 15% , 20%, 30%. And that happens when an A sale, generally of sale, a piece of property. I really feel any good mediation program should address that. And that's something we should look into and. A few other items and I'll just finish up and there are two other attachments there. One of them is a caution racing wrench in today's market. That's something that we as landlords put out, distributor members cautioning against and, you know, excessive raises, obviously, and trying to smooth out. So it'll make it at least as palatable as possible to a tenant. And so and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to speak on this. I hope you would, you know, seriously, take a look and consider these items that I have presenting to you and then. Obviously I would be available going forward to, you know, to put any finishing touches to this program that we're you know, we're all into it together. I'd been at a lot of those meetings and talked to different people, and I'm sure we could still work together with, you know, Angela, Jeff and Don and so forth, and that I hope the loose ends and come up with a good program. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ken. Madam Mayor. Council. My name is Ken Godliman. I'm a resident here in Alameda. And I would like to thank Jeff for doing such a beautiful job. Thank you, Jeff. It really helped. Bring people together. As a contractor here in Alameda. I retrofitted and replaced foundations by the hundreds. And I can tell. You that in the last. Ten, 15 years, the cost for that project. Has doubled. Retrofitting a home. And putting new foundation in. Is it safe for our community and it's safe for the inhabitants who live in it. I'm afraid that if there's any kind of a rent control or a freeze on price, it will. The. Devastating for our community. It actually keeps the homes and our community from being safe. And that's where it's at. Thank you very much. Yeah. Bruce Carnes, then Barbara Rasmussen and then Ed Hirshberg. Mayor Council. I'm a small landlord and I have two Victorians who are terribly expensive to maintain and I've kept my rents down where they're not anywhere near market. And a lot of my friends are this way. And I think that introducing something new, I think the peer pressure is probably the best way to go about this. And all of us, lots and lots of small landlords, we live right here in Alameda. And so we're we're affected by the city. We love the city. And that's what I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor. Council members. Staff. My name is Barbara Rasmussen. I've lived in Alameda for quite a long time. I've been a housing provider for about 20 years. I want to thank Jeff for the work he's done and say that I support the proposal that he has before you. Thank you. Thank you. Hirshberg. I don't believe he must have left. Moving on then. Laura Thomas, Marjorie Roach and Angie Watson will be after. And then David Howard. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council members Laura Thomas from Renewed Hope. First off, I wanted to give you copies of our rent survey updated because I gave you copies back in July. And about 40 more people reached our online survey and answered it in the meantime. I can't say that the results are random because they're self-selected. They're people that, you know, heard about it. Found their way to our Google. Site and filled it out. But what I think since there's three of you that weren't on the council six months ago, I thought it would be good to bring an update. So some of the first responders responded back at the beginning of 2014. And so there's 40 new ones. But I think what you might find really enlightening and useful is the 180 comments that are attached. So everybody that responded to the survey had an opportunity to post a comment and we collected them all. So that will be, you know, I think, help quite a bit in understanding some of the anxiety people are feeling. So renewed. Hope greeted the suggestion of that city task force back in September with a certain amount of skepticism because it didn't include tenant representatives. But we also responded to the desires voiced at the time by both the organizing committee of renters that we had convened, and the landlords and property managers. Who. Wanted to engage in a discussion of the issues and the problems surrounding rent increases. And we chose this alternative because we hope to bridge the divide and we hope to find common ground. As you know, the progress, I think, was kind of difficult and it underlined the disparity in power between the two groups in particular, because it was very hard for us to get tenants to come. And we ended up with a kind of a small core group that was. Brave enough to just sit down throughout the whole process. But what emerged in the meantime was something that we had hoped for, which was the tenant led group, the Alameda Renters Coalition, whose intent is to continue working with property managers to strengthen the Rent Review Advisory Committee and to continue to organize and support renters in Alameda. We aren't going to ask that for the task force to be convened at this point. We will be throwing our support behind the coalition has it takes the lead in organizing tenants. And we'll hope we'll all be working together to bring stable and affordable housing. De Almeida In pushing for the rent stabilization process to be included in the element, I reminded the Council that part of housing element law requires the city to conserve and improve the condition of existing affordable housing stock. And that means market rate rentals. You are the only ones that can say that the half of Alameda that is renting can turn to to deal with these economic forces that are assaulting them. And I hope you can develop the proper policies that recognizes the value of our community's social and emotional health. So I hope you will give. Us. Solutions to these destabilizing housing costs your highest priority. Thank you. Thank you. Next was Marjorie and Angie from Echo. Are they? Yes. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Marjorie Roach. I'm from Echo Housing. I'm the executive director. And Echo. Is currently under. Contract with the city. Of Alameda to provide fair housing counseling. And investigation and tenant landlord counseling and conciliation services. We are the oldest approved fair housing investigation and enforcement organization in the state. Our purpose is to ensure that all renters have access to fair housing regardless of race, gender, national origin, disability, familial or marital status or sexual orientation or identity. As tenant landlord counselors, we are not advocates for either the renter or the housing provider. We advocate for the law to make sure that tenants and landlords are aware of the rights and responsibilities. When I reviewed. The Alameda. Rental Housing Community Discussion Group report, specifically discussion point five, it made me aware that some rent increases become effective before they're heard by the rack. In cases such as these, Echo may be able to provide a formal. Mediation. Between the renter and the landlord. This type of mediation, which would be provided, includes a face to face meeting at which would be present the disputing parties and at least one mediator who would be a neutral party. The purpose of this type. Of mediation is to make. Sure that all sides are heard and all parties understand the issues. The mediator would be responsible for. Facilitating the meeting and getting the parties. To speak to each other instead of past each other to come to a mutually agreeable solution. The mediation can. Take anywhere from. An hour to several hours, depending on the complexity of the issues. I have another issue that concerned me with regard to the report that Mr. Camber wrote. Tenants were reluctant to come forward to complain about rent increases because of fear of reprisals or retaliation by housing providers. I want every. Person in this chamber. To be aware of the fact that a landlord may not legally. Retaliate. Against a tenant for exercising his or her rights under the law. This includes exercising First. Amendment rights. To assemble and prevent views collectively and. Joining. Or organizing a tenants. Union. I want to make sure that everybody hears it. If there isn't. Anybody if there is anyone in. This room that has been threatened in this. Way. Please contact Echo Housing. Our number is 855. Ask Echo or 510 5819380. Thank you. Thank you. David Howard and Dennis Cox and Andrew Barr leaving. Good evening, Mayor and council and staff members. I'm an Alameda resident and since 1985 have been either a commercial real estate appraiser or a chief underwriter for affordable housing developed development. A lender. My position is that the evidence is pretty strong, that rent control is a right a solution. It has been tried and failed in virtually every case. The main problem with rent control is that there's no means test. So whoever's in there, it's subsidized. And what turns out to be the case is you're more likely to subsidize an investment banker than somebody who needs to be subsidized. For example, I'll be appraising a property tomorrow. That has a stockbroker in the penthouse. At less than 50% of market rent. Running his stock brokerage business. Out with a wide bank of screens. And so this is what happens with rent control. Another unintended consequence would be my family moved to Alameda in the beginning of 2000. We lived next door to a blighted property that was, I think, nine units. The building was built in 18. 90, approximately. So this building would be subject to rent control. It would have never been renovated. It was a vector problem up until a year and a half ago when the rents got strong enough. This what was really looked like the Addams Family house finally got renovated. And then the last thing I would point out from my experience to two things actually in appraisal work is. When there's an apartment complex that's in a lesser neighborhood, those units will never get renovated, that they will be as bad as can possibly be and be inhabitable. So that's one unintended consequence. The other one is this only protects the people who are there right now because. Once somebody moves out and rent controls in place, the landlord will charge the highest possible rent. That is achievable. First of all, there will be very few units because people don't leave rent controlled units. So vacancy goes way down, which will drive the rent up on the remaining units. So the consequences? It's an idea. It seems like it would work, but because mainly because there is no means testing, you get all these bizarre consequences and it affects the upkeep of the properties also. And then finally, new people who want to move in here, no matter how poor they might be, they're out of luck. Cox. Hey. Of our 11. Rashid Shabazz, Don Spangler. That's our order. Thank you. As far as I know, Dennis Cox is not here. All right. Oh. Okay. The end of our living. Good evening, Mayor. Council and staff. My battery is almost out, so I'm glad I was called. I'm speaking this evening as the immediate past president of the Alameda Association of Realtors. Our current president, Tony Berg, was unable to attend. So I'm speaking on. His behalf for our board. The Alameda Association of Realtors is an organization whose members represent both renters and housing providers. We provided information as requested by the facilitator and only attended those meetings where all parties were invited. We've read the report and we believe the report does not respond to the direction of the city council. The Council has the group to provide. Information. Regarding the depth of the problem, as well as. Demographic information, including the number and type of. Rental units available in Alameda. Median rent for each type of unit and average vacancy rates. What we feel the report does not address the request of the Council. We do feel that it fairly highlights. The rent review advisory committee. The good work that it does and the need to increase the committee's role in this process. The LME, the Association of Realtors, stands ready to be active in any further committees or. Assistance as needed. Thank you. Yeah. Rashid. Good afternoon or good evening. It is late, like another speaker said and past my bedtime. Council. City staff. Beautiful people of Alameda. My name is Rashid Shabazz and I moved to Alameda in 1987. I moved here along with my mother, the beautiful, intelligent Deborah James or Deborah James. And we moved to a shelter on Concordia Street, which was near what used to be the liquor bar and later Rite Aid and now I think is Westbury. We were able to later move to a one bedroom apartment over on Central, above what's called a Taco Bell here across from what used to be Taco Bell and Elmo Mike's. And we later moved in 1989 to what was then the point of Vista Apartments and later Bridgeport. Now, we were able to move into that apartment complex because there had been a situation similar to what we've seen here, where rents were raised double, doubled in many instances, or threatened to be doubled by a property owner, Gersten Company out of L.A. and people came to the city council meeting, protested and ultimately Section eight vouchers were issued and me and my mother was for the move into the Harbor Island apartments or again it was the post office departments that are Bridgeport Apartments. And many people know the story that in 1996, the 15 group, the Florida Slumlords, bought those apartments and renamed it the Harbor Island Apartments. For about eight years, this out-of-state landlord allowed the apartments to deteriorate. There was a Harbor Island task force in which no residents were involved, and this task force and the city allowed them to continue to operate without forcing enforcing any of the code violations, the multiple. Code violations that. Existed. I give some of that history because that was my own experience. And then ultimately in 2004, me, my mother and 400 other families were forced from the Harbor Island Apartments. We know from the USDA or the school district data that nearly two thirds of families were forced from the island because so many children were then placed out of district. So the experience of residential displacement is something I know personally. Our family moved twice after that, and we've been in the same apartment for the last nine years. And fortunately, our landlord, who used to live in that apartment as a resident and now owns it, has not raised our rent for nine years. We are very grateful. That is not a reality for most out of meetings, I'm sure don't have any scientific evidence, but I doubt that the euphemistically speaking housing providers or landlords are able to extend that to everybody. I later with that housing stability was able to go back to school, went to UC Berkeley. I did my housing, my undergrad thesis on. And if I can just wrap up very, very briefly, I did my thesis on housing discrimination against Alameda in black Alameda and it's called Alameda and is our home. And one of the takeaways from that is that this displacement is constant. It's particularly for African-Americans. And so while I spoke out here in September in favor of a task force, I repeat that there needs to be a task force to be able to study this data. I'm grateful for the community process that did exist because it organized people and attempts to engage people. But I'm interested in data. I think that what was proposed, although we had critiques, there were no residents represented by the stakeholders or not residents pardon me, there were not any renters representing I don't know if there is any renters represented on this council or the previous council. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that it is invalid, right? Because if that was the case, then with the housing tenure in Alameda, half of the folks should be renters. Right. So anyway, in conclusion, since you allow me two little extra time to speak. And I'm grateful. For that, I would again hope that we can bring up the housing task force to be able to study and get more information about the actual renter market. What is the state of the market? What are some of the demographics of the housing tenure where people being displaced? How does that impact things like the school district, etc.? Because housing is a basis for many other opportunities that us Al-Amin are grateful for. Thank you. Thank you. The John Spangler and I'll Brian McGuire. And then, Amy, we thank you. Thank you again, Mayor Spencer. I'll be brief because my line is going off in 5 hours. I've been at it since five. I want to offer start, sir, with a quote from Martin, the Reverend Martin Luther King. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. When we first moved to Alameda in 1997, we bought a house. Linda and I owned the house for about 12 years. We sell it. So since then, we've been since 2009, we've been renting. There is a profound difference in. The potential for intimidation when you're renting than when you're dealing with a mortgage. The comments that Jeff quoted and others have referred to are genuine. They're very real. And I'll bet you none of them. None of those comments came from investment bankers. I've been to three Alameda Renters Coalition meetings. None of the people who shown up have said anything about being in the banking business, never mind being investment bankers. A lot of these people are on fixed incomes. Social Security retirement. And when they're faced on a fixed income with a 10% increase. That means they get to choose when they're going to eat or whether they don't get medication anymore. Instead of paying the rent increase. This is a very real conflict. The landlords you've heard from tonight have very real expenses. I've heard a great deal. I've seen a great deal of can they live and work on foundations? I know what the going market rate was when we were on the gold in the Gold Coast. Those are real expenses. I don't want any landlords to starve either, but I don't think it's fair that people who are faced with a 30% no ifs, no ads, no buts increase without any changes at all in the status of the apartment they're living in and no change in ownership and no improvements and substandard conditions should get away with that. That said, I support the process that Jeff undertook. I am very happy to be part of the group that is now offering some support to my fellow renters. And I hope to God that this mediation process and strengthening the RAC works. It is the Alameda way. It would be wonderful to not pursue stronger measures. But. If this collaborative approach does not work, we have a big problem on our hands and I hope this council will be willing and able and ready to deal with the next step if it has to come. Thank you. Good evening, Council Mayor Staff. I could stand up here and tell personal stories about rent increases past, present and future. Notice to vacate upcoming move from the only home my daughter's ever known. But I think some of that anecdotal grounds been well covered. Council has a bigger responsibility than just dealing with this on a case by case basis. Renter initiated mediation is no substitute for an ordinance governing this relationship between renters and property owners. Smart people can and have already told you more about the types of power imbalances in this relationship. One thing, renters hold almost zero market power over their housing costs in terms of choosing one versus another. They can't dictate to the property owner, so they can just act and choose off the menu. Think if you were a teacher or a cop and had to negotiate your pay and benefits instead of relying on collective bargaining. Angela and Arc HRC have started this process, but you really are our union reps in this type of situation. You need to act accordingly. A lot of property owners have, you know, several property owners in this process and, you know, in the discussions have sort of been crying poor and talking about the costs of maintenance and keeping safe, habitable structures makes it sound like property owning property in Alameda is undesirable. But look at the MLS right now and you can see there's almost zero multifamily rental properties on the market right now available for purchase. If they don't want to be property owners and landlords and it's too much of a hassle, there's a line of people that will be happy to pay double what they inherited, double the value that they inherited, that their parents paid for when they, you know, and that they've now inherited and are are making their living off of. They'll be alright by the grace of God. I think they'll make it. I don't personally advocate for the strictest rent control measures due to some well-documented unintended consequences, but you need to take some of the volatility out of this process. Something like CPI plus X percentage with the ability for capital pass thrus is could be a starting point. There's lots of you know, we can learn from other cities. This process needs to have the city's imprimatur behind it. I was disappointed that the previous council kind of pass the buck on this. And I hope you. Consider this and actually work on an actual ordinance and not just rely on a case by case process to try to negotiate this. Thank you. What was your name again? Brian McGuire. Amy. Oh. Good evening, everyone. My name is Amy. I'm a renter. I live in Alameda about eight years. And this few years, you know, I'm a renter, a race two times totally about $300. And I enjoying the meeting like a renter meeting staff about six times. And I listen to every people and less than the owner what's reason they entrees rent binary also I ask my friends they are owner you know and then. For me. I know. You know, you're only the owner. They cost the same, you know, and I think. And no reason to raise the rent. And for me, I think you only raise the one times enough. I don't. I want. Don't want. I hope it can stop no normal or raise the rent or you know, for me, I think I or I want to rent a house. I have a renter's lease, you know it just how much money pay, you know that's how much money. You know it is a Y raise next time. And also I hear my friends, he's a renter, a owner. He said, oh, Amy, I will go to raise my raise their house, rent of money as they I say how much money. They say, oh, 100. I say to you know, oh, what's, you know how they think, how they say, I don't know, you know and I know about they they know why is retired one woman another is a picket dog or stuff a woman I feel you know also care about their you know is. My friends, he's the owner, but he's he, you know, have money. You know, he don't want any money. That's the he just think, you know, see another place how much money or to bail on so I thought well going to so for this is all stories I felt no I hope you know is the city council and a study about that you know. And. If I want to raise money, you know, maybe 2%. And from, you know, just a sink of 2%. I know I've already raised money too much, you know. Only one times. I know, actually, you know, is no reason to raise rent. Well, I hope kids think about this. You know, I have good stages and as soon as possible. Thank thank you. Count that. That was our last speaker everyone. So at this point council comments are actually staff do you want to. Cause. Yeah, I guess what Steph is looking for tonight, you've heard a great deal of testimony. I think on behalf of Steph, I want to thank Jeff Canberra for putting together this process with the stakeholders now that they've put forward. Their product we had staff really need direction from the council because this is such a. It's a very human issue, but it's also, from a policy perspective, a very complex issue. There's lots of different ways of looking at data, what data is being considered and not being considered and the way that gets framed. Can determine the outcome. So what data is being collected and analyzed, I believe, is actually in itself a policy decision because we don't have unlimited resources either financially or in terms of staff time. So what I'm hope what what on behalf of staff who are going to actually do the work, what we're looking for is some clear direction and boundaries from the Council about what it is you're looking for us to do here. And then we'll be able to give you a report back on how long that will take. I'll need to think about it for a week. Like how long will it take to put together what you're asking for? But we do need clear direction from the Council. On next steps, please. I'm willing to jump in. All right. Council members. Who would actually you want me to now? Obviously would like to start. Is anyone else? You guys go to that? Okay. Go ahead. Thank you, Mary Spencer. So and it's been said, but thank you to Mr. Cameron, Mr. Lindsay, Angela and all the other people, all the speakers. Very informative. We appreciate it. I am. And it was said by a couple of speakers and I appreciate everything that was done. And I'm really impressed whenever a community group coming from such divergent viewpoints can get together and find middle ground and, you know, not be at each other's throats. I think you did a good job and I think you may be surprised each other with some of the things you found out. I went back, though, and read the the staff report from September when the staff report was recommended, but the majority of the council chose not to do it. And that's that's fine. I think this has been a valuable process, but I am still concerned that we need I believe we need to answer some of the questions that were posed by that staff report before we move move further. These might be great proposals, the 5 to 6 points. But what was asked in in Ms.. Porter went over them in the beginning is the questions that a task force would have been asked to answer was, is what is the state of the residential rental market in Alameda? And I appreciate everything the the community groups did, but I don't think they had the resources or the time or the wherewithal to answer that question. I think there's been some interesting data presented in one of the online news sources, Michelle Allison, at the Alameda meeting. But I know staff is proposing a consultant to gather that sort of data. I feel like we need to know that to have that answered because it was to know what the impacts of tenants of rental increases are. Trends impacts on residents and families, identifying the root causes for recent price increases, existing efforts in other Bay Area cities to combat these increases, and also how these increases impacted different groups, whether it was by age or by racial group or the type of housing. I think we need to know more of that. As far as what have been the impacts of rent control or stabilization ordinances in jurisdictions that adopted them? You know, of all the speakers we heard only a couple and I think there were landlords even touched on rent control and why that wouldn't be a good thing. So that might be premature, quite premature this time. But I do think the question and it was answered in part by the group, what changes, if any, should be made to the R, a c? One thing that I found, I think in investigating a little bit is that in the RC works hard when they get these cases , I don't think it's the same sort of process for joining that board as other boards and commissions, because as I understand it, there's no term limit. So we can look at that tomorrow and. Okay, yes, good. Yes, we're looking at that. And the so we haven't had a study done. I think that I would want to wait to even explore these proposals and whether they should be adopted until we know a little bit more about what the situation is that we're facing. And I think Councilmember Odie tried to elicit that, that, you know, how many ranchers did you hear from? And I'm still troubled by the fact that we're hearing that some people were hesitant to even be heard. So, I mean, there must be some other ways besides coming forward in a in a public forum. But anyway, those are some of my thoughts at this late hour. And if people want to discuss the specific proposals, I'll come back. But I just feel like we need more data. Okay. And I want to say so the people that are watching us when they watch us on feet, again, it is approximately 15 minutes after midnight . So I know everyone wanted to take on the whole agenda tonight and I'm pretty sure we will not be doing that. So at this point. Member Comments. Next. Next. Council Member. Want to go? I'll try to pick. And I'll try to cover like general comments on on the issue of rent control and then specifics on the six items. I do want to say thank you to Mr. Camera and the group. I was one of those people that was skeptical in the beginning. I thought that the both the referral process, the referral that the staff came up with was the way to go. But I'm heartened by the fact that you guys have tenants and property owners talking together and collaborating and working together. And we did have that six months. And I think we have a path forward with this group, you know, to form the foundation for, I guess what was called a model mediation process. So I'm encouraged by that and I hope we can keep moving forward on that. And I hope that Mr. Lindsay can continue to be the enforcer and keep keep the bad apples in line. But I you know, there's one thing we're talking about Alameda Point tonight and, you know, there's a connection between, you know, the housing stock shortage and rent control. And if we're going to sit up here and say, well, we don't believe we should have rent control, and at the same time sit up here and say we should also stop building housing. We should have no housing at the point we should have moratoriums, you know, on density bonus applications. No, I don't think we can do that. You know, otherwise we're going to end up having a city that's full of tech people that's going to shut out. You know, people like myself, I'm a tenant. One of the people asked, are there tenants? There's two tenants up here that if the other one wants to say who they are, they can do that. But, you know, I'm a tenant and. If that's what the city wants, then, you know, I guess I'll be for it because that's what the will of the people is. But I don't think we want to turn into downtown San Francisco or South a market where we're the only people that can afford to live here, you know, are people that work in the tech industry. So I do want to just second a little bit of what Councilmember Ashcraft said. I think there's no one short term objective that I like to see, and that's this collection of data. I believe that was the first item on the original staff report State of the residential market, quantitative analysis of rental rates, vacancy rates, and so on. And then I think maybe as a long term, because I don't think we can make a decision on if we're going to implement rent control or if rent control is even necessary until we have that data. So maybe a longer term, it could be six months, it could be eight months, it could be however long. Staff recommends we need to have an adequate amount of data to make that decision. Then we have an analysis of rent control as a tool to maintain stable rents and affordable housing. And. I was a landlord tenant attorney before going into government service. And the thing that I saw in my practice is that. Rent control didn't really help anyone except the attorneys. So if we're going to do something, it has to be something that protects our tenants. It has to be something that, you know, respects the rights of property owners to protect themselves from the rate of inflation and earn a reasonable rate of return. Because actually this is an investment for them, but it cannot be a full employment act for attorneys. So we have to be careful as we put that together. I think the other thing that we haven't looked at and I didn't see it in here, I think some of the tenants mentioned it, some type of just cause eviction. You know, there's no there was no discussion on that. I mean, can you pick somebody who's been there for 15 years and then re rent it out at market rents? So I think that's something that we need to look at as well. So just quickly going over the six points. You know. Again. Jeff, I think you guys did a great job of putting this together. And, you know, I'm impressed with the way you're able to bring people together. And I hope we can we can push forward these six points. And I just have a couple quick comments on one discussion. Point one I think we should consider that is parties only, not attorneys. You guys have developed a rapport between landlords and tenants, and I think it's better if in the mediation process, you know, it's still the landlord and the tenant and not not attorneys going at it . A discussion point to participation. You know, there might be I agree with that recommendation, but I think there might be a valid reason why someone may need a continuance. Maybe they're out of town, maybe, you know, they have childcare issues, you know, in building some mechanism where they can do that. And then if the, you know, if the landlord wants a continuance, then, you know, he or she doesn't get their rent increase for that time period where they have that continuance. Discussion point three. You know, I think it's very important that we have this notice. You know, one of the things I've I've heard is there wasn't a lot of tenant representation there, a lot of tenants. And I found this in my practice. A lot of tenants don't know their rights. So, you know, giving something, making it a requirement as when you get a lease that you get some notice that says, you know, we have this rec and we have this process and if you have a rent increase in the future, you have a remedy if you think it's excessive. And I agree that, you know, every time you get a rent increase, this should be a required notice that that's served with every rent increase. And I'm going to skip 2.6 because that's kind of melded into 2.3. But this this percentage, I think we have to be very careful if we set a percentage because we're basically saying if you if you say anything over 10% has to go to the rack, then you're basically saying anything 9.9% or 9.99% or under is going to be acceptable and there's going to be no recourse. And I encouraged by my discussion with Mr. Lindsay also earlier today that you guys are talking about this. The task force is is trying to come up with a number. I think we have to be careful. You know, right now we have no number. We don't want to be in a situation where we're having de minimis rent increases. You know, going to the rack. So I understand that. But we also want to make sure that, you know, we're not giving license to say, you know, anything under a certain number, you know, is not going to have any review on the retaliation. The point was made, you know, this is the law. I mean, that's in the civil code. I don't know if we need a new ordinance to say you're not allowed to retaliate if it's already state law. But I think if we put that in the notice or we put something in there that says, you know, exercising your rights to mediation under the act is not or is actually considered an exercise of tenant rights and cannot be retaliated. And I think that would be sufficient. And then on point five. I agree with that one. And then I think I discuss point six. So again, I want to thank all the folks here that came out and talked. I have an appreciation for all the tenants. Being a tenant myself, I appreciate for the tenants as someone who fought for tenants. I will say I never had a tenant case in Alameda, so I think our landlords are doing a good job. I don't think that we have a widespread issue of exorbitant rents, but I really would like to see the data and that's my suggestion and a thanks everyone and thank you Jeff for for all your hard work on this. Member de sac. Thank you Mayor Spencer for a purpose of tonight. One of the things I wanted to do was review a range of data, largely because that was one of the issues that we had raised way back in November when City Council then discussed how we might approach this matter. So I put together a data table, a presentation, there are just six tables in and the presentation, but I just really want to focus our attention on three of the tables and for what the presentation is about is about, you know, what has been the experience of oh. You want to do this? And then I'll just. What has been the experience of rental households in the city of Alameda? I made comparisons with San Leandro and the city of Oakland as well as Alameda County. But for our purposes tonight, we're just going to focus our discussion on the city of Alameda and perhaps on the website . On our website, I'll post further discussions about comparisons. If we can go to table one. We'll just skip the objectives right here. This is a key table because the data comes from the United States Census American Community Survey, which is a survey of a sample of residents in the city of Alameda over a number of years. So you can see the way that I prepare the data. I look at pre-recession recession and recovery period. Let's just focus on the recovery period. According to the eight U.S. Census acts, the typical health rental household pays 29.4% of their income towards their rent. And the reason why that number is important is because 30% is the threshold for what constitutes affordable housing. Now, bear in mind, this is from samples from the 2011, 2013 period. These could have just jumped way off the charts in 2014. But when you look at the typical that is the median household who rents, they're paying 29.4% of their rent of their income towards rent. So they're just slightly under what the Fed constitutes as unaffordable, which is 30% is the threshold. Next slide. And this is a comparison with other cities, but we're going to skip on table three. I think this this really gets to one of the reasons why we're dealing with with the stresses that we're talking about. Even though the typical rental household pays slightly under the affordable rate, the typical rental household income is $51,700 in Alameda. Relative to the typical household owner occupied household income, which is $113,300. So someone mentioned, for example, that they experienced rents of $450 increase for $50 a month. So multiply that by 12, that's $5,400. So you can imagine 12 times 20, 50 plus 5400. So you can imagine monthly, you know, when you annualize the monthly rent increase for renters, how that really draws down on on persons is constrained incomes. But the important part about looking at the 51,700 is when you look at table for next table. Now, this table comes from an Oakland based outfit that talks about, you know, what is the income that's necessary to lead self-sufficient lives. So in this in Alameda County, if you have one if you're one adult with one child under under five years old, you need $55,700 to eat to lead a self-sufficient life. And that's you know, that's a bare bones income to, you know, that all the frills are not included. Likewise, if you're a single adult with two children in those ages, a roughly $66,300 to who lead what's called what this outfit calls a self-sufficient lives. So you can see that when you look at the typical rental households income in Alameda of $51,700 and compare it against standards like the self-sufficiency standards, that kind of underscores even more how just, you know, slight change in in the rental in the rent upwards as affects disproportionately disproportionately affects renters. So let's go to the next slide. And the other thing, too, is, prior to the recession rent renters in Alameda, the typical renter had $59,700. That was a household income. And then coming out of the recession, the typical household is now as their income has declined by almost $8,000. So you can see that, you know, the rental housing market and the households in it, that there there are special constraints that we need to be cognizant of for the typical renter. But the thing that I get out of this data is that. The typical renter, for the most part, has an affordable rent. But you can't just look at that affordable rent just because it's 29 under 30%. Rent to income ratio, just because it's under what the feds constitute as affordable. You can't say, oh, well, you know, we don't have to do anything because you have to look at not just the rents, but you have to look at their income relative to, you know, what it takes to lead a self-sufficient life in in Alameda County. And also, you have to look at the income in terms of how it's changed in the past six years or so. And so I think what this tells me then is that while the data doesn't speak to any grounds for a generalized approach for dealing with the with a rent issue, generalized approach, meaning rent control, however defined and loosely defined as price controls. I don't think that those data from the households perspective to justify rent control from a generalized perspective. But I think there is enough there to to say that, you know, we do need very particular case by case type of solutions. And I think to me, this data speaks to I actually I think it confirms the six points that were raised through the forum. I still believe that the forum should take those six points and have them vetted more by the Rent Review Advisory Board, but as well as a social service human relations board. And I will say, though, that the six points, in my opinion, need to be strengthened. I think that, for example, if we're going to make the changes that we're contemplating with regard to strengthened rent review advisory board in the relationship with equal housing, that implies that there's going to be a lot more cases involved. And is ECHO or is the rent review advisory board, do they have the capacity to handle the rising expectations that we're creating in doing this? So I think we have to have to strengthen either echo housing our relationship with them or the review when fires report. One specific way of strengthening the rent review advisory board or the echo housing is. We've got the business license fee, you know, property rental property holders of a particular type, hey, into the into the fee. So what we could do is we're always adjusting the fee, you know, for, for, for purposes of inflation or maybe we hadn't adjusted it for for two or three years or so. So, you know, let's just say hypothetically, the fee is $110 or for the for property owners, the business license fee. And independent of this whole matter, we're going to adjust it anyways and we adjust it, let's say, to $125. So what I would propose is we take that increment and we reserve the increment for housing related issues. So and that and so if it's a $10, a $10 incremental change that that we would have made anyways regardless of the issue. But now we're reserving that $10 incremental change. You know, you multiply that $10 times roughly 55,000 buildings that that contain 15,000 rental households, that $10 amounts to ten times 5000, which is what it's $50,000 for. Suddenly, you know, without having added on a new special fee, we would have come up with an amount of money that we can help pay eco housing or rent, rent, review and value board, be able to handle the increased case that's going to come down the pike. And I think it's important to increase the capacity of echo housing is because last year in our Cdhb budget process, we actually took money out of eco housing. You know, it was a interesting discussion that we had, but we ended up taking money out of Eko Housing. But city manager John Russo found ways to backfill that money. So, so, but but the issue though, is the way that we're funding our portion of Eko housing right now, it's, you know, it's subject to the budgetary, you know, things. I think we should continue to fund them via CDBG, but we should also take a look at this kind of approach that I'm talking about with regard to the business license fee when it comes to rental property houses. Now, another specific item to improve the capacity of of of the rent review advisory board or eco housing. I, for example, I believe I don't have to pay a business license fee, though. I live upstairs and I rent out the two houses downstairs. And you look on Craigslist, you know, there's a lot of people, I'm sure, you know, homeowners who are, you know, helping make their mortgage payments, you know, things like that. Well, I think, you know, rent review advisory board, it would be it would be great for them to, you know, to to look at to help us in under in looking at this issue with regard to that particular change that that we might contemplate. So that's that's another way that we might want to take a look at that. Oh, okay. So I do think that we're on the right track. I do think that there are substantive decision points that we can take to strengthen the six points that were were raised. So that and I do think that we can do it in a way that the property residential rental property owners, you know, if they were concerned about an increase in tax. The way that I outlined it well, it increased anyways, but now we're just reserving the increment towards this issue. Like. Vice Mayor. I'd also like to echo, thanks to Mr. Canberra and everybody who stepped forward, participate. It's not been easy and. To see the five points to have consensus of. And the six point that is still being worked on, I think, is I'd like to seize the moment. And City Manager Russo asked for some specific direction, and I'd like to. Make a motion to have a staff of bring back an implementation plan for applying those principles to the Review Advisory Board. Because that first part is protecting and, and, and establishing fairness in dealings. It's a mediation process. It makes it stronger. It doesn't substantially change the process except to strengthen it. So I think that we have to we have to take advantage of the hard work that was done and move forward on that. I think there are questions that were asked in the staff report of a September that haven't been answered and the data necessary to answer. Before you continue. If I heard correctly, you're making a motion. Yes, I will second that motion. But I wanted to add or. Continue. Now. The second part of the motion is to have staff gather the necessary data to answer the questions. It were posed in the. September report. And to use the resources that are. Out here in the coalition, as well as the housing provider group to help gather that information, because that's a group that didn't exist when this was was posed. So that's my motion is to do both. I shouldn't. Sorry. I just want to make sure the motion is. Is that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Oh, I'm not going to stick it out. Someone else wants me. That's what we're looking for right now. So that we can continue the discussion. Yes. Okay. I'll second. And I would like to and I agree. No, I'm sorry. Not for you to continue discussing. You've had no idea. I see. I know. Yeah, but that I haven't had an opportunity to speak at you. Comes back to you to finish up motion second. It comes back to you if you have any other comments. Okay. And I still have discussion. Okay. Okay. Then I get to speak because I've been waiting. You spoke at the beginning? No, but I said that I would if it was more than just a proposal to continue so we could study. They said I had some comments about the proposal. We will get back, but everyone gets a turn. Then we can go round again. Okay. Thank you. That's fair. Okay. I am the other person that rents. I've been renting for 15 years. The same house when we first moved up here 15 years ago. They were my husband and myself and four children. At that point, the renters market was such that we had to pay a fee to have someone help us find a home. However, it changed after that. Our rent decreased. We've actually had a very good relationship with our landlord, who is someone similar to some of the speakers we've had this evening and this. I know some of you have moved here in the last few years and you're experiencing this part of the renters market. However, over the 15 years that I've been renting here, it has gone down and it has now is going back up. And I do appreciate, as a renter not knowing for sure month to month what's going to happen. I personally strongly support the first part of the motion because these are five things that we've had all these people spend all this time on, which started back in September, their house. And for me, I'm very concerned if we're going to have the spend, I don't know how much more time before other people are ready to support the work of the community here. I think it's very important we move along as quickly as possible. On your five points, on the five points that were unanimous, one through four, some of those are law. So there shouldn't be any problem with trying to get us to do those. Eight out of nine, that's I don't expect to get better than that. I do think time is of the essence. And I understand I recognized back when this was sent by prior council to Geoff Cameron, it was to try to get people talking and trying to resolve this. They did their task and now it's our turn to actually take action on what the work that's already been done. So I do strongly support one through four and number five because that was it. They agree. It says no agreement on number six. I would not have that hold up the process. I personally am in favor of 10% to me is too high. When your rents are 2000, 3000, whatever it is, 2500 10% is $200 on a $2,000 rent. And that I think many of us that are renting are paying close to the 2000 or actually higher than that at $200 increase when it's handed to you actually works out to be 20 $400 a year. So for me, 10% is too high to restrict it to that I would entertain. I know there's people think that you need to have a percentage. And I really like the way you guys have all been working on this together, so I don't want to take anything away from this process. But for me, maybe 5%, just not that I'm saying that's the recommendation, but 5% if you're paying $2,100, that's. You know. So for me, that's something to look at. But I would really hope that we could agree to take action on the five things and not complicate, which is why I'd like to break it down. We have the discussion. So I move that we make the five hour. Amend my motion, make the five consensus points. I'm back with an implementation plan in parallel with taking input from the working group as the recommendation comes back on the six. Or consensus come back on the six or whatever it might be. So we can have lots of promotions. But for this, I'd like a clean motion. One through five. Hand it to staff. Let them figure out how we can support the community. Only to second vice mayor's motion. Is that what that was, though? No, it's just the five, for sure. Okay. And then. Six. Could we just do that part? Well, I don't want to hold up the train because people are working on that. Have them work on the sixth. If the staff report comes back and said there's no consensus, there's no consensus. We'll keep working on what we've got the five in the implementation. But the five can move ahead without the six is my point. Oh, that's okay. Okay. Five. Moving ahead without the six. But don't. But include it in there. So that is the process. So there's other things we can include. But to make sure we're. I'd like to break it down so we can get our vote on what we can get. Then we can talk about the next thing. So. Okay. But there's a discussion before we vote. Yes. Yes. Did I get a second for that? Six. Thank you. Okay. So he has a second on that. So now if we could quickly discuss this motion because I want to get this through. Okay. I might ask you. Okay. So on discussion point too. I, I find the language about the tenets failure to appear unduly harsh. And this is what I mean. If you look at discussion point, too, we see that if the housing provider fails to appear or have a responsible party appear, although I think Vice Mayor would like it just to be the parties it was that, you know, no attorneys, just parties. That's and I agree with that. That was councilmember member. I agree. I hold that thought. Okay. So that so if the the housing provider fails to appear, the rent increases is void. If the tenant, on the other hand, fails to appear, the committee will dismiss the case and the tenant will be barred from subsequently challenging such increase before the committee. To my reading, that sounds like forever you can't come back. Whereas the landlord, all the landlord has to do is do another rent increase and show up this time and he or she is able to have the rent increase go through. If I'm reading this correctly, I don't understand why we should subsequently bar a tenant from challenging such increase before the the committee. Or maybe it just means that particular increase. Okay. Okay. So not a future. Not a future bar. Okay. And then in the text of the notice, the suggested text, I, I would like our city attorney's office to work on just making that language as user friendly as possible, because some of the folks who are dealing with these increases might English might not be their second language. We might think about what other languages it should be in. Other people are just challenged by legalese and this is better than some, but it could be better, I think just clearer. And the city attorney is nodding. She gets it. And so then, okay, we're not we're not getting to the the percentage that triggers it. But that's the sort of thing I would probably like staff to study anyway. And then I would also suggest that staff talk with other cities who have these provisions in place to see what their experience has been. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, and we might as well learn from others experiences. Maybe we could do this even better, but I think we are off to a good start. And then finally, should we as a council be asking for this matter to come back within a certain period of time? So we just have a look at how it's how it's working out, how it's been playing out. Um, so before we go on to that, did you want to address this, this motion? Yes, I did. But that's that was a question that you had. That that was my last one. Should we just for council consider should we that that's separate that motion right now. So I'd rather. Interpret it the motion what I'd like to see is a spell out range of possible implementations. I meant I specified two items that I would like, um, staff to take a look at because frankly, you know, if we don't improve the capacity of the review advisory board of Echo Housing to deal with a potential increase in, you know, where we're probably in a worse situation, we've raised expectations, but we haven't improved the operations by which we're going to address those expectations. So I would like us to take a look at the business of those two business license item fees as part of the motion, so that there. Might be would be a separate and then I. Do an amendment. So well, you know, one of the things, if I if I may respond to that is the we give staff direction to to come back with an implementation plan. My assumption is staff is going to refine these, not take verbatim and slap a cover sheet on it and give it to us. I think it's important to have your comment, um, be listened to by staff and incorporated into it is if it's going to be part of the implementation. Just like the point about item number six, is there a percentage there they may come back with saying, well, we could put 5%, but we advise that we don't put any percent because other cities don't have a threshold and the most democratic process allows anybody to challenge any increase. So I think that's the work that I expect staff to do. And I didn't purposely didn't put a due date on because I was going to wait for the manager's response to say, Well, we can do this in 60 days or we can do 40 days. And then we would respond to that accordingly. Okay. So. Ah. Oh. Well I said according to that fairly. If you want the answer. Now, I have to talk to Debbie for a minute. Let me. Let me talk. I don't want it. I purposely put it. Not in there to get your reaction after, should it? So I'm hoping I'm hoping that we can agree here in a manner to support this community work. I actually am very concerned if we take if we if it's going to end, if we make it so complicated, it's going to take 60 days, 90 days to get stuff back. Then it's going to be who knows how many more days before this happens. And this truly to me is a good faith effort. So I'm hoping we can come up with something that's not going to require. The question that. And I personally am not concerned about increase any license fee because I'll tell you, as any runner, I think most of us think when a fee gets passed on to the landlord, it's going to get passed on to us. And so for me, I would rather come up with a way that, as far as I know, is volunteers. We have many volunteers in this community that have already stepped up on this issue. And if there's a way I would rather put out the outreach of I need more volunteers to volunteer on rack rather than starting to increase fees that are going to be passed down. But isn't it isn't it fair to at least have staff look at overstocked, unwanted bonds and the suggestion that rate increases do not affect renters? They absolutely increase effect landlords and they affect renters. So it's something to keep in mind. So here's a question. Are we going to send this back not only to staff, but then the rent review advisory board for their view and input? Or are we sending it back. To staff. To give it back to us and then we'll make a decision? I would think that staff can communicate with them. The our direction is to staff. Um, so we have a motion on. You. Yeah. The answer is 90 days for publication and not for presentation because we have the two week agenda and we have to look at the data issue and what the data is going to cost and we want to be able to bring back to you and we may be able to do that more quickly. What the cost is to determine whether you want us to retain somebody to do that level of data collection. We'll move forward on the five points. There's no question that's easy. We can do. That. And so could you explain your comment? Because I want to I do want to address the five points. First, how much time do you need to do that? 90 days. To do the five. Points, to do the five points and to work further with the community group that's already been established 90 days for publication. We'll have something published in that within 90 days. So when you come back to us in the meantime, then as part of that process. I was not planning on doing that because then I have to we have to write another report and there's there's a limited resources. It's not this is not a huge staff. We will bring you something comprehensive back in 90 days and we will consult with the folks who were already the stakeholders. We will come back to you before 90 days to let you know after we check with various. We don't want to just go to one consultant. We want to talk to a group of different consultants, and we will come back to you, even though it may be under the threshold number. We'll come back to you with a short report about this to collect data. This is what the proposals we got. What do you want to do? Okay. What data are you talking about? Collecting the data that we mentioned in our initial report. Okay. So that is separate. And I want to I want to speak to the issues separately. Well, that's that's entirely your right to do that. But I was asked a question by the vice mayor about how long this dissipated these things would take. So I'm just answering his question. So let's so let's focus on the one through five. Okay. 90 days. You still need 90 days for that? Yes. You need the same 90 days to do your data collection. No, I need to come back to you and give you options on data collection so you know how much it costs. Because if we wanted to, we could do a data collection process that could cost you a half a million dollars. You may not want to spend that kind of money. But personally, I think that once we the sooner we get this going, we will be collecting our own data moving forward. And that can guide the process and we can see how effective this is. And as opposed to looking backwards, I think that we can look forward. So I'm happy to have that conversation in the meantime. But in regards to these five points, does that satisfy. Well, we have a motion on the floor and it's been seconded and I and it was we've. Yeah. Can you repeat the motion please. The motion that I have down includes all six points. Correct. Not just one through five. It includes all sections. And that's still 90 days. And for staff, though, to look at what percentage that number six should what percentage, if any. Will come with a proposal. But in the end, it's going to be a policy determination by the council. Right. Okay. And that doesn't slow down your 90 slow down your days. No. The part that slows me down is the data, because the data is the part that scares me. So we'll keep that separate. I appreciate that. Okay. So we have a motion and a second digit. I just I do just want to hear the motion back to make sure we've got it all. Okay. So. We find it. Okay. So it's to take the five consensus points forward to staff to come back with and then on a parallel track input from the working group on six at the same time to keep them working on it and then. That was seconded by member Odie. And then. County Council member as he Ashcraft asked if there would be no attorneys allowed, just the landlords and Councilmember Matt, R-S.C. agreed. So that was that's not part of the motion. It's my understanding that that would go to staff to look at. Okay. So it's separate. From a separate statutory. Yes. Okay. I wasn't sure if that. Was in the my staff will take all our comments. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So it's basically just that. Okay. And then to at yeah. Have staff gather the necessary data and that's separate. I, I, I backed that out so that we can have that discussion separately. Okay. So thank you. I appreciate that. So we have a motion. Second. All those in favor. I say. I. Others oppose. Passes unanimously. So now we do have other. Did you want to revisit your data at this point on this? Because I did want to get that done. Yes. I think we need to gather the. Hmm. The motion was that we asked staff to prepare a report that answers the questions post September. Staff report. Gathering the necessary data to support those answers. And the response from staff was that this would be something they would be looking a consultant for. And. Also contacting other jurisdictions who have similar ordinances in place to gather data. So we want I'm sorry, go ahead. And I think hearing the manager's comments, because we can ask how much data do we need to answer, these can rapidly inflate itself. So perhaps having gone through this, we can look at having staff come back with us to us, rather than a report with an estimate of what it might take to answer each question. And great range, and then we can revisit it and refine it so that we get the we get the questions answered that really we could prioritize which question really need to be answered. And. And keep within the budget, but actually accomplish. Okay. And I think remember detox information actually goes. To some of this. That he did. The word helpful. I mean, so we and we have other sources that can help provide this information. So information has been gathered. There is a survey out there that was already taken. So actually, some of you can some of you spoke publicly about your comments. You can also submit those to council and staff to support this work. Can I? May I? Yes. All right. I want to be crystal clear, because the data that is selected. Will often determine and color the policy decision. Let me give you an example, and I do not mean this in any way. I was very impressed with the work that Councilmember de Saag does, and he's always welcome to stop being a council member and come work with staff and do those kinds of reports, because that was terrific. But well, he is. And the but the point is the data collected as he. As he stated at the outset, was from the point of view of the tenant. There are other policy decisions. I'm not unsympathetic to that. By the way, I started my career as a legal services attorney. So I want to be clear. I'm speaking here intellectually. There are other data that may have to do with things like the cost of whether or not the apartment includes heating or doesn't include heating and what the cost of heating oil is. It may not include what other jurisdictions do in terms of requirements about soft stories. There are so many different things. If you took it from the point of view then of the housing provider and then what the costs of that are to a city if we don't keep the housing stock. I'm not making an argument for any of that. My point is what data you collect may very well drive your decision. And I don't want staff to be stepping into what is essentially a policy choice. What you choose to collect, I feel, is itself a policy decision. That's why I want to bring it back to the council. And perhaps it would be more helpful to get a an analysis of. What we should be discussing, because you brought two points of view to bear. I was on the council when we put the soft story ordinance into effect and an unintended consequence of that. Spun off of it because of cost. And it was mentioned also the pitch roofs versus the flat roofs. Um, there are other requirements that come up and if we could get the landscape of that so we can have a public. Education of what the landscape is. We might be able to make an informed decision about what data we gather. That and that's what we'd like to do for you, is give you the landscape and then have you pick and choose off the menu what you want us to actually go in and buy. And so I'd like to comment on this in that we have I personally really want to look forward as opposed to backwards and the data that you're going to be collecting, depending upon what it is, is actually data based on a system that we are actually trying to work together and change and make more responsive. And and I am afraid I'm concerned that rather than looking at so so we've had a lot of agreements made and we got behind these agreements. And the data, the relevant data will be, is it working? But we just changed. Is it working? That's that's what we need to know. I actually don't need to know. I think we the reason we're having this conversation is because there did need to be improvement. And now we're hoping moving forward there will be a better relationship that will work. So I'm more focused and I and I really want people to have their energy to focus on how we're going to resolve these cases or this environment that we're working together moving forward. So so that's why that's really my concern. That I hear that concern and I think we can accomplish that same. And as even looking forward, we have to understand what the landscape is. But I want to be positive. I really want to stay positive. And I'm afraid that if you spend too much time looking at this other stuff, we know we needed to work together better. That's what this group told me. And they also told me they are going to be doing that. Madam Chair, I want to stay positive, too, but I do think that these four questions are important, and especially number one, and I do think it helps us know what the current state of the residential rental market is, so that we know that the solutions we're hoping to institute are really going to address the the concerns. And that was what is the state of the residential rental market in Alameda. This could I can answer that too. There are next to no rentals available I would if I could just finish because I think staff did a very nice job of putting this together succinctly . This could include a quantitative analysis of rental rates, vacancy rates, absorption trends, and the length of residency, the race, ethnicity of residents and different types of rental units. The answers to this question will help identify the need and define the problem regarding housing costs. And I also and the second question goes to the impact of what impact rent control and stabilization, for instance, has had. And the other the one other category I would just like to add to for consideration is age, because we have had a number of seniors that we've heard from that they have been priced out of the rental market and they especially tend to be on fixed income. So I do think it's important to stay positive, but I do think it's important to note the situation that we're facing and I'm confident that staff can find a way to get that data to us expeditiously. So I'm not I think that they are overburdened. I think that we have a lot of things we're talking about. Do we have is there a motion of someone that wants to make a motion on this issue? Yes. I'll make a motion that we have staff provide us with an analysis of. The. Of the considerations needed to answer the questions that are in the September. Staff report. Yes. And. The potential costs if they can be identified. Gathering data that might be. Is there a second? Second? All those in favor. I, I. Oppose and. Abstain. And frankly, I'm much clearer as to what maybe. So if you look at these questions, one of them is what changes have any made to the vote? I get to speak after I vote no, I get to explain my no vote. I thought you usually I voted. For. You. You passed. No, that's not correct. Procedure is that. Yes, the motion passed. Actually, there was a change. It was three, three in favor, one abstention and one no, thank you. So when you look at these questions, the reason why I'm voting are the first one. What is the state of the residential rental market now? AMITA I've answered that. I think we've heard there are not very many units. And so for me, I want to have staff focused on things that I think are would be more productive for this issue. That's very. Antisocial. I'm sorry. I I'm sorry. You actually as when you vote no, I get to explain my nova. It's not appropriate for you to speak at this time. This could include a quantitative analysis of rental rates, vacancy rates, absorption trends, and the length of residency and races and ethnicity and age was added to this. So I'll be curious to see how how much this cost. But I think it's very time consuming and I'm not. And for me, the focus has got to be moving forward. We have an issue moving forward. What's going to happen with our rents? What have what has what have been the impacts on rental rates, supply of rental housing and the physical condition of rental housing? Again, these are issues that I think will be better raised moving forward. But people this desire to have their just when they have their disputes that it goes direct and I want to support REC and the community to amicably resolve these and we can do the data collection moving forward. What changes have any need to be made to the city's rent review advisory committee rack? I think motion number one address that. Number four, what changes, if any, need to be made to the Alameda Municipal Code relative to residential rental housing? And again, I think that we had already directed staff to look at that as part of the first motion. Thank you. And I really do want to thank everyone for coming this evening, submitting all of your written communication. And I encourage you to continue to email all of us and work with RAC. I mean, really, I support all of you coming out here and Mr. Camara Bell staff and you know, I agree we're going to make this happen. Moving on. Next agenda item is six I. And is this something that needs to be so? Right now we have one, two, three, four plus all of the referrals. It is 1 a.m. and two. Additional items on the joint. Okay. And there's two additional items. And I would request that we allow staff to let us know what needs to be done this evening and that we move those to the next item. STAFF Could you let us know what items you need to. Miss warmer them? Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. The two items that we really need to discuss. One is from the six K, which is the professional services agreement for our audit audit firm. And then also on the SSI, c is the financial report to accept the audit, which is freebie. Okay. And preferably we do three B first because we still have a consultant here from business associates. All right. So counsel. And I think. She's just what would you entertain a motion to? Well, I'm sorry. I had asked earlier about this. So now we are at 1 a.m. address. Let's continue, please. Three B. So to do this procedurally, do we need a motion to move this to the next agenda item? What do we need to do on the next? It's on the next slide. I think you can just just decide to call three B or six K and then I guess the rest. Okay, so count. So Council, are you supportive if we just keep moving to the agenda quickly, can't. We just have a concern about you know, some of the referrals have been on there twice and I know somebody in the audience that waited till late last time to talk about it, and they're still in the audience today to talk about it. So if we want to consider the three or the the referrals that were carried over, I hesitate to want to carry them over to another meeting. In a mirror. So it's 1 a.m.. I would prefer that we get to the agenda items that need to be addressed this evening. Go ahead, madam. It's just a procedural slash, technical slash legal question with regard to hauling over items. We do have a city council meeting tomorrow. So is it altogether politics? Is it altogether. Possible to not close tonight's city council meeting with regard to those items? And are we still within are we brown at correct. And also Sunshine Ordinance, correct if we keep this open and then continue it, keep those referral items open and continue till tomorrow. City Council meeting is that. Closure with the I believe that the technical language of the Brown Act and the Sunshine Ordinance would allow you to continue those referral items to tomorrow. It's just a matter of I mean, people are not going to know that and the community might not be very happy about it. But I think you can do that. Okay. So then do you need us to rule on to have motions on those two items? So could they could everything wait until tomorrow. Preferably to have those two items done and then the other items can be heard tomorrow? All right. So, yeah. All right. So, Counsel, are you agreeable to moving forward with the. The first one would be three be. Is that correct? Yes. And then we're going to deal with the referrals tomorrow belonging. Well, that's a separate. So right now, could we do three be? It could have motion to proceed with three. I'll move that. We proceed with three B second. Just to keep things moving along. I'll second it. All those in favor. I thank you, sir. We'll be proceeding with three B at this point. Okay. So you recessing the council meeting and calling to order the meeting. There you go. So, yes. Okay. Got it. Yeah. I have a quick PowerPoint. Quick. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor. And members of the council. I'm waiting for. Yeah, there we go. So we have a very brief report about the comprehensive annual financial report and. And the audited financial statements and all the compliance reports. State law requires this annual audit. City Charter also requires that the auditor provide the annual provide for annual audits and financing covenants, and granting agencies require annual audits with some special testing requirements. There are several standards which apply. These are generally accepted accounting principles, generally accepted auditing standards, and that the audit must be performed by a licensed firm of licensed certified public accountants. Now. Find if. So moving right along. Every financial report, every audited financial statement contains three main sections. Next one to the introductory section, which is just a summary of our organization in the context of the results. The financial section, which first of all contains the independent auditors report, which is their opinion, and we always want to see that they give