Regional Affordability Committee Meeting Transcript – 03/19/2018 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 3/19/2018 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 3/19/2018 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [3:09:45 PM] >> We'll go ahead and get started here. Good afternoon. It's 3:09. I'm Charles Chadwell, vice chair. I got news Delia Garza had a family or other item come up. I don't think she will be here. We're meeting in the boards and commissions room in the city hall. It is Monday, March 19, 2018. Again as I said, it's 3:08 -- 3:10, we call this meeting to order. Our first item on the -- is the approval of the minutes. I think everybody has that in front of them. If there are comments, I think you all got an email on that earlier. We all did. >> I move approval. >> Second. >> A motion and second. Further discussion? Hearing none. >> Do we have a quorum? >> We have a quorum. Thanks for pointing that out. Are we good? Okay. I'll take their head nod. Any further discussion? Call the question. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. Motion carries. We'll go on to agenda item 2, citizens communications general. The first five speakers signed up prior to the meeting being called to order will each be allowed three minutes to address concerns regarding items not posted on the agenda. Do we have any speakers? Okay. Okay. All right, let's see. Can you help me with this. Is it constable, first speaker? >> I think that was a mistake. That's one of our members. >> Susan. Oh, that's Comstock. [3:11:49 PM] Okay, great. >> Good evening. I'm Suzanne Almanza. Members of naacp, poder, eastern crescent right to stay coalition and community, not come millions of dollars dis. We say that codenext is not the answer to preventing our replacement by affluent newcomers.% the solution is enact specific programs that have worked in other cities making major public investments in low-income affordable housing and restricting land use to prevent demolition and redevelopment of our neighborhoods. And so we came up with six resolutions for draft ordinances and this is just a snapshot. The resolutions I'll send to you all the complete so there's six complete resolutions, but the snapshots are something that could be implemented by [3:13:51 PM] council right now. And number one is to create low-income housing trust fund and appropriations, establish a separate dedicated low-income housing trust fund in which all city housing funds are placed. We could allocate 1% of the city's budget each year to construct subsidized housing for low-income families. 20% of all future general obligation bond elections would be included in low-income housing. We're no longer seeing affordable housing because that's for a higher grade of people. Low-income zero to 40% median family income. To adopt the right to stay, right to return programs for east Austin residents, the policies to reduce or freeze property taxes for low-income residents and seniors, create home repair programs, use public owned land, property to build new land bank and land trust funds for low-income former families of east Austin. And you got the resolution that was passed on March the 8th at city council. Mayor pro tem Kathie tovo, that equals to adopt the right to stay and right to return is becoming a preference policy so that will be looked at and brought back in may of this year so we're moving forward. Three is use city-owned land for low-income housing, identify eight properties owned by the city of Austin that can be quickly made available for building low-income housing. And as you know, the city owns thousands of properties that could be used immediately and in January they passed a resolution to look at five different properties. We need to make sure the city gets going on that and that's why we're trying to move this forward. Four, expand use of combined districts and historic districts. Apply tools to help conserve and preserve our neighborhoods and prevent [3:15:51 PM] gentrification -- [buzzer sounding] -- And displacement. Number five, establish interim development regulations in areas with inadequate drainage and six, implement Austin environmental quality review. And so I leave that with you all to see if you all could be able to look at it and see also if this committee would be able to support the people's plan. >> Did you say this was passed by the council March 8th? >> Yes. Number 2. Only number 2. By mayor pro tem. That's the resolution you see there on the white paper. >> [Inaudible]. >> That one right there. >> This was passed March 8th. >> Yes, March 8th. >> So this would be asking this committee to consider for all of our different jurisdictions. >> Yes. >> Let me be clear, the council did not pass it, they directed the city manager to make a recommendation or propose a policy. >> Absolutely. The language on that resolution is there. But it's what I was saying, it's equivalent to the right to stay and the right to -- >> Number 2 on the yellow sheet. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Next up is Juliana Gonzalez. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm Juliana Gonzalez, I'm here on behalf of Austin tenants council and interested in two agenda items today so I'll be quick and brief. First, I know that this committee has been talking about the problem of eviction in our community for several meetings. Going to talk more about that today and probably next meeting as well. I just wanted to reiterate one potential solution which is to create and to fund a program that offers eviction intervention support. In Texas may know nonattorney advocates like the ones that work at the tenants council or other [3:17:51 PM] advocacy council can -- even in eviction court. And so we would like folks to be considering the opportunity to -- to create a program to allow us to do that. I also wanted to bring it to your attention that mayor pro tem tovo has drafted a resolution. I think it's going to go to council in April to Austin city council in April which would direct the city manager to create an eviction intervention program like the one I described and to create a budget to fund it. So I draw your attention to that. Keep an eye peeled for that in April. We really support that initiative and we think it could be a good step toward reducing the number of evictions and also the damage done to tenants' housing records. Second I know that you are addressing tenant relocation related but different issue, I guess. And I just wanted to note that at the tenants council we see many, many cases of tenants being relocated or displaced en masse in our city. We've seen just under a dozen this year -- or since the tenant relocation ordinance passed September 1, 2016, and only three triggered the ordinance. So in only three cases were property owners required to give notice to tenants under the tenant relocation ordinance. And so we think that points to some problems with how the ordinance was passed, what situations trigger the notice requirements of the ordinance, and I know you guys will be learning more about that today, but I hope you just keep that situation in mind because it's important for me to let you know that tenants are being displaced and the tenant relocation ordinance is not at this time protecting them. If you have anything you would like to follow up with me on. My email is juliana@housing rights.org. Thanks, it's really important to us. >> Thank you, miss Gonzalez. >> This might be a question [3:19:53 PM] of miss Gonzalez. Could we get some statistics? You mentioned quite a number of people. Do you have a number of people who have been displaced who the tenant relocation ordinance is not protecting from displacement? >> You may want to ask neighborhood housing when they come up to present. I know they have anecdotal evidence and they definitely have data on the ones that have been protected. >> Okay. Thank you. [Buzzer sounding] >> Juliana, I've got a question too. Is the language drafted already? You said mayor pro tem tovo will be introducing something in April. >> I saw a draft resolution from mayor pro tem tovo's office this morning and I believe, yeah, there's a draft going around council. >> That would be useful if you could share it with the committee. >> I think that language will be posted -- whatever the final language is will be posted at the end of the week for a council meeting. >> If you could send us a link or where we would find it, that would be helpful. Thank you. >> I was going to suggest we could have miss Gonzalez come back and make a formal presentation to our committee. In the past we've had representatives from Travis county constable offices, the jps, neighborhood housing community development office. I'd like to hear a formal presentation from the Austin tenants council at some point in the future. Any other questions? Miss Gonzalez, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Up next is Mr. Gus peña. >> Chair, committee members, Gus peña, proud native east austinite, proud marine Corps veteran. I'm here as co-founder for veterans of progress. We were born in 2012. I will continue to say this and with all due respect with the prior speakers, low-income affordable housing is still an option. One of the things that I've asked the mayor continuously [3:21:54 PM] at the city council meetings bring somebody that is a true expert on affordable housing. Richard Halperin. They bought homes for hud from one dollar each and put families in there using transitional housing and let me use this verbiage because people, I thank god they are learning this and speaking of it, the wrap-around service is very important. You can't have them transition from homelessness to housing. You got to -- you have to have the wrap-around services, okay? That means health care, wages, job, tuition, whatever. Now, again, I will say this much. You know, and bear with me. On April the 2nd to the 5th we're going to celebrate fair housing act of 1968 that lbj brought forth to help people being -- even they were out there homeless also, to have affordable housing for them, fair housing act of 1968. Here we are still in 2019 still, I don't want to hear this crap about affordable housing, you know, $1,400 a month for a one bedroom. That ain't good. That is not affordable housing. We need something and we can do it, but bring the experts that know about affordable housing. Richard would be one of them. I want to say this, one family moving to temple because they have four kids. They could not find affordable housing here in Austin. Okay? That tells you what? We're losing people and that is a slap in the face to Austin, Texas, who has become too expensive for us mexican-americans or people of color. That's not acceptable to us. Not acceptable to us veterans. And I'm going to tell you what, things are changing as we speak. I'm holding the housing authority of city of Austin accountable for all these -- tearing down the apartments, Chalmers, whatever, and what's going to happen with displacement. Anybody else started saying that displacement, displacement. Do we have units for the people that are going to be [3:23:55 PM] displaced and moved? They are going to tear down those units. It ain't going to be fair to them. We have to have a plan from day one to say you know what, 30 days you are going to move out, we have a unit for you. I'm going to hold Michael Gerber accountable. Let me tell you something, bridgid, when Bruce Todd was mayor, they needed help with their family. I will tell you this much and I'll wrap up. [Buzzer sounding] This very, very essential, very, very essential take down these notes and make sure we have low, true blue affordable housing because we're losing combat here. And I'm going to be at the city council every darn Thursday and we're going to make it fair and equitable for the people who are -- need housing. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Mr. Peña. Up next is Mr. Fred fukes. >> Mr. Chairman, I was asked to speak on item 6. Do you want me to speak now or wait? >> We'll just wait. Thank you. All right. Go to agenda item 3, a discussion and possible action on 2018 meeting dates for the regional affordability committee. And let's see, I have some -- a document in front of me that says we canceled in January. Today is March 19th. May 21st is the next one. I have a note says there's a conflict for several people. Is that still true? Do we have it on our agenda? It's okay for me. Check your calendars real quick if you want. >> 3:00. >> For some reason I had it canceled on mine but I'll add it back in. [3:25:57 PM] I have a hold. We'll go with 21st, 3:00 P.M. The next one would be July 16th, but that's the July recess. So not then. Did we want to consolidate or we could move it to the may -- we could do it in may or we could have a June 4th meeting is a suggestion here. What it says here. >> Yeah, I can make it [inaudible]. >> How many others? Good? >> [Inaudible]. >> What's that? Make sure we tentatively put it in for now? >> [Inaudible]. >> Yes, in place of July 16th. >> [Inaudible]. >> Yes. Okay. I'm just putting these in and I guess we'll send out notes. The next one is September 17th. >> [Inaudible]. >> I have it on here so we have one won't be able to make it. You'll make it? Okay. All right. The last one would be November 19th. That's fine with me. Okay. You got all of that? We need a motion to approve those dates. >> So moved. >> We've got a motion. A second? Discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Go to agenda item 4, discussion and possible action on affordability inventory website for the regional affordability committee. [3:27:57 PM] >> Hi, I'm the staff liaison for this committee. I've been working with councilmember Garza's office that details on the information on the evictions and transportation initiatives that all the various entities of this group have been working on and their entities have available for folks with disabilities or those facing evictions. It's currently in draft form. You may have seen an email from me requesting further information from your various entities. If you have not yet sent me that, please do so. So we do have -- I launched it this afternoon. It's still in draft form so bear with me. It's not as polished, I'll show you exactly what it's going to look like. You also have a printout. You have a draft printout in the back as well in case it's a little hard to see on the monitor here. So basically what we have is we've got an overview of what this website does. It has the list of all of the committee members on here. It speaks to the strategic plan, if you scroll down. And so kind of linked back into the goals of what you all passed in your strategic plan I think early last year. As scroll down through the website we start with the transportation one at the top and the various entities you've got on the left-hand side is name of the program. On the right- hand side is a short description. Where I was able to find them. You have the links to those specific program pages that the individual entity websites. For example if you click on one of the cap met throw ones it will take you to cap metro's page. For transportation we currently have cap metro, central health and a partial city of Austin page. Which is down there. And then we have the evictions as well. And so that is kind of being cobbled together. Under the city of Austin [3:29:58 PM] page and we scroll down and Travis county is in here as well. That's kind of what the website looks like. We're modeling this website off of the existing city manager's and affordability initiative. Drop-down menus midway through the page. Once we get all the information we'll be transforming that and making it look -- if you open up -- one of the drop-downs. If you look there, it's a little cleaner and it just links to it. So we'll be -- once we get all the information on to this website, we're going to transform it to have it look kind of like that but we can't until all the information is out there. I'll send you a link so you can start sharing it with partners. We're going to be putting it on to the main website so you can link directly to it and you can Goen a we can keep growing this website as you all have discussions and actions around the affordability initiatives. >> Any questions? Did you say you had sent this to all of our offices and asked us for promise that could help populate it? >> Yes, it was part of a long email with information about the meeting notice so it could have gotten lost. >> I think I missed that. I don't know if you have Lonny from my staff. >> Yes. >> If there's a way to do just a specific reminder on that because I know we have, for instance, the county has a program I think that does provide people with transportation assistance, short-term capital metro cards so that is a program that the county offers that would relate to transportation. And I know we have a number of other ones, but I want to make sure that doesn't get lost because I don't remember seeing it. >> I'll email her directly. >> We don't have anything from Williamson county. Did anybody respond from Williamson county because if this is going to be truly a regional affordability community we need information from them. Is there anybody on the [3:32:00 PM] committee that could help maybe encourage that? >> I'm Williamson county. I could check. >> It's a vacant position so we actually don't have any representatives from Williamson county. They are not currently -- >> I think commissioner long had been on it initially and I don't know how Williamson county picked. Did they -- did the county commission collect the representative? >> We reached out to commissioner long when we first set up this committee to request that they appoint somebody and never actually heard anything back. >> Then I would follow that up with other cities being represented on this committee because we're all in this together. So I'm thinking of -- >> Well, my first thought was pflugerville and eanes ids. These are two that come to my mind. >> Pflugerville itself and Hutto and Elgin, manor. Where people end up going if they can't afford to live here. Leander. Cedar park. >> I think when you look all across the eastern crescent, Round Rock, pflugerville, Elgin, manor, del valle and just keep going down to hays and Williamson. >> It might be good for somebody to take a look at this before our next meeting. Because if we did, you know, if -- seems like there needs to be some criteria to determine. If you did every school district and city, then -- you did the msa, I just think we probably need to look at some criteria and figure out is it the eastern crescent, what is it? >> Because we've got five school districts now. >> I think that perhaps -- and Paul, you may have been part of this, I can't remember, but the group that put this together originally, I know that councilmember Garza was part of that and I see you shaking your head, you probably are part of it too so I know there was some discussion about who to include. If you all talk about that? [3:34:01 PM] >> Yes, actually if you go to the website, there's the ordinance that created this committee. And so the ordinance that created this committee actually had -- called for representatives from the Austin city council, aid, board of trustees, Travis county commissioners court, Austin community college, cap metro, central health, del valle ISD and Leander. Those were the particular entities. I think as receipts to the ISDs, the original intent was to look at the larger ones within the city of Austin limits. And then I think the other one was just governmental entities. I can't remember the original thought, councilmember Garza's intent, but I think it was trying to get the largest governmental entities represented here. >> So even though the cities that I mentioned are not included in that ordinance, and I'm good with that, we can follow the ordinance, we still need somebody from Williamson county. >> Yes. >> And it would be help fell to have the others to come but the Williamson county piece is a really big hole. >> Absolutely. >> You go first. I was just going to say we should -- someone should reach out to Williamson county. I don't know who. >> First one that comes to mind would be judge Dan Gettis, if you haven't reached out to him at least until the end of the year he's the current judge. He might have somebody. I can meet with him and talk to him as well. It would be worthwhile if you sent the original charter and then copied me on it if you wanted, that's fine. >> If the judge can't, Terry cook has been very interested in issues. She's the newest member of the Williamson county commissioners court. >> And I know Leander ISD, [3:36:01 PM] they have workshops Monday evenings. I know don Heisel fairly well, always difficult, but they could show up for two hours or so. I can reach out to somebody if they want to attend or at least may participate. I think they start at 6:00 and their concern is getting all the way back home. We should try to wrap up by 5:00 normally. >> I have a question. So I'm not really quite sure what you are asking for when it comes to ISDs. We focus mostly on children, not affordable housing or any of that kind of stuff. >> So transportation would be an area for you all if you have any programs for low-income students. If there's any sort of after-school program that could help that could kind of be -- on a parallel track. If a single mother is able to keep her child at school longer because you offer a free program after school so she's able to make more money and work and so hopefully not face eviction. Anything like that is what we're looking for. It might not be for these two specific topics. The ISDs have that much overlap with what we're talking about. >> I'm thinking that on this web page, it might be useful to -- under each header for each subject area, you might put the strategic plan information there. Because each strategic -- in the strategic plan each one of these initiative areas had some bullet points related to suggested initiatives. So I think that if you put that information in under transportation and then you started listing what each organization is doing, that that would help people [3:38:02 PM] relate these initiatives better back to what we were proposing for affordability. >> That's a great suggestion. >> I see the city of Austin is not complete. >> Yes. >> Are you having difficulties getting -- my office would be happy to help you with that. >> It's more of just kind of getting with the staff and -- they are a little swamped with mobility stuff especially. >> Well, and you might also talk to Carl poplam in Austin energy because they are particularly working on some transportation initiatives that are related to affordability. So he would be a good person to outreach to also. >> Yeah, definitely I will contact him. >> Okay. >> And maybe Mr. Mitchell from cap metro can answer this, but I know that cap metro provides aid vouchers for low-income students and families. I don't recall the total number. I don't know if they provide that same opportunities to other ISDs within the service area of cap metro. That's one thing perhaps we can list for the ISDs. I don't recall the number for ISD. >> I don't either, but I think it's not all of our schools have access to that. Our title 1 schools do, but I don't recall the total number, but I know that it's available. >> The other thing just to follow up to the point councilmember kitchen raised, I can't remember why we were listing the programs or initiatives to transportation with eviction. Was the intent to do all of -- >> The intent it will grow over time. As we started going through the strategic plan and finalizing and getting the presentations and taking action. We just started with those two. >> Thank you. Great job. Thank you so much. >> So I'm trying to -- I have a very faulty memory [3:40:02 PM] because my secretary [inaudible]. When your own secretary and security and own driver and your own planner, it's just really hard. You understand. You don't get paid. So the joint subcommittee has a whole body of information about, you know, what's happening with our kids and that kind of thing and what's going on, initiatives and that kind of thing. I think mining that information and pulling out reports from all those committees because this is stuff they've been reporting on for a long time. It would be helpful to add a link to on this website. I can't remember the names of all the subcommittees, all the reports that have been generated. >> Absolutely. I'll take a look. >> Okay, thanks. >> That reminds, me, a wasn't there a study at some point, it might have been done by a joint subcommittee, looking at the impact of essentially the rising cost of housing displacing children in school or evictions or something related to housing and disruption for students and the loss of continuity in a given school. So there is a direct relationship to the school districts, it's just we have to connect those dots. If people are being displaced and forced out of their housing and having to change schools. >> We just don't provide those services unless it's a foster child or a homeless child. Other than that, the school district will not provide services for that. >> And it's really more I think on this committee for us to get a better grasp of the issues that affect each of our jurisdictions. So evictions, I don't have any direct authority over evictions, but we know it's a problem in our JP courts and we know it has a huge impact on disruption across the board at the county and the city and the school district. So we're really trying to get our arms around these issues is my understanding of it. Was there a study done -- >> I know housing works has [3:42:03 PM] done a number of studies so housing works would be another organization to look at. And I believe del valle provides child care, correct? >> We have extended care, but -- >> But some sort of child care. Your superintendent took me on a tour several years ago. >> That's for employees or students with children. >> But that's a service though, that would help low-income people. I'm just wondering if stuff like that might be helpful for people on to know that. >> I don't think that's how that works but I can find out. >> I think the real idea should be to put an asset map together, and I think that we're beginning to do that. Because there are some horizon issues that we need to be thinking of also, like carts, for example. At some point we're going to grow outside the definition and we're still going to have people that need to come in for dialysis and cancer treatments, et cetera. >> You are referring to the rural transportation. >> Yes. >> But yes, clearly I concur that we need the asset map because we know that there are demographics shifts happening. We heard about displacement and the tenants issues and we'll hear more. People living in parts of our county or other counties where they don't have the transportation to get to various services or, you know, facets of that you are life whether it's health care or education or their jobs. >> So I sit on the anti-displacement task force and that at some point I'm going to offer that for future agenda item because I'm going to recommend that that task force ask this committee and the joint subcommittee for an endorsement when we finally get to our recommendations. I think that will be very powerful to have. This committee's endorsement and also the joint subcommittee's. So we are currently looking, we've been meeting since January and we're currently looking at a lot of data and there was a U.T. Study [3:44:04 PM] commissioned under the resolution that set up the task force to study what's going on on the ground at this point. So I think it would be helpful to have that study presented here, that's Dr. Muller and Dr. Tang and I believe there's another person involved. Pardon? And Heather white, correct. Dr. Rivera is also involved, involved in the people's plan. All that information I'll offer as future agenda items because there's a lot of really good information related to affordability coming out of that task force. >> One more thing. >> Sure. >> Last point, too. I also remember when we started this committee that one of the original intents or goals was also to have the cumulative ramifications of budget adoptions and budget schedules. Bond elections and all of those things. And so maybe perhaps inter government agency that we should all offer some information about that. I think the intent was if we were truly going to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars that we should take into consideration the cumulative effects of the budget, the tax, bond elections and all of those things and have it sort of in a schedule so we were all aware of that. For example I know the school district adopts a budget a lot earlier in July, used to be October. The county and the city do it under -- September, October time frame. So having that somewhere listed where we could obviously show that information, take that into consideration with the taxpayers. >> And in concert with that, and this is not asset mapping but a different type, it would be helpful to have kind of demographics and mapping of the overlapping taxing jurisdictions so that we [3:46:05 PM] have a clear picture because that's really what you are talking about is the overlapping taxing jurisdictions. >> There's -- at least on the Williamson county appraisal district you can click on the address and that's close but I think you are asking the same thing, build on that and even extend it. >> Right. >> A lot of people will say, okay, $100,000 house, my mortgage $1,000 a month, how much all these taxes or whatever. If you have these different bonds, what's it really going to be in five years. Not that you can predict that, but at least you have an access if you pushed a button on that. >> The point is for these overlapping jurisdictions, we know for a single household or individual what the cumulative effect is of those overlapping -- >> City, county, school. >> Yes. The operating side is one thing, but then you have the debt side. >> Well, and we have started trying to work with multiple jurisdictions, planning together and looking at priorities. Pflugerville is an example of where we were looking at pflugerville ISD, city of pflugerville and county's investments in roads as they built a new school so that we could identify where our priorities aligned and how we could work together. We didn't wait for a formal process. We started it in formally, but we are taking steps to formalize it now. I think we can still meet together, plan together, talk together, and we really probably ought to look across the smsa because you've got campo that's going planning, you've got capcog that's doing planning, all of these different jurisdictions that need to work together as we talk about how you come into [3:48:05 PM] and out of the city. >> And based on that would it be helpful for this committee to have an update on what you're talking about, the work that you're talking about? Because those entities are not represented on here. Would it be helpful for us to know what's going on there? Those jurisdictions meeting together? >> Well, we're happy to share. >> That would be great. >> And I do think it's valuable in terms of sort of the overlapping debt impact to people who also help people understand that a significant percent of their local school taxes are being taken by the state. The state is not fulfilling its constitutional duty and instead is using local property taxes to not even fully fund schools around the state. So if we're putting in the debt burden, there also needs tore an asterisk pointing out this year alone over half a billion dollars of just our aid taxes and I know Round Rock is growing, pflugerville is being affected, eanes, all of them. >> Okay. >> So I'll -- thank you for all the feedback. I'll take it back and start working on it. >> We just gave you a double -- >> I will not programs this will be done by your may meeting but it will be a living document that will grow was we grow. We'll provide regular updates as I have them. >> It's a great resource. If you are thinking about it, I guess all the presentations and all the material. >> I also have questions. How are we going to publicize this so the public at large knows about it. This is beyond Austin city limits too. >> So we'll add it as a link to the front page of the regional affordability committee. If you all choose I think as a body you could -- I don't [3:50:05 PM] know if it's like a press release or if you just sent out -- you may sign a letter and start distributing it to all the various entities. >> Also other entities could choose a link from their home pages so that would help too. >> Absolutely. >> Great report. Thank you. Agenda item 5 here and discussion and possible action on eviction trends in the central Texas area. >> So we're actually -- if it's okay with the body, we're going to take that up after the presentations since it kind of flows. The presentations next. >> So then we'll go to item 6, briefing and discussion on the city of Austin tenant relocation resolution and the potential impact to eviction issues in central Texas. >> Good afternoon, committee members. My name is Lauren, I'm a planner with the city of Austin's neighborhood housing and community development department. And I'll be giving a briefing on the tenant notification and relocation assistance ordinance and how it's been implemented in the past year and a half since its adoption. So I'll just give a quick overview of what it does and how it's triggered through our development permitting process. Talk about these three times that Juliana Gonzalez mentioned it has been triggered in the last year and a half, how we implement it and what steps we need to take as we implement in the future. And we've also received feedback and evaluation from committee members who have been interested in how the ordinance has been implemented as well as [3:52:06 PM] applicants who have had to comply with it so we can give you that information as well. So the ordinance was passed by city of Austin city council in September 2016. And it basically provides notification to residents of two types of properties, multi-family complexes and mobile home park developments that are slated for closure due to redevelopment or certain types of site work that I'll talk about in a minute, and it allows for financial relocation assistance to be provided to low and moderate income residents of these properties. It creates something called a notice of intent period, so when the property owner or the developer provides the notification that is required to all the affected tenants, the notice of intent period begins. It's 120 days for multi-family developments and 270 days for mobile home park communities. And during this period, basically, that permit that was sought by the property owner or developer cannot be approved. It allows residents to make arrangements and locate housing that they can move into that meets their needs to save up money for relocation costs. The threshold for the ordinance is five or more occupied residential units, so in a multi-family development or in a mobile home park a property would have to have at least five occupied residential units at the time that the property owner came in for the permit. And speaking of permits, the permits that trigger the ordinance are listed there at the bottom of the slide so for multi-family properties we're looking at demolition permits or building permits that would authorize demolition of the existing structure. And for mobile home parks the permits are zoning applications, so zoning or rezoning, and site plan applications. [3:54:09 PM] >> The funding for the relocation assistance, who provides? >> We don't have any funding get and I'll get to that later on in the presentation, but currently only the notification piece is being implemented. >> And to be clear, this only triggers if residents are needing to relocate because of an actual demolition of the property. So if there was a substantial renovation of the property with substantial increase in rents and all the residents moved because they could not afford it, this would not be triggered, right? >> Correct. It's not triggered if it's just a rent increase. >> Right. >> And it's not triggered if, for example, a plumbing permit is being applied for and people end up having to move because their water is shut off for a long time. >> And it's only the demolition permits that trigger it, so it's not triggered if there is a permit drawn for a substantial renovation, right? >> Correct. That's how it's currently -- >> I'm wondering if that ties to what we were hearing from the tenants council about them saying perhaps more displacement and perhaps that was from other situations, not where something was demolished but where there was, let's say, a substantial renovation and the rents increased. >> Correct. I think anecdotally that could be the case. Also leases could be ended and not renewed before someone came in for a permit. So that's, I think, a more common reason. >> Sure. That makes sense. Thank you. >> Two multi-family properties have provided notice under the tenant relocation ordinance totaling 62 households and one mobile home park that had 41 households that were notified. And the department has received information from the tenants council or other [3:56:10 PM] community members anecdote there any of situations where leases were ending and not being renewed, sometimes where they were being terminated before they were supposed to be finished. Due to redevelopment of a property or there were rumors that the property owner, property manager was ending leases in order to demolish or redevelop the property. But in each of those cases the properties did not have any of those four types of permit applications, the four listed on slide 3. None of those had been applied for at the time and therefore the ordinance did not apply. And -- and as Juliana Gonzalez mentioned earlier, this aspect of the ordinance has been found to be a little problematic to a lot of people, but unfortunately we as a city or as the city are unable to require landords to renew leases under state law. So we can't, you know, require that someone keep renewing a lease if it's gone month to month. There are state laws that will help in situations where a tenant and a landlord have signed a lease for a year and maybe six or seven months in the landlord says that they are going to close the property to demolish it and the tenant must move. So there are existing laws that could help deal with those situations, but the situation where leases are just ending and not being renewed is not something that the ordinance covers or that we as a city could get involved in since it's a private contract. >> So does this also apply to multi-family properties that are either funded by hud section 8 housing, may have been prior Austin housing finance corporation recipients of bond dollars, same thing with Travis county, housing finance corporation, tdhca? [3:58:10 PM] What happens in those instances? Does this apply to those particular developments as well? >> If there are properties that have more stringent relocation requirements, for example, if you are hud funded you have to follow the federal uniform relocation act, then the more stringent rules apply. >> Seems like on east Riverside with the new or Cal facility, seems like there's been articles about those and what about a mobile home park that I can remember, maybe that was it. Oracle. Seems like there was more than that. >> More than three. There are lots of situations where leases are being ended and people are being told they need to move where the ordinance hasn't applied. But that I think property owners or managers still are working with their tenants to provide notification. It's just not under the auspices of the ordinance. >> Okay. >> So broadly speaking the audience gets implemented in sort of four steps. So an applicant, which could be the property owner or it could be a developer or an agent of the property owner, fills out an application for one of those permits that I mentioned and each of those permit applications have a question or a couple of questions dealing with the ordinance. Specifically they'll ask whether five or more households occupy the property currently or are being displaced or, five or more current occupants being demolished. If the applicant says yes to any of those questions, the application will indicate that a follow-up might be necessary, that the ordinance might apply, and either the applicant themselves will reach out to neighborhood housing, which has happened on a couple of -- I think actually all three of those occasions, or the developer reviewer could [4:00:11 PM] let them know that they need to do so. And all of our forms, all of our notification packets and the certification forms saying that notice was delivered, are all available online, but in each of those three instances I've worked with the applicant to make sure notice is being provided in the required way and answering any of them questions. So after the notice is delivered to the affected tenants and nhcd receives the documentation saying that it was done appropriately, then we'll issue a certification letter similar to how we do for our smart housing projects, if anybody is familiar with that. The letter will state when the notice of intent period is over and gives a date, and that is the date on which whatever permit they were applying for can be approved. So we'll give that letter to the applicant and then the applicant will make sure that it gets inserted into their file, that the development reviewer has it. The notice period whatever application they were applying for can be approved. We are currently working with the development services department and the city's I.T. Department to sort of more automatically and instantaneously integrate neighborhood housing into our electronic development review process through the Amanda system. So we have a couple of upgrades that are going to be happening in the next quarter, which I understand starts at the end of the month, so that's just to sort of streamline this whole process. And it mirrors steps that we're taking to track developments that have affordability requirements associated with other programs like our planned unit developments or density bonuses. So that's ongoing. Other next steps involve the financial assistance piece. So the ordinance did authorize city council to charge a relocation [4:02:14 PM] assistance fee for eligible applicants, but did displace 15 months especially when the applicant was looking for a rezoning or planned unit development approval. To set this fee we had suggested staff have recommended and the ordinance requires that a nexus study be conducted, but this study has been conducted across the country when a city wants to determine if a relationship exists between some kind of activity and an impact that the city would need to deal with. So for this specific fee the study would determine whether there's a relationship between redevelopment of multi-family or mobile home parks and the increased need for affordable housing, the need for a tenant relocation fee. And if it found such a relationship, then some modeling and analysis would be done to ensure that any proposed fee amounts would be proportionate to the impact that that particular redevelopment was going to have. Funding was not allocated for this study in the current budget, but neighborhood housing has requested funding for this study to be done by an experienced consultant in our upcoming budget request, which I think we submitted in early March. The ordinance also allows for city council to allocate public funds for assistance where in case a row zoning was not being sought, but someone was able to demolish a current apartment building and build a new one under their current zoning entitlements by right. So fund funding for that fund was not identified in the current budget either. So as I said before, therefore really just the notification piece of the ordinance is being implemented right now. The ordinance had directed [4:04:14 PM] staff to resolicit input from stakeholders on one specific section, namely the offenses section of the ordinance. It asked us to resolicit information specific by about penalties and how they're calculated. Currently the ordinance calculates them based on the number of units that are not receiving notice in the appropriate way. The question was should it be number of units or just total number of buildings, total number of mobile home parks in an application. And whether proof of culpable mental state in that someone intentional violated the terms of the ordinance, whether proof of that should be required to prosecute a violation of the ordinance. So in October we reached out to stakeholder and we received some limited responses back that indicated support for getting rid of culpable mental health requirements. And so through the context process we have moved to remove the culpable state requirement of the ordinance so that is in draft 3 of codenext right now. As I mentioned we have gotten some feedback and lessons learned from people who have had to comply with the ordinance as well as stakeholders and advocates who have been sort of paying attention to how it's been going over the last year and a half. And so the big one is something that we've already mentioned today, but concerned with how the requirements are triggered. Specifically Lisa ooze ending and just naturally -- leases ending and just matterly not being renewed before the application process is submitted. We talked about this with the codes and ordinances joint committee in January and some research showed that Santa Barbara, California has a six-month look back period in their tenant relocation ordinance [4:06:16 PM] basically allowing anyone who resided at the property for the last six months to be considered eligible for financial assistance. And we have a request to the law department to figure out how and whether something like this could be incorporated into our ordinance in the legal environment that we're living in. We heard from applicants who had to apply with the ordinance that safety could be a concern and this is also in a UT clinical report that came out prior to the ordinance being drafted that as a development empties of residents just during the notice of intent period, especially if it's nine months for mobile home park, there can be safety issues when there's more vacant units, fewer people around. Another thing that the applicant mentioned was financial assistance is paramount and it needs to be compared with housing locators who can help lower income people find housing housing that is camp rabble to what they have to the extent possible, but also meets their needs. This was part of a staff recommendation that we made to council in a memo that we submitted just before the ordinance was passed in August of 2016. And finally relocating mobile home park residents will be especially difficult because existing parks are redeveloping throughout the city and the region and a lot of times the homes that are needing to be relocated are old and sort of frail and finding someone to move them can be difficult, moving them in general can be difficult, and finally in the parks that remain open there are maybe lack of spaces or there are restrictions on how old a unit can be. Sometimes 10 years is the oldest a manufactured home can be to move into the park. [4:08:16 PM] So all of these things are kind of ancillary to the ordinance, but could make relocation of lower income mobile home park owners a little bit more difficult. So that concludes the briefing piece. I'm happy to answer questions on the ordinance or I don't know if there's any eviction questions. >> So it occurs to me that for a future agenda item we ought to invite some industry representatives from the apartment association and reca to come in here and answer our questions about what they're doing to be responsible citizens in this whole issue because that's the big piece. They are the market. They are driving a huge part of the market. And they are not very responsive in my opinion to the needs of people who are being displaced. So that's the first, just a comment. And a question would be are there loopholes in the ordinance that you have identified that the -- that industry is using to displace people and not follow the ordinance. >> I have to say that for the applicants that I've worked with, everybody has really wanted to do what they need to do to follow the ordinance. >> [Indiscernible]. >> 'Em yes, ma'am. >> So I think that's because it's not a proactive approach, so we're relying on people to fill out the forms. >> Right. So we're relying on the good graces of the industry to do this. >> Right. So I think the people that we end up working with are responsible actors who understand what they need to-- what requirements they need to meet. Besides that piece, you [4:10:16 PM] know, we can't verify every single development -- I'm sorry, demolition permit, for example. Are there really five people living there or not. >> Do you have the bandwidth to do that? >> To drive out to each site to see if there are five households residing there or not. The other big piece would be the lack of a look-back period. I think that's sort of the most obvious one. >> So that would be helpful, adding that look-back period would be helpful is what you're suggesting? Okay. >> Kitchen: I think that a big problem, of course -- not problem, but an aspect of this to remember, it's a very limited ordinance as others pointed out earlier. And it's not going to solve all the problems. So it would need to be broader. It's limited. It's limited to demolition permits in these areas and there's just not a huge number of those. >> So what I'm basically asking is what can we do? And this ties in with the work of the anti- displacement task force as a tool. What can we do to strengthen this ordinance, but I'm still saying that industry representatives need to be brought in and we need to be asking them questions in a non- threatening type of a way because they want their cooperation. We don't want them to be -- to turn around and go, y'all are just nasty people and we're not going to talk to you because that's generally the way they get approached. But we need them as partners. So I'm just suggesting that to this group that it might be helpful to have them here and then have some of the good actors here. I would love to talk to them and find out what's motivating them to be good actors. But in our loose regulatory atmosphere that we have in the state of Texas, it's been my experience that we haven't had that many good actors. Because I just hear from all these people all the time who get displaced. And so does Ms. Gonzalez at [4:12:16 PM] the tenants council. And her suggestion too about the eviction, she mentioned eviction -- maybe she should come forward and remind me what she called that. The assistance? Being given to tenants at the point of eviction when they really don't know all the rules and then they have people come up, attorneys and so forth, to help. And then the establishment of tenants' councils at various multi-family locations. But I'm concerned about our duplex/four-plex people because they don't fall under this at all and there are a lot of duplex/four-plex people shut he willed out of their out of their apartments because people see dollar signs and they are throwing these people out and they don't have any recourse. So it's a big ball of wax. So whatever we can do, whatever tools you can recommend at this point, would be helpful. >> A couple of things. I'm interested in the cost of the Santa Barbara program and ultimately the services that they provide and the services that you feel are necessary as we build a program and then I'm interested in your partnership with code compliance compliance because they have not evaluating not only on trailer parks, but I guess manufactured home places and some duplexes and other commercial ventures to determine what our volume is going to be over time and who might be impacted by the policies that you're proposing. Have you looked at any best practices that we've pulled out of Santa Barbara? >> Yes, I can give you a view of Santa Barbara's program. It applies to demolition of rental structures that require -- where that work requires a permit and [4:14:18 PM] reduces the number of rental unit. Tool applies to condo conversions and land use changes. And in California the prone are or developer has to provide the financial assistance to tenants. And the way that they calculate that is will the greater of four times the center's median rental rate or $5,000. There is no eligibility requirement. And if you are in a household where there is an elderly member, a disabled member or it's a low income household, then it's five times the city's median rental rate or $6,000. >> Okay. And -- all right. I'm interested in I guess their reach. Number of ftes and number of properties that they look at over a reasonable period of time. Probably the last fiscal year or two. And then the code compliance issues I think are something that can give us some insight because you're looking at the horizon, what we see coming and what we can expect over time. >> I'll have to get you the information on the ftes and the cost to implement in Santa Barbara. In terms of code compliance, I have read the report that they put out about mobile home communities and bringing them up to code. We did work with a point of contact in the code department, Todd will tox, when we were crafting the ordinance. We also worked with aboa and reca and some of the apartment associations and some industry representatives and I'd be happy to provide our stakeholder list to you. However, I think that's kind of the extent of how much we've been working with the code department. >> A couple of quick [4:16:18 PM] questions. >> Two questions. One is I believe tcad and I'm pretty sure that Williamson county central appraisal district has informatn on the size of units. That's how they determine the property valuation. So if you said your people don't have time to drive out and look at the units, you would be able to pull it up on the appraisal district database and it wouldn't require people to drive out and actually look at it. >> True, but we wouldn't know if they were currently applied, though? >> Does this only apply to currently occupied five units on or more? >> Yes. >> That's interesting. And the other question is: Was there discussion when this ordinance was adopted about -- including language from the Santa Barbara ordinance that addresses alteration of units? Because it seems to me we've got a pretty narrow universe if we're only looking at demolition permits or in the case of mobile homes, I guess it's a relocation. So there was some discussion. Can you give us some insight as to why that language wasn't included in this ordinance? >> Sure. We worked with the language development services department throughout the process to craft the ordinance and originally we were wondering what the threshold was when you're doing work that made a unit inhabitable and incorporating those permits. And there's some logistical hurdles with that. For instance, the people coming in for like a plumbing permit or an electrical permit or a non-structural demolition permit would be trades people a lot of times who actually don't know anything about the property, don't know if it's occupied. So collecting that information was going to be difficult. And then this is also the first tenant relocation [4:18:18 PM] ordinance in Texas. We want to make sure that we were crafting something we could implement, that made all of our stakeholders, if not happy, at least they could live with it. And it was a varied stakeholder base. So we started looking kind of at a more narrowly applied universe, I guess, but I think that as we're implementing it and we see that we're not capturing, you know, ooze, as many properties as are being closed for redevelopment when many low income tenants are being displaced that there's room for talking about how we can broaden what we're looking at and improve the ordinance. >> And that six- month look-back period is probably an important one if you're saying that they're terminating leases, then applying for demolition and the redevelopment permits, that six-month look-back may capture some of that too. >> As we look at the Santa Barbara numbers, keep in mind it's a city of 90,000 with a median house price of 1.2 million. Extrapolate to us a little bit if you could, because I don't think it would be a complete apples to apples comparison. We're 10 times the size, but our median home price is less, although climbing too much. But anyway, just keep that in mind. >> We looked at maybe close to two dozen ordinances across the country, and really very few of them have look-back periods. This was the only one that I've been able to find. So again we need to talk with the law department about how this would work. >> And I'm Erica Lee, assistant director of neighborhood housing. [4:20:21 PM] The one element I would add to that conversation is when we were trying to figure out how to craft this- - these rules, one of the things we were trying to figure out is how can we assist the actual residents. And if people are already gone, then it is -- a little different discussion. So when you think about the look-back period, yes, it's great to say okay, we're going to capture these developments where they're being redeveloped, but after six months trying to go back and contact those tenants will be very challenging if not impossible. So that may be one of the reasons why there aren't look-back periods in some places because of the challenge with trying to actually help tenants. >> I just think that the ones that I read about also that the owner's just let them deteriorate until people just get feed up with leaks and collapsing front porches, balcones. And then they go in and they gut it. People move out slowly. And then they go in and -- trades people when you come in plumbing you want to do all the plumbing all at the same time, all the plumbing, all the tile, so you don't want to do one unit at a time. >> Industry is very good. The bad actors in industry is very good at doing this. It's passive/aggressive approach to tenants. And like view is a classic case of that. Lake view. And I believe they are still suing the previous owners of those apartments, the tenants are. There's a class section suit that is still going on, suing the previous owners for the way they were treated in that whole Deback kel. [4:22:21 PM] So once again I think we need to make partners of our industry people and get more good actors in this. Because we can try in this state to do this with ordinances and laws but we're ham struck by a certain philosophy at the state capitol. And my aunt lives in one of those mobile home parks in Santa Barbara. And it is pristine, maintained, excellent place to live and it's the only place she can afford to live and she's 85, in Santa Barbara because of the home price and the condo price and all that kind of thing. But the laws in California are much more amenable protecting residents, particularly elderly, than our laws here in Texas. And I understand why you all are hamstrung in what you can put together legally in the state of Texas. So once again we have to make the industry our partners and help them understand why what they're doing -- they are the market and why what they're doing is hurting people. >> I have somewhat of a facetious question or comment. So the nexus study is a legal requirement, is that what you're saying? >> Correct. It was a recommendation from our law department. >> So I'm just thinking this is the fa taskforce part is if we know that Austin's ranking as relates to gentrification and being a segregated city, is that not enough to move forward with this type of a program? >> So the nexus study is needed to set the fee. >> It might be a state requirement. >> You're trying to actually quantify how much -- how much does it cost the city when people are displaced. >> Gotcha. And the other thing is -- Ms. Almanza often talks about this. She does a good job in [4:24:23 PM] reminding folks that I think there are 17 mobile home communities that are -- 16 mobile home communities that are vulnerable. I think they house nearly 1300 people. One of the vulnerabilities is she points to the fact that the zoning for the mobile home communities is one of the reasons that those particular communities are vulnerable. So with that being said are we looking at taking preventive steps or proactive steps or have we assessed the stages of vulnerabilities of those 16 mobile home communities? >> Not to my knowledge. I don't think that has been undertaken. >> I do think that with the codenext mapping process that the mapping team tried to assign across the city zoning that kind of matched the land use where there were discrepancies so there have been some mobile home parks that have gotten the correct manufactured home zoning in the draft 3 map. >> So I have a quick comment/question. So all this really does is tell a tenant this they are going to get a certified letter that their home is going to be demolished. How does it actually help them in relocating? >> So tenants that would be affected by the demolition permit or the site plan application, they get a packet of information saying what work is going to be happening, when the permit can get approved. And then there is information on tenants' rights and then renters' assistance programs. We found from stakeholders we had both apartment and mobile home tenant stakeholders come to our meeting, some of whom had been displaced. There was a lot of information they didn't know about what their rights were, the fact that they [4:26:24 PM] could continue to send their child to the same school even if they moved out of district for the remainder of the year. How to make sure that they didn't have to pay another deposit when they moved and had to get their utilities turned back on. So I think all of that information in one place is pretty helpful. And then the reason that we settled on the 120 day and 270 day notice periods is because that's what people were telling us that they needed that much time to save. I mean, since there isn't a financial assistance piece right now people who can save would want enough time to be able to put money away. And to find another home that met their needs that was around the same price, which is very difficult for a lot of these units which are pretty cheap. >> So we don't use any of the programs that we talk about with relocation with our affordable housing, any bond money that we have reallocated for affordable housing, we don't use any of that to help these tenants? >> You mean like with financial like relocation assistance? >> Yeah. >> Not through this program. If money were allocated, then we could. >> Right. And they could be eligible for some of the programs. >> And that information would be in the packet. >> Do we tell them about them? >> Uh-huh. >> Perfect. >> But to be clear, the bond money that -- for the general obligation bonds goes before the voters has very stringent -- >> It goes to certain programs and certain programs. Yeah. >> And typically it's been for developing or rehabbing actual units, most of which are rental. So that's where -- that's where the -- >> No. There's programs in there for rental assistance. >> No, there is some money in there for rental assistance, there absolutely is, and the burn league has viewed some of that, but -- the urban league has used some of that, but the [4:28:24 PM] majority of the money has been for development of units. >> I guess two other things I would note is the -- if we are able to complete a nexus study that would enable us to be able to charge developers and then that money would go into the fund to provide tenant relocation assistance, actual monetary assistance. And then another possibility is setting-- you're right, setting aside city funds for that particular use. >> Yeah. And let me just say that when we pass this we wanted to get started on it. It's the first one in the state of Texas and we wanted to get started down this road and we identified the need for assistance. And hopefully we'll see that in the future. We'll 'working towards that from a city council perspective. But there's a number of steps, just getting this program in place, there's the nexus study, and then of course there's our budget process to see what we can do in terms of identifying relocation assistance. >> Okay. >> I just don't want to have to create another budget item when we already have you funding in other areas. >> Yeah, but there's not enough fund persian gulf in those other areas, that's the problem. >> Yeah, there's never going to be it enough funding. >> I see what you're saying. >> Maybe at the end of the day is what we do is put additional dollars into the relocation assistance fund then these folks could access. >> So something that Ms. Gonzalez alluded to is tenant education, them knowing their rights, and you've alluded to that too. Getting that information out to them, number one. Number two, I'm going to speak from the standpoint of the lakeview apartments, when it was brought to my attention as a trustee that we had students there who were going to be displace displaced, didn't know where they were going to go. Wanted to go to the same school. I contacted the superintendent, yes, they can go to the same school but they have to have transportation there. [4:30:25 PM] And that's something that we can't afford because the state doesn't give us a transportation allowance. So I'm going to go to the state, they don't like people that much, especially poor people, because they don't really make it easy for the rest of us who do like poor people who want to help them. And I'm talking somebody on a teacher retirement, you know, I make $24,000 a year, woo, as a teacher retiree. So I would be considered very, very poor. If I didn't have other resources, family resources, I would be in the same issue. And there are teachers out there who don't have those family resources and they're living in subsidized housing. They're living on properties that are tax credit properties. And when they get flipped or whatever, they're going to be out also. So these are professionals. And it's criminal that anybody is thrown out on the street because somebody is so attached to their property and their money. Anyway, so I'm going to go back to this nexus study and I know nhcd has made a request in the budget for 2018-2019 to have this study done. And if -- that's a critical piece. If the city legal department says that's a critical piece for getting this moving beyond the point of innovation requirements, then let's do that. What can we do to make sure that -- how much does that study cost? >> Based on estimates for similar studies across the country, we estimated around $120,000. >> $120,000. >> It's combined with a request for a study for residential demolition fees as well. And that would be an extra 45,000. >> So 165? >> That was the request. >> 165. Okay. So that's the request in the city budget, $165,000. That's going out and I'm saying this to all you city [4:32:25 PM] councilmembers who are not here. Please can we do this? Because if this is the impediment to creating a fee system for developers who benefit, who benefit greatly from redeveloping a property or raising a property, they benefit, period, from city infrastructure from the workers who are going to clean their buildings, et cetera, et cetera, they benefit. They reap enormous benefits compared to the misery they cause. And they do this very quickly too because one of the things we noticed with lakeview, we had residents who heard about it and they started making plans. The residents are usually the ones with kids. We've got to make plans. Where are we going to put these kids for school? How are we going to get them to school? How will we get them diplomacy to affordable shopping? You can put people in places of opportunity, but if they can't afford to buy anything this that area, what's the point? That's a little aside rant that I go on. So they move fast. The tenants move fast. They're practical people, okay? And developers know that or they don't care, either way. So the people who do care are trying to help. The people who do care, whatever, do your thing. So I'm just saying out there somewhere we have to find some people with heart and then convince the people who are making money off of all of this, using the infrastructure that's already in place. So city council people, $165,000, let's get this country to we can move forward on this. And I might add that also goes back to a lot stuff that's been done with code. Thank you for raising that, commissioner Travillion, code, some of us in my neighborhood, the rundberg area, have been working on this for 25 years to get code in the place where we can get our landlords to pay attention to the conditions that they're letting people live in. Rental registration, oh, big boogie man. [4:34:26 PM] Abor doesn't like it, triple a doesn't like T nobody likes it because oh my god, they would have to pay a fee. So I'm going to rant. I'm going to stop. If we can get that nexus study done, let's just do it. >> Okay. Any other comments? Questions? Very enlightening. Thank you. Okay. Let's see... We want to go on to 7 or back to 5? What would we say? >> [Indiscernible]. >> We'll go to the 7, discussion on developer complying with density bonus program in the city. >> Good afternoon, my name is chase clements, financial manager at neighborhood housing and community development. I oversee the auditing and monitoring division, if you will. Just a brief overview of nhcd. Our commission is to provide housing and community development services to benefit eligible residents so they can have access to liveable neighborhoods and increase the opportunities for self-sufficiency. I probably don't need to read our objective. I think you guys know enough about us. So this is my team that I oversee. I'm financial manager. And we kind of have a broad group of individuals in our group. From an accountant to a financial analyst, we have a planner to our team, contract management specialist, a financial generalist and an internal auditor. We kind of run the gamut from planning to accounting all the way to kind of process improvement and internal controls. [4:36:29 PM] Our auditing group, we conduct accounting reconciliations and entries that you would typically expect any accounting team to perform. Our finance individuals work more on kind of the budget side and answering requests from council and kind of all of our federal reporting. Our auditing piece, we are the kind of liaison to anything in the outside audit world, external auditors, save Austin auditors. It's -- we get a lot of audits in our department so that it's a large workload. And then finally, the last piece, which is probably what you guys are more interested in hearing about than this is the monitoring piece. We Overlee all the federal and local regulations, monitoring of our subrecipient agencies, all of our multi- family, both incentivized and funded multi-family projects and our single-family projects. And then at the end date we try to provide technical assistance and research to play within the federal regulations and local regulations that are required. So the different types of monitoring again, our subrecipient monitoring is agencies that we contract with with our grant dollars. Those are a little more stringent on the federal requirements. There's a lot of -- a lot of compliance and regulatory detail that goes into that type of monitoring. We're getting dollars from H.U.D. And turning around and giving those dollars to subrecipients. Then the next two is the funded and incentive-based monitoring. Our funded projects again are going to be federal and local dollars that have gone into some sort of development to provide affordable housing. And then our incentive-based multi-family projects are projects that are providing affordable housing that is obtained through like a zone org incentive action. [4:38:30 PM] And then lastly is our single-family. This is like down payment assistance, home buyer assistance and homeowner assistance in the form of hrlps. So our subrecipient monitoring, there's 12 separate recipients that we fund through grants. They perform all of the services throughout the department from rental to homeowner to business and public service assistance. The methodology for coming up with our monitoring plan every year, we run an annual risk assessment. We evaluate agency performance. We review all of the contracts that we have in the file against federal regulations, through H.U.D. Checklists. We ultimately decide who will be looked at annually based on the risk assessment. We will go and do on-site reviews and it's -- I have an audit background, so we kind of look at it like an audit. You're going through and taking sample selections and basically asking them to prove up what they've spent the dollars on. And then we provide technical guidance. The funded multi-family projects, there's 128 currently as of the other day. There's 128 development projects with a total of a little over 4,000 affordable units. We take the same methodology or approach to how we're going to look at each one of those. We run an annual risk assessment. And based on prior performance and current feasibility. And then we do -- we randomly select 10% of the units during an on-site review. And it's similar again to an audit. You're selecting 10% of the affordable units and you're going through on the funded [4:40:31 PM] projects we have the ability to do physical inspections as well as rent and certification type work. The physical inspection piece we have outsourced to blueprint housing solutions. It's a third-party that we contracted with beginning last year. And then again we do provide technical assistance as needed. And then the incentive-based multi-family monitoring, it's a similar portfolio size, 93 projects with a little over 4,000 affordable units. This has been contracted out to blueprint housing solutions as well. This is the first year that they will be performing that monitoring for us. And we hope to have results -- I think I have a slide on that in a second. We hope to have results on that monitoring at the end of next month, I believe, and April. We're doing 10% of the units reviewed at every project and that involves rent and income certifications, you know, verifying the appropriate rent levels being charged and the individuals are within the appropriate income level. And then our single-family portfolio is about 1400 loans that has come through down payment assistance T homeowner rehabilitations. Again, it's a similar approach, annual risk assessment. We review tax records, code compliance, run tcad, that sort of thing to verify individuals are actually living in the homes and throughout the tenure of the loan. And then there's the loan servicing aspect related to either releasing liens, modifying loans, refinancing, that sort of thing. Our main systems that we [4:42:31 PM] use, we have what we call the affordable housing inventory. It's developed by an individual within nhcd. It's an access database and it is the system of record for all of our multi-family projects, both funded and incentivized projects. We also utilize Amanda to work with other departments within the city to identify projects that I'm assuming -- I don't work with the Amanda system. We have somebody in our real estate group that does, but I believe they're identifying our incentive-based projects that way. And then northridge is a system that we use for our monitoring. So when we first put this presentation together a lot of people were asking house about the affordable housing inventory because that's where a lot of the density bonuses live. So this is a snapshot of what our monitoring plan looks like. We get a lot of questions about what are you doing to monitor density bonus programs? So when we came up with our monitoring plan, we quickly realized that the resources weren't there to go look at 100% of these projects every single year. It's a ton of units. And we have limited resources. So the first action was, you know, how are we going to get our hands on all of this? We divided our portfolio into three. We said we're going to look at every project on a rolling three-year basis. So this kind of gives you a snapshot of just one quick page within our inventory that shows you 2017, these are the projects we're going to look at, 2018 we'll look at these projects and then 2019 we'll look at the other third of the projects. Obviously those numbers change based on the result was of the current year so that would all flow into our risk assessment at the beginning of every year. So you would be looking at a third of your portfolio every year plus any [4:44:34 PM] identified projects the prior monitorrings that you found to be of higher risk or had prior issues or findings. And then as you drill down on a project, I just highlighted gndc, Guadalupe neighborhood -- thank you. You drill it down. This is what our access database shows for that individual project. There's little tabs I think you can see at the top that go along and show project details, who are the contacts, when did the affordability period start, what's the total unit count, what's the total affordable unit count? And then this is the monitoring tab obviously that drills you down to actually show you what has this project done to evidence that they are either complying or non-compliant. And then it will trigger your next monitoring date and tell you at the bottom, hey, you looked at this two years ago or three years ago. If there was no finding, then it would move to three years from that point. And again, this is just another drill-down of that information. Highlighting just a few more details related to the project. Just a little bit more about blueprint housing solutions. We brought them on to do the physical inspection piece. There's a physical inspection piece requirement on our funded projects. We didn't have the capability in-house to be going out and verifying property standards that all these residences -- it's a federal requirement and it's not something that we had the capability to get done. After we brought blueprint in we had more discussions about what else they could be doing for us to help us [4:46:37 PM] address obviously a need that we had. So that's when they began the process for the density bonus monitoring. Contracting of monitoring and inspections. They should be -- they've completed their first year of physical inspections. They should be complete with their first year of the incentive program monitoring at the end of next month. Just through conversations that we've had preliminary to the results that they're going to provide us, the issues that we've kind of seen kind of fall into these three categories at the bottom, either they've been provided inconclusive evidence so they can't really opine one way or the other on whether or not the individual was being charged the appropriate rent or the individual was at the appropriate income level. An example of that could be you're supposed to have two months' worth of rent to support how much -- two months' worth of pay stubs to support how much somebody makes. Maybe they only have one month worth of pay stubs so you candle really analyze that -- annualize that amount and make sure they are making that amount of income. Or maybe they had poor records and weren't able to supply those at the time of the monitoring visit. So the first bucket is inconclusive. The next being they were not following the right process, the property managers, that is, were not following the right process, but there was no impact to whether or not the person was eligible. So maybe they had two months' worth of pay stubs to substantiate the evidence for that individual, but they had the wrong calculation, ending up in let's say the calculation showed us at 25,000 and instead they calculate it at 20,000, but they were still under the allowable amount for someone being eligible for that unit. So the process was wrong, but there was no impact to the individual. And the last being the worst obviously, that they weren't [4:48:37 PM] falling the process appropriately and the impact being that the person was either being charged the wrong rent or the person was not eligible for that unit. So those are kind of the three categories that we've seen issues so far or we've been kind of discussing with blueprint so what they have seen. And then the bullet kind of above that is technical training required as part of remediation. One of the things we're working with blueprint on is we've set a date for all -- any issue that we've identified as -- that falls into those three categories at the bottom. All of those individuals, property managers, will be required to come to a blueprint facilitated training where they will be providing technical assistance to individuals, property managers, on how to better run these programs or run this program. Specific to the density bonus program that they are in. And that's kind of in a nutshell what I do and what monitoring does at nhcd. I'm sure you guys have a few questions. >> I have a question. >> Same suspects. [Laughter]. >> All right, perfect, thank you. Do you have any demographics on who is actually benefiting from these density bonus programs? Such as this many units were for veterans or this is for low income families? Or this is for students going to school or something like that. >> So from my experience in monitoring and really in auditing is to answer your question no, I don't have any of that information. I don't collect -- I'm not looking at the individuals honestly. We're going out and looking at units and we're looking at the information to verify that they are income eligible and that they're [4:50:38 PM] being charged the appropriate rent. I don't know how I would collect that information, to tell you the truth. >> The reason I'm asking is because we have all these programs and we have criteria and we have specific demographics that we want to be able to benefit from these programs. And on so not being able to actually a have that data kind of puts us in oh, do we put more services for veterans when they actually might be getting all these services and they just don't know. So that's what I'm asking. >> Yeah. >> So no is the short answer? >> Erica leak, neighborhood housing. And the slightly longer answer is for units that we fund we actually do get information, they're called tic. Tenant income certifications. Thank you. And those actually do provide more information and maybe chase knows the more information they provide? Maybe not. >> Our real estate team-- we could get back to you on the information that it provides. I'm not sure. >> It does provide -- I know it does provide more information, especially for anything that is funded with federal funds. So they do have specific information they provide. And the reason that we don't at this point track additional information is that the requirement -- it's basically they are tracking what is required by the ordinance. And most of our ordinances, what they require is that the units be rented to people who meet the income. The income limits. And so they're tracking to see whether or not people are in compliance. We have sort of hypothetically explored [4:52:38 PM] potentially having some optional information that people could provide and we're looking at that, but we don't have that implemented at this time. >> [Inaudible]. >> How is this information made available to the public? I'll give you a couple of specific examples. There are some units that were built on burnet road in a couple of different locations that I've actually gone and looked at. I'm curious about the availability of the affordable housing and how it's configured and I've just gone in like a normal customer wondering about the units. One of them had gotten tax credits and had a certain number of units set aside for people who met certain income qualifications. But there was no notice of it. The only way I found out was because I went in and asked. So I'm curious about that. And is that among the subrecipients that you monitor, the entities that get federal tax credits and are required to provide affordable housing as a condition I guess of the tax credit? >> Do you want to talk about the housing? >> You go first and then I'll go. >> So earlier chase mentioned that we have the affordable housing inventory and he uses that internally, their team uses that internally for monitoring, but we also actually have the information about the units that are either subsidized by the city or incentivized by the city on the city's open data portal. And so basically you can go on the open data portal, you search for affordable housing inventory and it will bring up a spreadsheet that shows all of those units. [4:54:38 PM] And so it's the -- you know, the addresses, the number of units that are affordable. We are also working with partners to try to -- and this is -- this has been much more challenging than it sounds. We're trying to figure out a way to get that information to have up to date information about availability because right now it's just a static list. Like this is what has been funded or incentivized, but it doesn't tell you whether there are any units that are available. We are still working on that with Austin city up. It has turned out to be a more challenging issue than it sounds like. But we are working on that. And I guess the other thing I would add is we're also close to having a more user friendly list of all of those affordable units on the neighborhood housing website. But again, not up to date vacancy information. >> So I did just Google it and I'm just glancing at it to see if it shows -- so this is useful. >> Quick question, if I may. >> And then I have a follow-up question. >> To clarify. But what's on the city's open data portal are those units that the city is involved with, right? >> Correct. >> So it would not cover, for instance, the housing authority of city of Austin, which I know it's confusing, but it's not the city. It's separate housing authority. Those would not be covered if foundation communities or someone else had units, if the city was not involved those would not be covered. So I'm just adding to -- I'm through Austin city up and otherwise working on this project and it is more complicated than it sounds. I had what I thought was a [4:56:39 PM] very, you know, simple, innocent request a couple of years ago when I was working in another realm to the city's neighborhood housing and community development and I asked, oh, can I get the database that shows all the affordable housing units in the entire city of Austin? And asked for other data. And this is how we started down this journey because it's all in different places, depending on whose project it was. So first it's a big project to find out where all this is, get it into one database and then how do you -- in some instances you could require it, in others you would have to incentivize keeping the information up to date. That's just part of the complexity. >> I'm still trying to figure out who tracks, for instance, the entities that get the federal tax credits? And are required to provide a subsidized housing essentially or lower cost housing because of those federal tax credits? Is that something that you all monitor or where would that -- that you all monitor or where would that information are available? >> If they get funding from the city then we would monitor it, but those would be monitored by the Texas department of housing and urban development. No, affairs. >> Community affairs. Housing and community affairs. >> So you don't link to that database for any of those units in Austin? >> Well, the city actually subsidizes -- provides gap financing for many of those developments, so most of them probably are in our database. If -- there may be some where the city did not provide any subsidy, in which they would not be in our affordable housing inventory, but as part of the Austin city up we're trying to -- [multiple voices] >> That's what I meant when I said only if the city is involved does it show up on the city's portal. Only if the city is [4:58:42 PM] financially funding, involved in some way does it show up on the city's portal. And so what we're trying to do, yes, through this larger project is get all of this together. >> Well, and that gets to >> That gets to the other part of my question. I had gone to a development just curious to see it, and when I asked if they had any less expensive housing, the answer was very quickly "No." But I found out later that in fact they did. They were on the list of -- it may have been Heather Wei but someone here early on discussing the affordable housing availability with us said they had begun to compile a list and I noticed that the apartment that -- complex that I visited was listed as a development that had affordable housing units and was somehow tied to the city because this was their inventory at the city program. But they said clearly to me "No, we don't have any less expensive units." So -- >> Actually -- [overlapping speakers] >> I don't know how that's being enforced. >> Bridget, I asked that same question and some of them, because I knew they did, they said they're never empty and they get really pump upset when they say from -- you know, if they offer them, they only do so when it's empty. And generally they said when they have an empty one, it's filled immediately. So -- >> Another unit I went to they said we do have lower cost units that are subsidized but they are full so they at least made that information available but the other denied that they had any. >> But the real point of the issue is, is this, we all know that Austin has had a serious problem with fair and affordable housing for generations now. All right? We do know that deliberate city policy segregated the city. [5:00:42 PM] And it seems to me that we should be able to have a gis outlay by location of where our affordable housing is. Is it going to be more difficult? Yes, it is going to be more difficult. Is it going to take more analysts and are they going to have to dig for more data? Yes. But it's deliberate city policy that led us -- not policy that you implemented. I get that. I'm sure none of us were around in '28 to vote on that association but the fact of the matter remains that, you know, we've got policy that has segregated the city and we -- market is now displacing people and folks don't know where to go. I think that we have to at some point look at eeoc numbers for the number of recipients of these resources. This is something that the public should know. We should know how public dollars are being spent across this community. Because a lot of it has to do with -- when you talk about how do I find out, we shouldn't have to go get in our cars and drive to every site to see whether there's a free space. And then we start talking about how we advertise programs that are available. Roc. Next door, the village, soul city. These are all places that are not traditional places that have been used, but they're places that are trusted by community members to get information from. If we are not using them, we are not serving our public. So it's important that we do lay out where our opportunities are by location. It's important that we lay out who is actually gaining access to these facilities. And it's also important that we lay out where you [5:02:42 PM] can get this information and that we make it easy for people because a lot of these people are hourly employees. A lot of these folks you're going to have to make designated times in order for folks to get out and take advantage of these opportunities and I know it's difficult, but we got to a difficult place because of choices that were made by government leaders. So what's going to get us taken care of is the government leaders coming together and decide we do more and better as it relates to our housing. >> And I couldn't agree with that more, commissioner. I would ask, if we're working with the -- with Travis county through the city up project to make data available. This information is community-wide information, and in order to make this information available to everyone in the community we need data sources from he were. And as part -- that's part of the problem the city has. We have our silo of data and we have to -- as a community, to build information and put it out there, that's the kind of comprehensive data that we need. We need the city. We need the county. We need private developers. We need anybody and everybody who is involved with having this information available, and so the city needs everybody's help. So I guess I'm hearing you say that the county can help us, and so we're looking forward to that. [ Laughter ] And it's -- and as you all negotiation any of you that have worked with data, you know how difficult it can be because the data you can put out there is only as good as the data that's captured. And as the data that we shared. We really are luckily that Austin city up is helping us from the private sector to look at -- and we've got a tech community here also that can help us make sure that our data sources speak to each other. >> Just to speak to that directly, the county can and will help. [5:04:44 PM] >> Excellent. >> Great. >> We lay out in our corporations process exactly where we're developing, exactly what we're developing, and exactly who qualifies for that -- >> And who is in it? And who is in it? >> And we should have who is in it as well? See, that's the difficult part and that's what we really need to work on, okay, we're all relatively good at the front end, which is what the requirements are, what the openings are, all that. It's on the back end, who is actually in those units? Are those units actually available? That's the difficult part because we're not collecting the data and we're not putting it in one place, and it's not in one place easy for people to see. So that's a project that would be important for us all to work on together, I think. >> Yeah, that's really -- >> And maybe city up can help us bring people to the table. >> That brings once again to my mind the fact that we need industry partners to to do this and engage them in a way that they will be helpful to us in telling us who is in these units. >> Right. >> Because the speed at which our people are moving in and out is great. The speed at which people are being displaced is great, and it's more than we can do. If we wait -- data lag is a big issue for the anti- displacement task force, for everybody. So what I want to be clear about, and I want to offer a comment about the Amanda system, in our neighborhood work, that's the -- the Austin city association neighborhood work and restore rundberg on code compliance. They use the Amanda system. It's extremely cumbersome. I want to put that out there. In you're trying to mine data from that it requires way too many people hours to get it. I just want to naught out there. I don't know what y'all can do that. I appreciate staff, when I have come into contact with nhcd staff in work I've done with Austin interfaith and other community things I've always found them very cooperative and helpful and I really appreciate that but I feel you're understaffed and we have a [5:06:44 PM] huge compliance and monitoring piece, which is -- that's the biggest piece of all government, monitoring what it's done. And when you short change the monitoring piece, you end up with fraud and people being displaced and that kind of thing. So I really feel for you, trying to guaranteeing -- just the federal requirements, reporting requirements are onerous. I know for the school district we have a whole department that is devoted to federal requirements so we can make sure that we can prove to the feds that we're using their money appropriately. Okay. The good news is that we do have some stuff that can help people. The Basta tenants organization -- tenant association organizing efforts that are going on that the city is paying for, thank you, thank you, thank you. That's really working. When you get people on the ground who are directly affected by all of this, engaged in advocating for themselves, it's much more powerful. But we still need to help them. That's an education expertise that kind of thing so very good. Educating tenants, I'm going to say it again, we need to help our tenants. I know the Austin tenants association is working short staffed to do all of this too but the more we help tenants understand their rights and they stand up to landlords, et cetera, I think the better. So that's another area. I'm not a big data freak like some of my co-- colleagues. I understand it and I appreciate it, but I'm looking at the humanity that's being impacted by all of this. We can talk data all day long but until we build relationships with industry people and help them understand what they're creating when they just talk about money, that's important. By the way, I agree the city has created policies that has continued to -- that -- created the original segregation, et cetera, but that was with the compliance of industry, with the compliance of private people. And it continues to this [5:08:45 PM] day with the compliance of private people. It's not just government. It's also the compliance of the people who benefit from these policies. And so until we get to them, we're not going to get a major change. So I'm going to say again, I'm going offer -- if we're through with this I offer two items for our agenda but I want to make sure we're done because we're past 5:00. >> I have a question. >> Let's wrap up, real quick questions and we've got one more speaker here. >> Where is the data that defines the income subsidies and how much each unit is subsidized? Is there any data where we can find that at? So for instance I have 140 units at M station. In dollar amount, how many of those units are for certain incomes and where do I find that at? >> Lauren is going to speak to that. >> For the record, Lauren, neighborhood housing. The open data portal has several fields for each of the developments that show which units are available at what median family income levels. Like a percentage of median family income. So at or below 50% or whatever. You can find what that means in real dollar terms on our website. They're called income limits, and so if you just search neighborhood housing income limits that should come up. We use the home income limits. And then was there another part of that question? Sorry. >> It's okay. Let's go ahead -- any other quick questions on this? Otherwise it's after 5:00. I think we have a couple people that need to take off here and we've got one more speaker real quick. Anything else on that? Okay. All right? We good? Back to agenda item number 5, I think it is. Is that right? Mr. Fukes. [5:10:47 PM] >> Thank you. Mr. Chairman, my name is Fred fukes, attorney and group coordinator for the house group with Texas Rio grande legal aid and adjunct professor at the university of Texas school of law where I teach a housing class each spring. Much of our work is focused on eviction defense work and many of those clients are in tax credit housing, they are in housing where the city has provided funding, federally subsidized housing, public housing, private housing, resolution trust corporation housing. I might reiterate a couple of things that have already been emphasized by some of you. One, the -- involving the department association getting the opinions of the realtors and the Austin apartment association I think is great. They pride themselves on representing the best of the association and their membership. If ask you for their involvement and their input, that is a great idea. Second, the city of Austin should be complimented for making this first step on the relocation ordinance, which, as councilmember kitchen recognized, it's a first step but it is a step, and I'm going to make some suggestions in a minute for improvement on that. With respect to the idea of pulling together all of the information on all of the subsidized and affordable projects in one place, that would be wonderful. I don't think it would take that long, actually. Tdhca maintains its own listing that you can go on its website. The city of Austin maintains its own listing of its projects where it's provided subsidies. H.U.D. Provides, through its database, its listing of complexes that have federal section 8 subsidies. Where you'll find some difficulty then is for those of you who remember [5:12:47 PM] the savings and loan crisis in 1987, the resolution trust corporation properties. There are a number of those in Austin. When they were sold out by the resolution trust corporation were obligated to maintain those units as affordable units, and there's no listing of those. But those would need to be included in any listing. And of course then there are some myriad programs such as the home program where you've got to find all of those. But one central database would be great. The Austin tenants council has an affordable housing guide that it gives to tenants, which is helpful. But if this would be available on the city website that would be great. I was asked to just very briefly give my perspective on the relocation ordinance as it relates to the impact on evictions. Basically I would have four suggestions. You know, pie in the sky, but this was a first step, and these suggestions would not require any expenditure on the part of the city, which is always the concern. One, tax credit owners who decide that they're going to opt out after initial affordability period should be required to tell tenants that -- with 120' days notice minimum that they're going to opt out and that could mean an increase in rents. There are two complexes at present in the city of Austin that receive tax credits that are considering opting out. One is country club creek apartments in east Austin that gave notice in October of 2016. That it intended to opt out of the affordability requirements after October of 2017. I don't know the current status on that, but that one year has gone by. [5:14:48 PM] The second is fort branch at Truman's landing zip code 78721. It just gave notice several months ago that it's intending to opt out of the low-income housing tax credit program. If both of those complexes are not picked up and purchased by an owner who wants to keep it affordable, that will be a loss of affordable -- 400 affordable housing units in the city of Austin. At a minimum, the tax credit owners who opt out should be required to give tenants more notice that if they are successful in opting out they are going to -- tenants are going to see rent increases. Two, owners who stop -- who decide to stop accepting section 8 vouchers -- and this happens. City -- state preempted Austin's ordinance, which some of us hope may be turned around, but for know owners aren't required to accept section 8 housing vouchers and some owners have opted out of accepting housing vouchers. Those owners who decide -- and it generally happens when there's a sale of the property, new ownership comes in, new ownership says we're going to make this into an upscale apartment complex and we're no longer going to take vouchers. And then in that case, if they're not going to take vouchers, which is currently legal in the state of Texas, they should be required to give tenants more than a 30 day notice when the lease is ending or 60 day notice that they're no longer going to take vouchers at the end of the lease. Third, if there's a significant rent increase, it would be great if the ordinance required that if an owner is going to do a significant rent increase that they be required to notify tenants at least 120 days in advance that there's going to be a significant rent increase, which I would define anywhere 15% or above. [5:16:49 PM] I had a client over Christmas who came in. She was paying $1,070 a month. She had gotten notice that -- and she -- there was a mix-up on her notice and they had evicted her because they wanted $1,270 rent, a $200 a month rent increase. By the time she got to us she had already been evicted by the justice court. We were able to pick it up on appeal to county court law and work that out for her. If there's a significant rent increase if that were covered by the ordinance, that would be a significant step. And finally there is -- with respect to the -- the current city ordinance on source of income although it was preempted by the legislature with respect to section 8 vouchers, it did not preempt that part of the city ordinance that landlords from Travis county health and human services and the city of Austin where someone goes in and the health and human services says we'll help with you $1,500 or from integral care which says we will help and assist on the rent towards the extent of $1,500 or so. But there's a big misconception out there on the part of landlords they can still deny and accept vouchers because it means a delay in payment. That is one of the things I think there needs to be some education about, landlords and actually getting in their industry here and saying "You realize you're supposed to accept these vouchers" and having enforcement on that part would be significant. >> I just want to make sure I got that. So the section 8 vouchers are what was held invalid, [5:18:51 PM] not vouchers from any other source? >> Correct. That's correct. >> Okay. >> And then with respect to section 8 vouchers, the legislature did not preempt that -- volunteers with respect to veterans, and there's a big misunderstanding about that, and that is but if you are a veteran and you have either a vas voucher or regular voucher that was specifically not preempted by the legislature and that's where there needs to be community education in the apartment association needs to step forward. And a final addition to the ordinance, if you are seeking to go improve, would be -- and this was already alluded to and spoke about, and that would be when there's significant remodeling of an apartment complex such that tenants are going to have to relocate. And if that were could have had that would be great. And so it's already late. I just was asked to give perspective very quickly, and I've tried to do that, tried to answer any questions. But thank you so much. >> Great. Let's go quick, real quick questions. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. And need to pick that guy's brain. [ Laughter ] >> Thank you, Mr. Fukes. >> You are going to share your contact information with us, right? >> I'll be glad to send it to Katie and I can put any suggestions in and email them. >> You've been here several times before, right? >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> I appreciate it. You hit on a couple of things I mentioned at the very beginning. >> Yes, correct. >> So thank you. >> Yes, thank you. >> Great. Ms. Shea, do you have something? >> Just a quick question: This is really for the Austin city council folks. Is this a mechanism for reviewing the ordinance and updating it, separate from the nexus study? >> No. But we can always do that. We can always do that. [5:20:52 PM] Of course as part of our budget process, it will come up again because -- well, I know that the departments put forward the funding for the nexus study. I know if the department is putting forward funding for actually relocation assistance. So but that would be something that we would -- we could discuss as part of the budget process. So in that sense. It's also an item that we can bring back to the housing committee, for example, to take up again. And so. . . >> Okay. Any other comments? Agenda item 8, identify items to discuss for future meetings. I think we had Ms. Gonzalez was recommended to come back and give a presentation. >> Yeah if I can elaborate on that. I think we've had several really good convictions about the -- conversations about the eviction notices and processes. I was looking at notes I think in 2016 we actually had data that was presented to us by -- >> Travis county. >> -- The -- let's see. It was the -- >> I think it was HHS. >> Yeah, Travis county business analyst and we actually had data. >> Sherri Fleming. >> And we had the jps here, informal presentation. We've never had a comprehensive presentation and I certainly would like Austin tenants council to be part of that. Perhaps Juliana could offer her perspectives. I think it would be good to have. Of course we can invite Fred back to be part of that conversation as well. >> Okay. >> So I'm really new to this committee, and I think it's a great committee. A lot of the things we talked about are short-term solutions to a lot of the problems that we have with affordability. Have we spoken about any [5:22:54 PM] long-term solutions? Such as community land grants or buying property and [indiscernible] Through the city of Austin type of snuff have y'all gone over that? >> A continuing conversation that we've had related to that is somehow getting -- when we talk about having data in one place, getting the data together in one place of all the usable, not a little median, but the usable land that all the entities that could be used for affordable housing. >> I want to request, again, that we have put on the agenda an update about the anti-displacement task force work. By the way we've gotten lots of data, lots of information that I can share with you. There's a website that's gone live for the anti-displacement task force with all the data and stuff we've gotten from the city so you might want to take a look at that. >> Do you have a link to that? >> Then also invite city reps, good actors, whoever you want, just get some people here so that we can have a dialogue with them because until we engage them seriously, government can do all it being but these are private industry people who are controlling a lot of this. >> Okay. All right. If -- >> Were we going to take up item 5 or no? >> Let's see, discussion possible action eviction trends? We went back to Mr. -- >> I don't know what action we could take on that at this point. >> We were just -- >> It's a standing item that we have for y'all just in case there was discussion you wanted to have following presentations. >> I don't think we're ready yet. >> I don't think there was any action for it but it was kind of all related here. >> Okay. >> One last thing, the point that Ms. Woody raised [5:24:56 PM] it might be helpful to refresh our memory, can we find the latest, the strategic plan that we adopted? Is that online? Or can you email that to us? Maybe that's something we can put online as well? >> Yeah, it might be listed as backup in one but I'll double-check and make sure we have the most current copy and I'll email it to you guys. >> Great. All this time I thought we were doing great on time but that clock is an hour behind. >> I looked at that too. >> Anyway, if there's nothing else, then we'll go ahead and -- any other comments? Hearing none, we stand adjourned. Thank you, all. >> Thank you. [ Adjourned ]