Housing and Planning Committee (HPC) Meeting Transcript – 09/06/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 6 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 9/6/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/6/2022 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [3:02:03 PM] I'm going to call to order the meeting of the housing and planning committee at 3:02. And we have -- we'll begin by public communication. I know that we have four speakers. And. >> Reporter: We were checking on the names. That would be great. I don't see him here. Who else do we have? Okay. >> Edward, can you hear us? [3:03:19 PM] >> Can you hear me? >> Now I can, yes. >> Okay. Please proceed. >> Thank you. Hello. My name is Ed. I've been a resident of Austin since 1988. I'm calling to ask council to enact an immediate moratorium on issuing short-term rental licenses. I had planned to address here today to explain why accountability provisions need to be added to Austin's short-term rental to make it enforceable. Because of a court ruling in new Orleans just two weeks ago, we have this more urgent need and that is for council to immediately place a moratorium on issuing new str licenses. New Orleans passed an immediate moratorium last week and Austin needs to do the same without delay. Here's why. New Orleans had a short-term rental ordinance similar to Austin which classified properties as either owner occupied, which Austin calls str 1 or nonowner occupied, owned by [3:04:19 PM] an investor in the short-term rental business, which we call str 2. New Orleans ordinance allowed owner occupied properties to be licensed as short-term rentals just as Austin licensed -- it's limited exception. Out of state property owners sued New Orleans in federal court over being denied short-term rental licenses and two weeks ago the 5th circuit court of appeals ruled new Orleans ordinance unconstitutional, saying it violated the commerce clause by limiting str licenses to owner occupied homes it meant out of state property owners were treated differently. This federal appeals court ruling effectively strikes down part of the str ordinance as well. If the city can't have different rules for homeowners who live in their house and investors who live elsewhere. This means it's now open season on neighborhoods. New Orleans recognized that and one week after the ruling city [3:05:20 PM] council passed a six month moratorium on issuing str licenses effective immediately. This gives the city a plan to come up with the new regulatory process for strs. Better to let no one get a license while it's sorted out than to be overrun by applications that can't be rejected. Austin needs to do the same. Enact an immediate moratorium on str licenses while we figure out what changes we want in our ordinances. We can't let them establish facts on the ground that can't be undone within the ordinance. Remember, there's a decision from a Texas court limits how Austin can make retroactive rules about str ownership. There's no time to waste. We urgently need an immediate moratorium on str licenses while we sort this out. Thank you and I'll be happy to take any questions. >> Chair: Thank you, sir. We appreciate you speaking with us today. Let's see. Who is our next speaker? [3:06:22 PM] Debbie Rowe mer owe. Okay. Here she comes. >> Good afternoon. My name is Mitchell -- I'm here to represent trailer park here at 4811 south congress. We had a meeting here with city hall on September 1st. We brought to the table that we had got a notice for us to vacate our property. They gave us until November to move. They said you got five months rent-free just leave. The only reason they gave us the three months to move is because they have no license to -- they don't have a legal license to run the trailer park. They have very many city violations. The management at this time there. A lot of city code violations are taking place. We are requesting today, we had spoke -- with a Vanessa Fuentes [3:07:24 PM] as for the discovery I had, the documents that were -- law abiding citizens in our community. We've all lived there more than 15 to 20 to 35 years there. Receipts that we pay the owner, we refused to take the last payment due to he didn't have a license to collect. But he collected for a whole year that he was not licensed. We're asking they help us pay for our moving costs or -- or moving the trailer, getting assessed. All that applies. The light and the gas connections. We're asking -- we came and we spoke with Mr. Antler, the mayor and the community here. They said that we'd try to see -- we're here to request they help us buy the community, the trailer park. If y'all could do that, we would be obliged. Like I said, we all pay rent on time, we're current rent payers. We pay two months ahead of time. Also, if that cannot be done, at least help us get more time with [3:08:25 PM] the owner. Like I said, the owner -- the management refuses to give us the owner. Right now we're like a pawn right now. We're in the middle of these people here. They're calling them the dirty deals that Austin investment reels -- foreclosures going beyond the law. These are the people that we're dealing with. You know, we're regular people. Red collar shirts. We go to work, come home, rest. These are the people we're going against. The properties, combined 138 million in foreclosure. Here are the documents. It's on the news everywhere. We need help. Our property, there's another gentleman that's here, I'm pretty sure you've seen him on the news. He said he's buying the property. Maybe we could meet with him. This is a breakthrough for us. We just hit ground right now. But we still need more time to assess the situation. But Mr. Mayor, the -- could probably see if we could try to buy the property, the city could buy the property. We're all for it. We're 100% behind you. [3:09:26 PM] But our name -- it is on the lease. On this list here. It's with nine other properties that are on here. Our name is here on it. So it's here listed. I don't know, I can give you the discovery too. I sent everything to Ms. Fuentes. She asked me to give it to the day I met her September 1st. I gave her all the discovery I've had. The letters, the receipts everything was sent in. >> Chair: All right. Thank you very much. >> I know that I'm concerned. I know that councilmember vela is concerned as is councilmember harper-madison. I can tell you that I will work with councilmember Fuentes as well as the mayor and anyone else who is working on this. Councilmember vela, did you want to say something? >> Vela: Do we know what they want to do with the property? >> They're not even disclosing that. When we came to Mr. Mayor, it was in 2019. Y'all rooted -- y'all adopted us and you made it for trailer park [3:10:27 PM] purposes only at that time. So that's all it's going to be, trailer park purposes rolled out for just that. We tried to get a historical monument for trailer park use because it was there since 1835. It originally stated in 1944. It was a historical monument for congress. I called to get the plaque. Just because the plaque is not there does not mean it's not in the momentum. We're waiting for the plaque. Even if the new owner came in and bought the port, it would exchange hands to another trailer park. Like I said, I got ten current payers that are paying a month. We got six properties, we're trying to get them to move out, but the manager neglected to evict these six people that are tormenting the neighborhood with drug infestation, doing the home raids. Targetsing people. We want these people out. We used to be able to leave our doors unlocked. Now we have people boarding their windows and locking their windows. It's not a way to live when we [3:11:27 PM] pay our rent and we go to work and fight as a community. We have children there. We have women -- I have a recipient with a liver transplant. Her liver defaulted like three weeks ago. We took her back to the liver institution due it all the stress. Because they're threatening to turn the light and gas and water off in November. These machines are causing her to live right now. This is something very serious. I mean, this is somebody's life we're playing with. >> Completely understand. Appreciate it. >> Chair: Thank you for coming it. I know we'll be following up with you guys. Let's see. One more speaker, right? Let's go ahead. I want to acknowledge that councilmember tovo has joined us. >> I'm Debra -- I'm a long time [3:12:28 PM] austinite. I moved here when I was 7 with my family. I'm now 35 years in the neighborhood in district 4. And I'm in my starter home. It's become our retirement home. We're in a small neighborhood of just a few hundred homes. And I've seen a lot of change, of course. Thawng for this chance to speak. The change that I've seen that it distressing, that brings me here today is short-term rentals. In the past year, we've had nine spring up. Councilmember vela has helped us, he connected us with code. Code has helped. But for the two out of the nine that are now no longer short-term rernls that are going back now to either being sold or for rent, which is all these houses were, either long-term renters that we know or homeowners that we knew in our little community. There have been three more spring up. As you know, this is a very [3:13:31 PM] unregulated situation in the city of Austin. We have a lot to learn from other cities, such as San Francisco and Denver and Washington, D.C. I know that there's a ruling that your legal department has to look into now that's come out of New Orleans. I implore you, though, to do what you can as soon as you can. Because this is like cedar pollen coming in at wintertime. It's giving us a headache and it is just blowing up. So that's the main reason I'm here. Again, just to ask you to look into this, to look into platform accountability, when and if that is possible. What code is doing to the 12 to 14,000 houses that are unregulated, full term rentals. All year round in the city is not enough. There's six officers, even if there were 12, how could they keep up with that many unregulated rentals that are popping up. [3:14:32 PM] This he know that -- those investors know they can do this freely. And they can take over our community like they've taken over our little neighborhood. We don't know these people. It's a hotel situation where they're coming in and out. We can't keep our community safe. We can't call enough for the parties, the trash, the noise, et cetera. It's ruining our neighborhoods. And I know that it's of interest to you. I know particularly to our councilmember, we've talked with him about it and it's been very helpful talking to him about it. I implore you to do what you can as soon as you can and the best way you can. Thank you. >> Chair: Thank you very much. >> Quick question. >> Chair: Go ahead. >> Just to follow-up a bit, we met a few months ago. >> The last time we met was at the meet and greet at the ymca. >> That's right. And the -- is it still your understanding that most of the short-term rentals in your neighborhood are related to kind of the stadium up there or has [3:15:32 PM] it kind of moved beyond that? >> Oh, I'm sure that they've popped up in the past year. We didn't have a problem with it before that. I'm sure it's because of the stadium. We love the stadium. We love the domain and all that it's bringing us. The hotels around our neighborhoods, I don't know how full they are. But our neighborhoods becoming full of the transient population that hotels attract. And we no longer have a neighborhood like we've had for 40 years. >> Thank you. I will follow-up. I'm very interested to see what code has to say and also get more familiar with the federal court ruling that's undoubtedly going to affect us too. Thank you. Don't hesitate to reach out. >> Thank you. >> Chair: Thank you. We're going to move on now to approval of the minutes. So I have a motion from councilmember vela to approve [3:16:32 PM] the minutes. Second from councilmember harper-madison. All in favor? Passes unanimously. Okay. Now we'll go on to our briefings. Our first one is a briefing and discussion on short-term rentals. >>> Good afternoon councilmembers. Code director for the department. Thank you for this conversation about short-term rentals. We have a presentation that we've prepared for you. So in this presentation, we're going to talk a little bit about what do we currently have in the short-term rental regulations. We'll talk a little bit about some of the data that we have [3:17:33 PM] for complaints, some of the data we have for licensing and some of the challenges that we are experiencing in forcing the regulations for short-term rernls. Next slide. Right now, it's very basic. Just the highlights of the short-term rentals. We defined that as a dwelling unit that is rented for less than 30 days. In the current ordinance we have, we have three types of strs in Austin. In all of them, it's important to understand that they need to get a license before they advertise or even operate on str. Next slide. So we have -- we have three types of strs. The first one is type 1. Single family house. This one is permanent in all the residential areas and it must be owner occupied. That's a requirement. It has to be associated with a owner occupied property. For example, a secondary apartment in the same lot would [3:18:35 PM] actually qualify to be a type 1 str. In these type 1, we don't have any density caps, we don't have any limitations because we are dealing with the idea that the property owner will be mostly present when they're actually renting the unit. The second type that we have is a type 2. This is what we call the nonowner occupied. This one is actually currently permitted to be in some commercial, commercial areas. Not at all in the residence, any new ones. We still renew licenses that are being double issued before. It was in effect in 2015. As long as they renew on time, we renew those type 2. We call grandfather. Strs in residentials. In these type 2 strs, one of the items that was there in the past [3:19:38 PM] but because of lawsuits that happened, we cannot enforce the occupancy limitations anymore in these types. This one has a density cap. So in the type 2s, we have a 3% maximum of single family per census tract and we also have a regulation for distance. It has to be 1,000 feet from another type 2 str. We continue to issue new strs, type 2s only on the commercial areas. Which is allowed by the ordinance. Next slide. So the type 3 multifamily and this one has come up to the attention recently. This one applies to all the strs in multifamily developments. These are permitted in all the residential districts. But we have a cap on the residential. The noncommercial zoning, we have 3% of the units and on the commercial zoning, 25% of the units. [3:20:38 PM] In other words, if you have an apartment complex, say for example, 200 units in a commercial zone, they can convert 50 of those into strs. That is allowed. We have heard some of that going on lately even units that are -- that were rented before, long-term and now they've been leased on a short-term basis. So that's the limitation on those type 3 strs. Let me talk a little bit about the complaint situation here. Next slide, please. So we handled the complaints and strs the same way we handle any complaints we get from the community. We actually do that through 311. We create the service request. We create the case. And within 24 hours, we are responding to these complaints. Even sometimes within hours of the complaint because we have a specific team for the strs. They are assigned to inspector, one is -- complaints closed. [3:21:40 PM] The case is worth [indiscernible]. I want to show you in the next slide, slide 7, these are the data -- we actually went back to January 2019 to look at the timing and the day of the week that we actually got the most complaints. As you can see right there, 85% of the complaints received within staff hours. That means from 7:00 to 11:00 P.M. We haven't seen much activities on Sundays. We did a pilot program on Sundays. But we didn't get many results on that. We do utilize a special staff sometimes. When we have special events on Sundays. At this time we were until 11:00, especially Fridays and Saturdays. That is the number of complaints that we actually get throughout the week and the timing. Slide 8. [3:22:40 PM] In this one I wanted to show you a map of the complaint, how it takes place. Once we get the case, of course, we have to do the process. We have to investigate, we have to identify the violation. If it is observed, we actually issue an nov. We conduct a follow-up. We have citations. If we get a violation that hasn't been resolved. We take it to hearing case, up to three times. If it continues, we actually move it up to municipal court and later -- further than that, we work with the legal department to prepare the case for district court. So one of the things that we also do in the program is being aware of the people that have a history of violations. In this case, we have the properties we actually do a preemptive allocation on those. We try to reach out, we try to get there and actually intent to [3:23:42 PM] make contact with the tenants to make them aware of the regulations that we have in Austin, especially with complaints about noise and party houses And so on. This is what we do on a daily basis. One thing that I will mention, looking on some of the data is that only about 13% of the complaints that we get are unlicensed properties. So most of the complaints that we have is nonlicensed strs. That's an interesting fact. Next slide. So, yes, we have a situation here. This market has exploded as we have seen. I don't think this is unique to a city of Austin. I've seen the same issue in many, many other cities. We've been in contact with San Francisco, Denver looking at their regulations to see how we can enhance ours and make recommendations. But right now, we have about -- around 2,000 licenses 19 -- it change day-to- day. Prior to the pandemic, we were [3:24:44 PM] close to over 3,000. So somehow these stats come down. People are not coming back to renew the license or issue new licenses. That's what we have right now. When we look at some of the data that is available in terms of identifying the rental market from the major platforms, anywhere between 9,000 to 11,000 in the city of Austin at any given time. It actually goes up when we have special events. This morning I checked. It was 9,700 that is advertised in the city of Austin. We have a challenge there to deal with. One thing that I will mention is that only the -- have the true data. That will be something they have to provide and we don't have that cooperation. Next slide, please. Based on we actually broke it down by district. You can see the data there. [3:25:44 PM] So about 2/3 of the licenses are type 1 strs, which is the owner occupied. Of those we've had about 205 that are secondary apartments. Adus or garage apartments, et cetera. 6% of the license are type 2 strs. With a vast majority of those being grandfathered because they were already issued in the residential zoning. 27% are type 3 strs and as you can see, districts 9, 3 and 5 and 1 contain 75% of the licensed strs in Austin. It's very telling, the activity and what type of strs are actually issued for this district. So some of the challenges that we have. Enforcement, next slide, please. So we -- in order for us to [3:26:46 PM] actually prove that someone is operating without a license, it's important that on a -- contact with the tenants. They have to really admit that they actually have the str for a short-term period. We have to get that confession from the tenant. As you oftentimes, it's hard to make contact with them. They're moving through Austin, they don't want to answer the door. They may feel unsafe. They're either not home. We have seen cases where the landlord even give them a script to say that they're actually there for a longer period of time so we can justify a citation or a violation. Advertising is a challenge as well. When we look at the ordinance, this is the only area that we can actually use prime a fish I evidence to issue an nov. The challenge is connecting it the act to the property. [3:27:47 PM] They've become very savvy. When we look at the platform, when we look at the advertisement, we cannot identify the location, the general area. They have going away from 14 photos from the front of the house. Anything that identifies an address. So we have to become like kind of a detective trying to connect the house, looking at photos, Google Earth, trying to find that location so we can connect that advertisement to the house. Once we do that, we can identify a violation. The moment they take it down and change the link, then we lost that. Noise. Noise complaints. I know it's another issue we have. And we have heard the issue about late night complaints. I want to point out that our inspectors are not peace officers. Most of the issues we see late at night are considered to be conduct and they are challenging for the code inspectors. We have no authority or the ability to actually address that [3:28:48 PM] individual that is actually creating the noise because we are deciding on way to take all that actions against the property owner. So that's a challenge that we have. Actually call the inspector and say very dangerous situation, late at night. Dark. These people are maybe coming out from a club and being alcohol and so on. We have to be careful with that. And the next challenge that we have, as you can see, have heard from some of the stakeholders, is the platforms. At this point, all the actions that are taking are against the property owner, not the hosting platforms. We don't have any cooperation from them. They basically hold the data. When you look at the advertisement, you cannot find the address or the location. That's some of the things that we're dealing W we are looking at -- we were looking at San Francisco, Denver, seeing how they actually did it on their [3:29:49 PM] ordinance, to see how that could work out for us. That will be something that we have to discuss with all department and see what is appropriate for the city of Austin. So that's about it. If you have any questions I'm here to answer any questions. We also have others here. I have some staff online that can actually answer questions if you have any. >> Chair: Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Let's see. We'll start with councilmember vela >> Vela: I saw there's a type 1 a and secondary. How are those different from a regular type 1? >> Lisa, you can -- is Lisa here? My supervisor. >> Yes, sir. >> Type 1a is a room within the home where the property owner lives. A type 1 secondary is a separate secondary dwelling that's [3:30:50 PM] associated with the owner occupied property. >> Vela: But those are all regulated the same as type 1's. >> They're all considered type 1's because there's an occupancy requirement for each of those. >> It's a distinction we made in the department to separate the whole house as a type 1, a room that's in the house or a secondary apartment in the property. >> Vela: Type 1 would be -- you're kind of a standard type 1 would be a homeowner renting out the entire home that they occupy? >> That is correct. They can rent the entire home. They can rent a bedroom within the house as long as it has access to a bathroom and they can rent the secondary apartment in the property. So these are owner -- related to owner occupied properties. >> Vela: Type 1 secondary would be an Adu on the property or a garage apartment with its own entrance and exit? >> That is correct. >> Vela: And then where are the str complaints coming from? [3:31:51 PM] I saw the number of licenses by district. But you know, is there kind of a spot or spots where the majority of complaints are coming from? >> Pretty much -- we can see -- we can correlate that to the licensing. You can see the higher number in district 9, district 3. Downtown, it's Austin. Those are the areas we get most of the complaints. >> Vela: And then you had -- so there were 3,000 licenses but we're down to about 2,000 active str licenses in Austin? >> Yes. Before the pandemic, we were 3,000- plus. When the pandemic hit, the market took a big hit. We actually lost revenue in the licensing side. We did a moratorium. Not a moratorium, but actually a kind of holding the licenses for longer because people were not renewing the licenses. So we lost that revenue there. [3:32:52 PM] Now it's actually picking up again. But we're not getting that revenue back or the licensing back for renewals and license that is used to be there. >> Vela: Thank you. >> Chair: Okay. Other questions? Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Thanks. I have several questions. But I'll pick up on that last one. I need to dig into this a little bit more. But we didn't have an opportunity during the budget to talk about the costs of the program. As I understand the answer that I got back to budget question 126, it doesn't look as if the -- any revenue we take in even comes close to covering the costs of operating the program. So I know you mentioned that you lost revenue when the applications weren't coming up. You know, it seems to me the clean community fee is largely covering the costs of operating the short-term rental. >> Yes. Thank you for that question. >> Tovo: It doesn't -- any fees [3:33:54 PM] that we take in from short-term rental owners are just a drop in the bucket. Is that an accurate assessment? >> Yes. Let me give you highlight on that. I'll let Trish give you more information. The way the program is designed, the licensing of the short-term rentals cover the cost of the administration. I'll let Trish talk a little bit about that. >> Trish link, the law department. Councilmember, the operation of the program is two components. One is the actual licensing part of the program. And they have licensees. Fees that are attached with processing those license applications. And then we have the enforcement side of operating a regulatory program and we handle that through the clean community fee because code -- their responsibility falls -- their [3:34:55 PM] responsibilities fall under the clean community fee. So that's what we use those funds for. >> Tovo: Thanks. Some of that I'd like to -- I'd like to ask -- to have an executive session about short-term rentals with the full council and that's a piece I'd like to address again. I didn't have an opportunity to really dig into the answer that you gave me back, which I appreciated the answer that you gave me back to budget question 126. I think that council needs to look really carefully. We haven't done a cost of service in a long time and that their -- I'm not really sure they're covering the licensing portion with the fees that are assessed. Certainly, it generates a lot of enforcement action that are not being covered by the costs of the fees. So -- >> Councilmember tovo -- >> Councilmember tovo, I just want to let you know, there's a request already in. We'll add yours to it for an executive session. >> Tovo: Super. I have other questions along [3:35:55 PM] those lines. I'll talk directly to the law department. Thanks for making that request >> Chair: Okay. >> Tovo: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the enforcement piece of it and the numbers that you gave. You know, some -- director Wright, that was helpful to see what the hours of complaints that complaints are coming in. A lot of that time period that you covered fell during the pandemic where we know bars and other evening establishments were closed. So you know as I looked and I've ask a few times for the hours and was really surprised to see that -- I was looking for the exact numbers. I think I asked for this in the budget process as well. It looked to me like a lot of your short-term rental inspectors are working, you know, regular hours during the workweek, Monday through Friday rather than on the weekends where we know there's a lot of short-term rental business. [3:36:55 PM] I appreciate the steps that you provided, that's pretty interesting. But, again, a good portion of that fell during the pandemic. I would ask if you could follow-up with us and look at periods outside the pandemic and see if that still holds true. I would think that most of our -- I'm surprised by that 85% figure. I appreciate you providing the data to show that. I do wonder whether that changes, though, when we have a situation where bars are open and people are going to them. >> Yes. We can do that. The data covers all the way to September of 2022. It covers a little bit more than the pandemic. Our inspectors are working. They do Monday through Saturday. We actually are working late Friday -- actually Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. We work until 11:00 P.M. [3:37:57 PM] We actually do that on specialty -- that is actually busy. We're going to be able to contact somebody there. That's the hours we're usually working on right now. >> Tovo: Do you happen to recall where you provided me with that information? I had actually asked for the detailed analysis of kind of how many of your inspectors work Monday through Friday. I think it was the bulk of them. That most of our inspectors are not working evening hours. >> Remember that str is one program in the department. We have inspectors that work Monday through Friday. >> Tovo: Do you happen to recall where that information -- where you provided the council with that information. >> It was one of the questions you provided in the cdq. I know it was responded to. The inspectors that work the late hours. We have a rotating schedule. We don't have all six at the same time. But we have a staff on those [3:38:57 PM] hours. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. >> Tovo: I'll let my colleagues know, we've gotten multiple constituent concerns about that. Because a lot of the noise challenges and the other challenges with short-term rentals that are more party houses are happening on weekend hours after bars closes when we don't have any inspectors working. Because they stop at 11:00 on those weekend nights. It is certainly an issue as you see just by the numbers. It's certainly an issue for district 9 and for district 3 where you have central Austin. Let me just highlight one of the things that I'm also seeing increasingly in our -- in district 9 are the multifamily, the multifamily units that are being converted to short-term rentals and in some cases being built instead of being built for short-term rentals. The 25% seemed like a pretty [3:40:00 PM] good balance early on. But I think we all see that there's a need for more housing units. And probably less need for hotel units if you had to put them in balance and so I hope as a council, we can revisit that number. Director -- >> Chair: Councilmember tovo? >> Tovo: Yeah. >> Chair: You might want to see if others have questions. >> Tovo: Sure. >> Chair: Go ahead and ask your next question. It's just that we have another presentation. Go ahead and ask your questions. >> Tovo: Thank you. I'll make this my last one. I thought our ordinance required that advertising on the platform include a license number. Is that accurate and if so, how could we have so many thousands of short-term rentals advertising without being registered? >> There is a statement on the ordinance that actually requires the license to be listed. But because we don't have that cooperation from the platforms, they actually advertise anybody [3:41:00 PM] that wants to be advertised and that's when we go up to the advertisement, looking at the advertisement trying to connect that advertisement to the house, which is a challenge. Once we can do that, we can actually enforce the ordinance. The challenge now is actually connecting that advertisement to the str. >> Tovo: Thank you. I thought we were working with a third party to do that work for us and had software. That's maybe a question for later outside of this venue. Thank you. >> Chair: Thank you for asking that question, councilmember tovo. I have some legal-related questions that I'll wait for executive session related to that and others. Councilmember harper-madison, you had a question? >> Harper-madison: Thank you. I appreciate it. I do. I'm going to go back to my notes. This was a very specific question that we received. A property in tod decided not to renew leases with a significant number of tenants in order to convert 25% of their units into type 3 strs. [3:42:01 PM] Since the tod is a special district and not a commercial district, can this be permitted? >> Chair: That might be a legal question for Trish link. She's coming up now. >> Trish link with the law department. The city code says that if it's a noncommercial zoning district, then the limitation is 3%. And t.o.d.'s, you're correct are special purpose-based districts. >> Chair: They would not be a commercial district? >> Correct. >> Chair: They would be subject to the 3%, not the 25%. >> Correct. >> Chair: Does that answer your question, councilmember harper-madison? >> Harper-madison: It does, thank you. >> Chair: Thank you. >> Harper-madison: To be sure, you said we're having an executive session. >> Chair: I don't know when -- yeah. We should have that soon. We don't have a date right now. [3:43:02 PM] But we'll get that out to everyone. We have about two or three more minutes for this item. Go ahead, councilmember. >> Hi everyone. Thank you for letting me join the housing committee today, the committee meeting. Short-term rentals has certainly been on my mind and looking at this policy wanting to better understand what we can do not only from an enforcement side of things but also to get to your question, councilmember harper-madison what we can do to ensure that our housing is not getting bought up and converted into strs, especially since we know that we are in a housing crisis right and we need to keep the housing available to the community who needs it. I just want to make a comment that I know council at one point considered looking at how we work with different str operators in licensing and essentially looking at how can we ensure that we're collecting our hotel tax dollars here [3:44:02 PM] locally. We know that -- even though you mentioned that the licensing numbers of str's operating in the city has gone down. We know there's a significant gap between the city and the state. Every single day, the city is losing out on thousands of dollars that could go to support cultural arts, our music community and historic preservation projects. I think it's incumbent that our council revisits our str conversation to have a conversation on how we can work with the operators and work with our community to ensure that we have a system in place that everyone mutually benefits from. Just wanted to flag that. >> Definitely. >> Chair: Thank you. Last comment. Go ahead. >> Actually, I was -- I know that Ms. Frank was here. I didn't know what the status statewide is. >> Chair: Let's ask. >> We're also -- is this going to be a topic coming up for this next session? I'm really curious about that. [3:45:04 PM] >> Good afternoon everyone. -- With intergovernmental relations. If you could pull through my powerpoint. The answer is yes. I think we're going to have another str fight on our hands at the legislature this session. Next slide please. Our first str fight at the legislature started in -- baiting for the next slide. That's okay. It's okay. There you go. 2017 was the first bill that was filed that would have preempted cities from regulating strs at all. That bill was filed by chairman Kelly Hancock, chair of the senate business and commerce committee at the time. It's extremely powerful committee in the senate. He was able to get it out of the senate and then it was held up in the house. The house bill was filed by representative parker, head of the Republican caucus at the time. So far we have been able to stop the legislation at the state level of preemption. But it does -- it is not without a lot of effort and it is not [3:46:06 PM] just my office and our lobby team. But all the homeowners, like those that you heard today coming forward and telling their stories to these members about the interference with that ir own use of their private property, how they're scared to have children play in their yards with parties going on and lewd behavior happening next door. How disruptive it is in their just use of their homes and in these neighborhoods that were designed to have homes, schools and churches. That's the extent of business activity that is allowed in these neighborhoods with zoning. So we were able to stop that bill in 2017. Next slide, please. They came back in 2019 with the chair of urbana fairs filing a bill. That's -- we weren't able to stop the bill there in house urbana fairs. As I said, a significant amount of effort. This time, though, we had other allies. It's Arlington, grapevine, [3:47:08 PM] corpus, galveston, Amarillo. Areas in San Antonio. Ft. Worth. Anywhere there's any kind of party activity. It's hard because it's the worst offenders is the party homes. It's being used for late-night parties until 2:00 A.M. We've all had a neighbor that's had a party. Hopefully it's one time a year for a graduation a quinceanera, a party. It's happening every weekend in these homes and in these cities. It's not just in Austin. So that effort has helped -- next slide please. Last session, wasn't last session. 2019. We started to see the change shift. Center poul Powell, Democrat out of Dallas area. She filed a bill to assist cities with. That didn't go anywhere. She's been redistricted out of her district now. Next slide, please. Last session was the covid [3:48:08 PM] session. So -- interestingly enough, we saw a bill filed by representative Shaheen, a member of the Texas freedom caucus, that actually was trying to provide some looking like it would allow for some enforcement on the platform. Didn't provide as much enforcement as we'd like to see from the platform. But we at least saw a bill filed in that direction. Representative Buckley refiled some of the button bills from two sessions ago and quickly realized her mistake and had no intent of moving those. She wasn't moving forward with those bills at all. For this coming session, I've already heard they are organizing their lobbying efforts, they're raidsing money, they plan to come back and so we do plan to have them on the table. Their goal has been always to preempt cities from being able to enforce any kind of code violation outside of basic health and safety is what they call it. That's basically building standards. It's very minimal. [3:49:09 PM] They want them to be allowed anywhere in the city that cities can't limit where they are. And that's what they're looking to do is have the state be the licensing agent for those services. And I'm happy to answer any questions. >> Chair: Okay. We are a little tight on time. Any question or two for -- >> Vela: Any -- any prospect for any comprehensive statewide regulation or something like that. A comprehensive statewide statute that -- >> I think what's difficult on this issue, enforcement is always hard, no matter what. As you can see us talking about that local leap. If we could get the state to help with enforcement with platform accountability, that would be very helpful. Because the platforms are only enforcing to the extent that they think it's enforcement. [3:50:10 PM] They haven't reached out to us, for instance, to ask what we would like to see in enforcement. I think that would be helpful. I think preserving the right of zoning to say where these belong in the cities and each city will have a different place where they are best suited and not suited in their cities is an essential right that cities should fight to maintain. Zoning being one of the most essential rights of local entities. And then beyond that, I think, like I said, the state maybe with platform enforcement. But as we've seen with state regulation, the state of Texas regulation is always going to be pretty light and you're going to lose the ability for homeowners who are they going to talk to when things go wrong? Who are they going to go to when things go wrong? They're going to lose that if the state takes over. >> Chair: Thank you very much. Much more conversation we need to have about this. Appreciate that, bree. [3:51:11 PM] Councilmember harper-madison, we're running out of time to get to tenant relocation. >> Harper- madison: Given that I recognize we're having the executive session. In the interim, I would like to know if a homeowner contacts our office because of the issue I posed before, how do we go about reporting that? How do we counsel offices who receive that kind of report? What's the best way for us to address the issue? That's because of our limited time here. I'm happy to receive that response in an email to -- >> Chair: Let's do that. Have a response in an email. >> Harper-madison: Thank you. >> Chair: Thank you all. Appreciate it. As we all have said, this is an area that definitely we need to take some action. All right. Let's go on to our next briefing. Briefing and discussion on tenant relocation. [3:52:16 PM] >> Good evening everybody. This is nefry Teed I Jackson with the housing and planning department. Just here to provide an update for you on the tenant relocation program. Service the community displacement prevention officer for the city of Austin within the housing and planning department. I'm here also with Susan Watkins who is our community development manager. She'll also serve as the program lead for this program. So we'll both be presenting today. One of the things I think I wanted to highlight is that we were previously scheduled to launch this program in 2019. A solicitation did go out. $500,000 of housing trust fund dollars had been allocated for a tenant relocation program. [3:53:20 PM] However, that was postponed as a result of the covid-19 pandemic and those funds were used to launch our initial rent program and so that's where this has been. We're moving forward with the program and we'll provide you today with updates. Next slide, please. We'll provide, Susan and I will provide a review of the ordinance and then also show you where we are in the program development, the various components of the program. Implementation and next steps. Next slide, please. Okay. So the ordinance was originally adopted in 2016. And with that, it was designed to make sure that we were [3:54:23 PM] addressing the increase or the concern around the redevelopment of multifamily properties, as well as mobile home parks. That was resulting in tenant displacement. It was having a very destabilizing effect on some of the most vulnerable members in our city, including elderly, low income and disabled households. So the ordinance was designed to provide clear city policy and equitably applied expectations for developers with a goal of really mitigating the negative impacts of displacement on our residents by providing adequate notification and financial relocation assistance for tenants. So the benefit was for tenants. The notification requirements of our -- are triggered under certain circumstances when a property owner wants to make changes to a multifamily or [3:55:26 PM] mobile home property from mobile home parks that would be when there are five or more occupied households. Next slide, please. And then, as you see here, there were additional updates that were made to the ordinance just to provide additional clarity and the additional stakeholder feedback was gathered in 2018. And from here, the next slide I will pass it on to Susan who will talk about the various components of the tenant relocation program. And I'll show -- she'll take us on through the next steps. Susan? >> Thank you. Good afternoon, councilmembers. I'm Susan Watkins, community development manager. And the housing and planning department. The tenant relocation program really consists of four main [3:56:28 PM] parts with varying roles and responsibilities. We'll review those in the next few slides. The next slide, please. This graphic illustrates the process that's been in place for the past several years and notification of tenants. We're collaborating with our partners in the development services department to review this process and ensure that it's the most efficient and responsive way to move forward with the program and we're working right now to incorporate the 2022 clarification of language around renovation. Next slide, please. The ordinance in 2016 established both the developer and a city relocation fund. While the state laws prohibit linkage fees and the city can't require developers to fund the developer fund, we are in fiscal [3:57:30 PM] year '23 budget, there are funds to inform that calculation of what a developer fee would be. And so as was mentioned, for the city fund, the housing department did intend to use $500,000 for that purpose in fiscal year '20. But that funding ended up being used for emergency rental assistance related to covid- 19 instead. Next so the eligibility for the relocation program is outlined in the ordinance and is specific to displacement caused by demolition and renovation and also includes income eligibility requirements for those in the multi-family units, about 70% mfi and for the residence, 80% mfi. These are some of the services that will be solicited for. It includes both financial [3:58:31 PM] assistance and housing locators assistance. And then the next slide. Staff is currently working on the various components of the program. We are working with development services, as mentioned, to implement the updated ordinance around the clarification around the renovation language. We're developing a process for roles and responsibilities with the various partners that we have, we're working on requests for tenant relocation services for this year and also working with our partners to (indiscernible) Responsibilities around enforcement. So the next slide, these are our next steps. We'll continue having engagement in stakeholders on the tenant relocation program and begin the solicitation process for the nexus study in the winter and will move onto the solicitation process for the tenant [3:59:32 PM] relocation services. And that is the end of our presentation. >> Chair: Okay. Let's see. So questions? Councilmember vela? >> Vela: What would the relocation services -- what would that encompass? >> So that would encompass -- it would include the items that are on slide -- let me go to that. On slide nine, if you can put that slide up for us. Or I can go over those. But it would include the needs assessment. So whatever vendor is selected -- thank you. Whatever vendor is selected -- nine. I want to make sure that you guys [4:00:32 PM] can see it also. Thank you. We would first do a needs assessment to -- because a needs of different households are going to vary. So just for example, some households might need to be relocated near schools if they have young children. So the moving services are not going to be the same, and then there's definitely greater challenges when you have residents of a mobile home park, right? It is easier to locate a family to an existing multi-family unit. But then when you're talking about land or mobile home park, that's different. So there's, first, the needs assessment. And then in addition to that, households need assistance with locating affordable housing units. It is becoming increasingly difficult, even though we have funds [4:01:33 PM] currently for residents who are facing displacement in Austin through our "I belong in Austin" program. And that's specific to households facing eviction. Slightly different from this program. But the challenge is the same, being able to find affordable housing within our jurisdiction takes a little more time and assistance. So the provider or vendor will help households locate units for which they would be eligible for. And then also there's the moving and storage, rent payment assistance, and other services to be identified. >> Vela: So this would be -- because I know we've got a pretty strong pattern at this point of asking folks to provide rental assistance, relocation assistance in terms of financial support. But this would be kind of rolling over kind of a -- or rolling some case management into the relocation assistance? [4:02:36 PM] I mean, am I understanding that kind of correctly? >> So yes. But what I'd like to add is this program is different than our existing programs. This program is in response to the tenant relocation ordinance, so it would only be used when a developer is either renovating their property or demolishing their property. And so this is not a citywide response to other displacement pressures that households might face. So it's very specific. It's in response to the tenant relocation ordinance. >> Vela: So it's very limited then. >> Yes. >> Vela: It's not going to be a broader kind of -- >> No. >> Vela: Okay. Finally, with regard to the mobile homes -- and I know councilmember Fuentes said a [4:03:39 PM] couple those. Where can folks move? My understanding is there's very limited locations for them to -- you know, to move their homes to. Like, other trailer parks where they can hookup and settle down. >> That is correct. That is a challenge that -- and Ms. Romero, we have spoken to her previously as well. Many residents in mobile home parks are finding it increasingly difficult to find locations where they can relocate. We have had a conversation with Trish link about smoring -- exploring options for -- and I hate to say this. Well, exploring options to see if people, residents, can be relocated outside of Austin's full- purpose jurisdiction. Right now, it is very hard to [4:04:39 PM] find affordable -- not only housing, but also mobile home. And so some people are being denied the benefit. So we have the resources, but because they cannot find locations within our geographic boundaries, they're being turned away for assistance. So this is something that we've had an initial conversation, and we will continue to see what options might be available to those residents. >> Vela: Well, thank you. I remember when there was a trailer park on Barton springs for many, many years. That was a long time ago now. >> There's still one there on Barton springs road. Still a pretty big one. One is gone but the other is there. So that will be an issue at some point. Okay. Other questions? Councilmember harper-madison, did I see you with your hand raised? Okay, go ahead >> Harper- madison: I did raise my hand. For what it's worth, I appreciate all of the dialogue. And thank you so much for your [4:05:41 PM] presentation, nefertiti. I keep coming back to wondering what our options are around, you know -- especially in hindsight, the conversations around city-sanctioned camping. I keep coming back to what the city's options are for utilizing city-held property as a parking spot for mobile homes. And so I'm not sure if that's a conversation we're already having or if that's something that's prohibited somehow. Anybody have any information? >> I do not know, but I would have to check with others and keeping in mind one of the things with relocating the mobile home units is the additional hookups and things, but I can find out. I'll reach out and follow up and provide that information, what I find. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, I appreciate that. Maybe as an extension of that conversation, I'm really deeply [4:06:41 PM] interested in how we can just because so frequently I think we forget about the affordability of the mobile home as an option. So just thinking through how we can best utilize our assets. If it's a matter of taking hundreds of acres of city-held property and connecting it with the appropriate utilities, would that be a way we can help? Dream big, right? Do we partner with mobile home organizations and provide the units? I don't know what the options are, but I really would love to deeply explore in a real robust way how to utilize city-held property and potential private partnerships for setting up some city mobile home parks. I don't [4:07:44 PM] want to put Mandy on the spot. Mandy and I have talked about this a little bit. But I'll allow Mandy to respond. I think she can articulate her thoughts a little better around this >> Harper-madison: This is new. This is a hot take! I'll take it! (Laughter) Thank you, guys >> Mandy, deputy director of the housing and planning department. I will say that we would face some of the same challenges with respect to some of the challenges we were facing with the city-sanctioned camping sites that we would face with relocating mobile home community. One is, frankly, the length of time it would take to properly extend utilities to the site to ensure that, as nefertiti mentioned, that there are hookups for water, sewer, electricity. Most of the sites that the city has in its [4:08:48 PM] possession are not fully -- don't have full hookups available. And I think we went through that when we went through the inventory for the city-sanctioned campsites. The other is really the entitlement process. These sites would need to be properly zoned and entitled for residential development. And again, that's something that takes a significant amount of time. It's something we could certainly look into. I will say that we have previously worked with a mobile home community through the rental housing development assistance program or Rhoda, and that was several years ago with north Lamar mobile home community. They partnered with a national community development financial institution to actually create a cooperative to purchase their mobile home community from the private owner of the community. [4:09:49 PM] And it enabled those homeowners -- I believe it was 65 homeowners -- to stay in their homes and actually improve. We provided a loan. The resident-owned communities or roc, which is the name of the cdfi, the community development financial institution and nonprofit provided additional funding to help improve the north Lamar mobile home community and provide that investment but maintain the affordability over the long term. So it's something we're certainly looking at and looking at creative solutions. But this would not be without its hurdles, should we contemplate city-owned property for a mobile home community. >> I appreciate that. I think it's safe to say that my team and I will be in touch, we'll follow up and be in touch to see what sorts of barriers that some specific council [4:10:51 PM] action might be able to help bypass. Seems like, you know, that sort of naturally occurring affordable housing form is one of many that we're really going to need to be able to think about. I just keep thinking about, you know, I'm hearing from cities across the country about their impending eviction storm, tsunami, catastrophic -- I mean, these words are getting tossed around a lot, and we're not just talking it about Austin. If we're looking at like this nationwide influx of evictions, I definitely want to make sure that Austin has been at the forefront like we have been so many other times and are taking the opportunity to be innovative and not miss a chance to build in some protections, even if it's something new that we're not accustomed to doing. Be great to know, you know, what levers we could start pulling now that will be really helpful. [4:11:56 PM] We obviously need it already. But really helpful in the future. >> Chair: Okay. Thank you. I have one followup question. Did you finish, councilmember harper-madison? >> Harper-madison: I did, thank you. >> Chair: Okay. So I wanted to ask you about the timing. So I'm seeing on the next steps that the solicitation process for tenant relocation services doesn't occur until spring. And I'm just curious why we can't go ahead and start that. It's not dependent upon the nexus study, so I'm not sure why we're not doing this simultaneously. The nexus study might inform what we can do for the developer tenant relocation fund, but if I'm understanding this correctly, the tenant relocation services are for the -- both parts of the program, the city tenant relocation fund and the developer tenant relocation fund. Can you help me understand? I'm feeling some urgency, particularly after the [4:12:57 PM] conversation and questions people have been asking. If we wait for the solicitation process in the spring, you know, we're easily talking late spring or summer or even later before we actually make those dollars available. So can you help me understand what y'all are -- what your challenges are in terms of the timing? >> The challenges are really time and resources, keeping in mind that our displacement prevention efforts and initiatives are all new. Everything that we're rolling out has to be built from a to Z. And so that's really where we are. We recently brought on Susan to help lead new programs and initiatives that will be launched. And right now, we are working on a rent solicitation. That's priority for us. Councilmember harper-madison mentioned the fact that, you [4:13:59 PM] know, there's this expectation of increased evictions, and we are seeing that through our existing programs with our "I belong in Austin" program. They're going through the funds more quickly than they ever had. And those funds are for households that are facing eviction, right? So we have that program. And they're going through the dollars quickly, as more families and households are finding themselves behind on rent. >> Chair: So I know -- >> So it's just a series of programs. >> Chair: Right. >> And then the 20 contracts -- or 15, I'm sorry, contracts we have for project connect. I'm sorry. Just rolling out all new programs is taking time. >> Chair: I know. And I understand that. And you guys have been doing just really, really good work on everything you do is a high priority, particularly considering the housing crisis we're all in now. I would like to understand what we can do better as a council to [4:15:00 PM] help you all with that because I think that we can't afford to do these things sequentially, particularly not like this. I'll talk with you offline to see if there's anything we can do to help to get this moving, the tenant relocation services moving more quickly. We're seeing demolitions every day. And I understand, everything you're doing is important and a high priority. So appreciate that. And I know it takes resources to get things done. Maybe we can talk offline about seeing what we could do, what the council could do or perhaps other parts of the city could do to help get these things done a little bit faster. So let's see. Other questions? Councilmember Fuentes? >> Thank you. I wanted to echo what you were saying vice chair kitchen. I am right there with you. [4:16:00 PM] In my community, we have a mobile home community that's been displaced. Just a mile up the street there's another mobile home community going through displacement right now. And as you mentioned, Ms. Jackman, that our eviction filings are back up to pre-pandemic levels. I just looked at evictionlab.org, and you can see just last week we had over 150 eviction filings in our city. So that speaks to what we're seeing in our community, that folks are getting displaced and that our resources are being utilized, but we need to scale the resources that we have. So to the extent that we can get that rfp process out more quickly and expedite it, certainly would go a long way in our community because we are at a crisis level when it comes to displacement. I wanted to circle back to a question that was raised about how we can expand useful mobile homes in [4:17:03 PM] multiple categories. Since we had Mandy on the screen, although, I think she -- is she back on? There we go. Just lost you. I just wanted to ask, what more can we be doing to expand the use of mobile homes throughout Austin? Mobile homes, they are single-family homes. And these are homes that our families are paying between 500 to $700. They have multiple bedrooms. These are homes for our hardworking families, and it is very hard to find another mobile home community where folks who are being displaced from their mobile home community to get to. And to add another barrier, there are certain mobile home communities that do not accept homes that are -- that were created earlier than a certain area. So it's not just as easy once you find a mobile home community that has space to accept you and your home, there are additional barriers our families are facing. [4:18:04 PM] Mandy, can you speak to what more can we be doing to expand the use of mobile home in categories? >> So a couple of things. One, at the September 1st city council meeting, if I recall correctly, that was just last week, you all asked us to move forward with a stakeholder process for our investment, so rental housing development assistance and ownership housing development assistance to look at how we can grab our eligibility with respect to a variety of different characteristics. One was the use of or investment of our dollars into mobile home communities. I mentioned before with the north Lamar mobile home community, that we had invested in this case, I think before I said Rhoda, which is rental housing. It's actually oda, ownership housing because the mobile home communities, while [4:19:05 PM] they rent the land on which they sit, they actually own the structure. So it does fall under our ownership development assistance program. We have some challenges because they follow federal guidelines in the sense that mobile homes are investment is eligible to be used on mobile homes that are permanently affixed to the land. So that are truly not mobile. And the federal government prohibits us from investing federal dollars and, thus, our local guidelines kind of follow that guidance. But prohibits us from investing federal dollars into property or mobile homes that are not permanently affixed to the land. So there is the possibility we are going to be opening up a stakeholder process and exploring both that one [4:20:06 PM] component, mobile home community. I think there were four different things we were going to look at through our Rhoda and oda program guidelines through a stakeholder process that will be kicking off some time hopefully winter of 2022/'23, where we'll look at all of our eligibility guidelines. We did this -- we try to do it on an annual basis. We also opened up our tenant eligibility around criminal backgrounds. That was a little over a year ago. I think that was 18 months ago. So mobile homes will be looking at that. In addition, approximately two years ago, at the time it was councilmember Casar who shepherded a resolution that had us look at zoning categories and ensuring that all currently mobile home communities that were currently being utilized as mobile home communities were, in fact, zoned for mobile home communities to [4:21:08 PM] kind of limit the -- limit the possibility of displacement if the land, in fact, was zoned for commercial or another sort of residential. We want to make sure that we had it as expansive as possible zoning for these existing mobile home communities. Nefertiti mentioned -- and I think this is really important, especially when we were working with the residents of the south Lamar -- I'm sorry. South congress mobile home community, and we had a lot of folks who there was no place for them to move. I mean, just not an option for them within the city of Austin full-purpose jurisdiction. So is there the possibility that we could contemplate providing assistance to folks outside of the full-purpose jurisdiction? That's something we're working, [4:22:09 PM] as nefertiti mentioned, working with law on. It's not a practice that we want to make common. We're in the business of avoiding displacement, not furthering displacement of folks outside of the city of Austin. But in certain situations, there may be so many restrictions on where someone can move that it may, in fact, need to be outside of the city limits. So we are currently contemplating that. And I had one other thing, and I should have written it down. Oh, that we are launching a capacity-building program. Again, this was approved at the ahsc September 1st meeting, and this capacity building will specifically be for small developers of affordable housing. And we're hoping that some of our folks who are [4:23:10 PM] working in the cooperative business could potentially benefit from accessing capacity building that will also provide access to funding for redevelopment or in the case of a mobile home community, creation of cooperatives and reinvestment into these communities. >> Thank you for that. That was extremely helpful and just also want to underscore that in this upcoming budget cycle that the city of Austin is able to have for the first time that $700,000 investment in the tenant relocation fund. So I'm very pleased to see that was also part of the budget we adopted for this upcoming fiscal year. One of the policies that I'm interested in working on that my team member mentioned, Sophia, that San Antonio does is that when a notice of nonrenewal is issued to a tenant or an eviction notice is issued, that [4:24:11 PM] they have a requirement that information be included on programs and resources available to that tenant so that they can see that, you know, the city has the "I belong here" program, additional resources available, emergency rental assistance, all of those programs out listed in a way that informs our community of what the city is doing to help. And so I certainly want to look forward to anyone interested in working on that issue to working together. Thank you. >> Vela: And vice chair kitchen had to leave the dais, so I guess I will bring us home here at the end of the -- are there any other questions from councilmember tovo, councilmember harper-madison? All right. Then I just have a couple more questions. It's my understanding that mobile homes are only allowed in areas that are specifically zoned for [4:25:11 PM] mobile homes. Is that correct? Or where can E they be -- where are mobile homes allowed? >> Yes, that is correct. >> Vela: Mm-hmm. And I also understand, again, just through conversations, that our housing assistance money, our emergency housing repair assistance money is not available to mobile homes who are renting or, in other words, if they do not own their property and it's not permanently attached, but you have someone who -- again, let me lay out the scenario real quick. Someone is renting at a trailer park. They can make their monthly payments. They're fine, but their actual mobile home is falling apart and is in need of some emergency assistance in order for them to continue in a place that they've been in for a while and that they're successful. Are we able to provide emergency housing assistance to folks in [4:26:14 PM] that situation? >> So our -- the housing and planning department's home repair programs do not provide assistance to folks whose mobile homes are not permanently affixed to the land. Having said that, we work with the Austin home repair, housing repair coalition, which is a coalition of nonprofits and other providers of home repair services. And some of those organizations, some of those nonprofits have access to funds that are not federal funds or not the city of Austin funds and can be used less restrictively. And I will tell you that we have multiple examples of folks who are in need of repairs and those nonprofits were able to connect them to those nonprofits to provide those repairs even if the city of Austin cannot provide those repairs. >> Vela: That's very good to hear. Although, and I understand the [4:27:14 PM] federal funds are limited. We cannot use those for mobile home repairs. But for example, in future housing bonds and making city monies available, we can make our local monies available to provide the emergency home repairs to mobile homes. Are we able to do that? >> So this is interesting, and I want to stay in my lane. But I will say that for our locally funded home repair programs, it's the general obligation or go repair program, and that program has been specifically vetted because it is funded with general obligation bonds, vetted and approved by the attorney general. When that was originally approved, I want to say it was from the 2006 affordable housing bonds, I know that was an issue. That's not to say that we cannot revisit it with our local funds. [4:28:18 PM] And that would be part of -- part and parcel of the stakeholder process that I mentioned that the city council passed a resolution on September 1st, and we will be kicking off that stakeholder process within the coming months. I really anticipate winter of 2022/'23 to look at restrictions around investments in mobile home communities. >> Vela: I appreciate that. I know there are a lot of folks just barely hanging on in mobile homes that are barely livable. And some assistance could potentially keep them there happily for years down the road. But that's not always -- we're not always able to do that. Any -- >> Jamie may, housing and community development officer. I wanted to connect a few dots that came up earlier. Mandy mentioned that the mobile homes are permitted under a different code essentially. [4:29:19 PM] It's an entirely different building code. So it would be a different format entirely. And then speaking of mobile home parks that councilmember harper-madison spoke about, it's not just the connections to utilities. It's also road networks and platting. There's a lot of infrastructure that goes into a mobile home park itself that are fairly long term. So it's a very intensive process and a product we don't deal with in our other programs, so it's a specialty-type situation. We are very interested in exploring these issues, but it's not just a plug-and-play type of situation. >> Vela: I know we call them mobile homes and there's an expectation they can be moved from place to place. Is that the reality? Are mobile homeowners moving them from trailer park to trailer park? >> Not necessarily. The nomenclature I'm more familiar with is manufactured [4:30:19 PM] homes, and that's kind of a shift in the industry. Mobile homes were originally from the 1970s. As they've become more familiar, affixed to the ground, they've been termed as manufactured homes. But they are still mobile in that you can pick them up and move them, but you'd have to detach them from that permanent foundation. So it's the foundation that's permanent and that permanent affixion can be removed but it takes time. >> Vela: Any other questions from councilmembers? Any other information from staff? No? Then we can go ahead and move on to item -- I'm sorry? Did I miss -- no? We can go ahead and move on to item 4, future agenda. Any suggestions for future agendas? Councilmember harper-madison? [4:31:21 PM] >> Harper-madison: Thank you very much. I would just ask that we take note of the fact that this tenant relocation conversation turned into a conversation about mobile homes. And naturally occurring affordability. I think there's a thread that -- or a needle we should continue to thread along these lines. I think it will come up more and more. And there's distinctions Jamie was making reference to, the difference between the modular and the manufactured. Just generally, I would like to have a conversation around this whole ecosystem. I'm certainly full will you aware it can't be as easy as plug and play, but it seems to me this might be a path that has fewer barriers than new home construction. >> Vela: Yeah, I completely -- >> Harper-madison: I could be wrong, but I would surely love to explore and see if there's an opportunity here we hadn't discovered yet. >> Vela: I completely agree, councilmember. Now also with [4:32:21 PM] kind of your tiny homes and your kind of new iteration of who knows what's going to happen? Where it may become easier, potentially, to move a 400 square foot home. I know a lot of the manufactured homes are much larger than that. If they get small enough, it might be easier to move them around. If we can facilitate that and it helps with affordability and housing options, I think we should do everything we can to make that happen. Councilmember harper-madison? >> Harper-madison: Thank you. You reminded me of another thing I was thinking of the other day. I very recently shifted in the sense I'm having to learn to live smaller than I had before. It's happened multiple times, smaller, smaller, smaller, to speak to affordability, right? I think, much like the conversations we have around culture shifts with multimodal transportation, I think it would be beneficial for us to [4:33:23 PM] eventually have a conversation around a unified kind of collective dialogue around living smaller. And ways that people can successfully do so. I think it's a matter of the culture around how we live and the stuff we think we have to have and need. You know, sort of prohibiting our ability to access affordability frequently. I think we owe it to ourselves and to our constituents to have a robust discussion about how to help people transition and acclimate to small living >> Vela: I completely agree, and I think, you know, our senior population, we're seeing that where, you know, folks just don't need, you know, 1400- square-foot house that they grew up and raised their family in and they don't need to pay to air condition it and water the lawn and they're trying to downsize, economize, and again, whatever we can do to facilitate [4:34:23 PM] those kinds of moves, I think we need to be doing. All right. Well, with no other items on the agenda and no other comments or questions, then I will adjourn this meeting of the housing committee at 4:34 P.M. Thank y'all very much.