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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10.13.2021 Rental Housing Advisory Board MinutesRental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 1 Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes October 13, 2021 Present: Lynnsey Erickson, Linda Jevaltas, Todd Hutchison, Timothy Ernst, Alec Gulan, TJ Hobbs Excused: Lateria Garrett, Lydia Christensen, Donn Lord Staff: John Zarate; Chief Building Official, Anna Maier; Administrative Assistant I. Call to Order Ernst called the meeting to order at 3:30 pm. II. Roll Call Roll call was taken and a quorum declared present. III. Welcome New Member – Tj Hobbs Hobbs introduced themself and explained their background and interest in rental housing issues. RHAB welcomed Hobbs to the board. IV. Citizen Statements There were no citizen statements. V. Approval of Minutes – August 11, 2021 The minutes of the August 11, 2021 meeting were approved as written. (Erickson/Hutchison) VI. ADVOCAP Rental Assistance Update Lu Scheer stated that ADVOCAP has provided $10,812,811 of assistance, $6,593,570 of which was for Winnebago County. She estimates that 60% or $3,956,142 of the assistance provided for Winnebago County was for Oshkosh. They have paid up to 15 months and can now provide up to 18 months through WERA. CDBG-CV funds have been set aside by the City to assist people exceeding 18 months. The amount of people who are homeless has increased substantially in the last two years. It has increased by 400% in Wisconsin and 37% in the counties they serve. There are over 300 people on their waitlist for affordable housing units. They’re finding that single people and small families are renting units larger than they need because nothing else is available. Some landlords are receiving backlash for choosing to lease to people receiving WERA funding rather than homeless people. Scheer stated that ADVOCAP received over 100 calls in one week from traditional UW-Oshkosh students. Whether or not they are listed as a dependent on someone else’s taxes determines if they’re Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 2 eligible for assistance. It was never an intended consequence that they would pay housing costs for college students while they’re moving to school. They have assisted over 50,500 people, a high percentage of which really needed the funds. They’re getting a few more requests for water. They’re also being asked what training and expertise they would need in terms of staffing for a homeowner assistance program. Jevaltas asked how traditional college students are eligible for the funding. Scheer replied that they’re saying they’ve been affected by COVID-19 because they are unable to find part-time jobs. Jevaltas asked if that is considered legitimate. Scheer replied that it is because it has affected their income. Jevaltas asked if they are being referred elsewhere for assistance finding work. Scheer replied that they always talk with people to see if they have other needs and if they could be referred to other programs or resources. It is a self-attestation form, meaning they attest to the fact by their signature. The Department of the Treasury would be responsible for verifying that what recipients report on their application matches their taxes. That is not ADVOCAP’s role. Hutchison asked when the program will end. Scheer replied that it will end in 2025. WERA I dollars are good through the end of the year and WERA II dollars are good through 2025 or until the funds run out. Some states are not running the program. Those funds could be returned and reallocated at some point, but they don’t know yet. Hutchison asked if the college students are saying that they can’t find work because they’re afraid of catching COVID or because there aren’t any jobs available. Scheer replied that there’s no case management. It’s all self-declaration. They’re attesting to this. Again, it is not ADVOCAP’s role to audit the information. ADVOCAP can ask if they need assistance in finding employment, but that’s all they can do. Erickson asked if the 1,500 people assisted so far are in the ADVOCAP service area or in Winnebago County. Scheer replied that they are in the four counties ADVOCAP serves. Erickson asked if they have staff who are able to assist applicants who speak and read other languages besides English and Spanish. Scheer replied that they have received requests for Spanish, Hmong, and sign language. They have been able to accommodate each request and have staff available to interpret. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 3 RHAB thanked Scheer for her time. VII. Rental Inspections Update Zarate stated that Inspection Services completed 13 complaint-based inspections since the last meeting. There were a total of 88 violations for the usual things like smoke detectors, leaking pipes, bad wiring, and loose handrails. Ernst asked when mandatory inspections might start up again. Zarate replied that they will start back up when the pandemic slows down again, but it is difficult to predict when that will be. Jevaltas asked if there are any outstanding complaints that have not been resolved by landlords. Zarate replied affirmatively. About 95% of complaints are resolved within thirty business days. The other 5% might be larger projects or there are other problems landlords are trying to avoid with evictions. They’re not serious safety issues like smoke detectors which are resolved very quickly. Hobbs asked how rental complaints are handled and who is responsible for them. Zarate replied that their Housing Inspector, Casey Koelbl, is responsible for following up with tenants and sending a notice to landlords. In a lot of cases they have their e-mail address because of the rental registry program, so they’re able to resolve those complaints quickly. Hobbs asked if they would only have the e-mail addresses if a registration happened recently. Zarate replied that they cannot require landlords to provide an e-mail address when registering for the program. It’s optional, but it has worked out well for them and they do have a lot of them in the system. VIII. Social Media Update Zarate stated that the Rent Smart program information was posted to Facebook since the last meeting. Anything that they’d like posted can be sent to staff. Jevaltas stated that she looked at the Facebook page and there are photos from Vermont that have nothing to do with their program. It might be a good idea to include photos from the Farmer’s Market. The landlord and tenant guide was on there, but it was very small and difficult to read. She suggested including a link for the guide because the pages are all out of order and it’s not inviting to look at. Zarate replied that there are photos from the 2018 Farmer’s Market, but he doesn’t see anything from Vermont. Ernst explained that anytime a photo is attached to a post, even if it’s just informational, that photo Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 4 will show up in the photos area of the page. Otherwise they are just listed chronologically starting with most recent. IX. Winnebago County Eviction Data Update Erickson shared updated data through September. There were 62 evictions filed in September. The average number of evictions before the pandemic was 53 per month. The CDC eviction moratorium ended at the end of the August, so that could be why they’re starting to see that number creep back up. In February 2021, 70% of filings resulted in a judgement and that was one of the higher months that they saw. For 2021, 104 evictions have been filed so far for 2021 and around 40% resulted in a judgement where an eviction actually occurred. Ernst asked how the Eviction Task Force is responding to this data. Erickson replied that they placed a few ads in the Herald about the WERA program. Some of the partners involved are from the Winnebago County Conflict Resolution Center. They offer mediation between landlord and tenant before anything results in an eviction. They also work with Legal Action of Wisconsin to help provide more legal services for tenants. Most recently they applied for City ARPA funds to potentially hire a Community Case Manager. The position would provide case management for tenants who are at risk of eviction or going through the eviction process and connect them with resources to hopefully prevent an eviction from occurring. Jevaltas asked if Erickson knew of any planned projects or developments for low income housing through HUD or anything like that. Erickson replied that Council approved a tax incremental district for the redevelopment of Smith School into lower income apartment units at their meeting last night. They’re trying to figure out how to encourage similar developments that will work given the increasing cost for developers. She thinks the housing study will be able to identify some of those strategies. X. Affordable Housing Study Update This item was postponed until the next meeting. XI. Public Information Campaign – Tenant and Landlord Rights Jevaltas stated that the Legal Tune Up resource allows people to have an eviction expunged from their record if certain criteria are met. She encouraged RHAB to share the link with relevant groups. Ernst replied that the evictions accrued during the pandemic is an issue this board should pursue as best they can because the numbers are pretty disturbing both in terms of the number of filings and the number of judgements when a moratorium was supposed to be in effect. It creates a permanent disadvantage for people looking for housing, even when it occurred perhaps unfairly during a moratorium. He said that the resource could be shared on Facebook and added to the information campaign. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 5 Erickson stated that the Conflict Resolution Center has some experience with expungement work. She asked if RHAB would be interested in having Michael Rust attend the next meeting to talk through what that looks like and what he’s seeing in the courts. Ernst replied that he thinks that would be very useful given their mission. Ernst stated that RHAB received a few drafts of the brochure and poster. He thanked Jevaltas for her work on the campaign and Erickson and Hutchison for their feedback. The program is called THRIVE, which is an acronym for Tenant Rights, Healthy Homes, Responsible Communication, Improve Housing, Voice Issues, and Empower. The bottom of the poster has links to the City website and place for a QR code. The QR code would link to a site containing links to various resources. They would need to figure out the content of the website, how to build it, and translations for other languages. The design is very basic and open for discussion. Ernst stated that he knows the design is pretty rough and he doesn’t know how to make a brochure, but staff could hopefully help them with this. The front page of the brochure would have a logo that hasn’t been designed yet and each page would have more details about each letter of the acronym. The back page would have a list of resources similar to the brochure they developed a few years ago. He asked for if RHAB had any feedback. Jevaltas replied that for the logo on the first page, she would like to see a circle that has the landlord, tenant, and city representing the three components working together so that tenants know it’s not just them and the landlord. Ernst replied that her idea makes sense to him. He’s not much of a designer and he doesn’t know how much of this they will need to do themselves. What he wanted to do today was set out a framework for what the campaign would be about, what the mission is, and how they would pursue the mission. Hobbs replied that they love the layout Ernst presented. In their experience, the board already has all of the elements a graphic designer would need to work with. They learned that there are ways to apply for funding for specific projects at the last Council meeting they attended. The board did a great job of organizing it and now the next step is paying a graphic designer. They think it would be appropriate to request funding through the city because it’s not something the board should be expected to pay for on their own. Ernst replied that the next step would probably be figuring out how to get it made, published, and printed. He would like to finalize as much of it as they can today so they can get it printed sooner rather than later. Jevaltas stated that responsibly communicate should be changed to responsible communication because that sounds a little better. Ernst replied that Erickson provided feedback that action verbs are generally more actionable. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 6 Erickson replied that she couldn’t think of a better way to say that with a verbal action. Whatever they think sounds good is fine. Ernst replied that he would like to keep the verbiage consistent. Jevaltas replied that they probably want the poster to be a bit fancier. The brochure doesn’t have to be as fancy as the poster. She likes the yellow because it’s eye-catching. Zarate stated that staff could help with the brochure like they did previously. The funding could be pulled from the Rental Registry program budget through Inspection Services. Ernst thanked Zarate for his input and asked if Zarate could figure out a contact person for them to setup a meeting to discuss the graphic design elements. Ernst asked if anyone had any feedback regarding the content and general framing. He likes the idea of the three parts interacting for the logo. The websites that the poster scans to doesn’t need to be super elaborate, it’s just a list of resources like links and contact information. He is going to assume that they can move forward and contact a graphic designer to help them with that. Hutchison asked if staff could get the brochure into a graphic format for them within the next month. Zarate replied that the Planning Division has a lot of brochures and people on staff who know how to create brochures. He will reach out to them to see if they could help out. Hutchison replied that it would be great if they could have it finished in two weeks so it could be sent out for feedback again, but they have a great start here. Ernst replied that he would be happy to meet with staff to talk about the vision and work on putting something together. Branding is important here, so they want to make sure it looks nice. Hutchison stated that Ernst did a really great job getting it to this point and getting it moving. He thanked everyone who contributed, but wanted to thank Ernst and Jevaltas especially because they really were the driving force behind this. He provided some comments to Ernst in separate e-mails.. The first being that this should be landlords and tenants working together, but the wording is just focused on tenants. The second being that the link taking them to the onboarding page was very confusing, so he thinks a more simplified page would be appropriate. He’s sure the city has a webmaster who can create the QR page with all of the links for them. That would make more sense than the onboarding website. Ernst replied that he will go through and try to add landlord to a few more areas. They will have to figure out who they can talk to about having a website made so they can put the link in the brochure before they publish it. He asked Zarate who could help with that. Zarate replied that he would follow up with Media Services. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 7 Ernst stated that he will finish final edits to the brochure and have staff send it out for feedback. He would like to use the brochure as a model when he meets with the designer for what they’d like to do moving forward. He asked Zarate to keep him in the loop regarding staff contacts for the graphic design elements. He would be happy to meet with them as well. He thought bus ads could be effective, but he doesn’t know how to make or pay for those. He noticed there was a large public transit presence in similar campaigns. Erickson replied that maybe they could discuss ideas for ad options at the next meeting. Ernst replied they would add a housing study update and additional elements for the information campaign to the next agenda. XII. Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 4:45 PM. (Erickson/Jevaltas)