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HomeMy WebLinkAbout03.09.2022 Rental Housing Advisory Board Special Meeting Full AgendaRental Housing Advisory Board SPECIAL MEETING Wednesday, March 9, 2022 3:30 PM City Hall Room 406 To Whom It May Concern: Please note the City of Oshkosh Rental Housing Advisory Board will meet on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 3:30pm in City Hall Room 406 to consider the following agenda: I. Call to Order II. Roll Call III. Citizen Statements IV. Approval of Minutes – February 9, 2022 V. 2/22/22 Council Appointment VI. Meeting Format i. Alternate Member Voting Procedure ii. Meeting In Person iii. Meeting Frequency VII. Adjournment VIII. WORKSHOP: i. Draft Housing Study Policy Recommendations - https://rdgusa.com/sites/oshkosh/ ii. Public Information Campaign Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 1 Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes February 9, 2022 Present: Lynnsey Erickson, Linda Jevaltas, Todd Hutchison, Timothy Ernst, TJ Hobbs, Alec Gulan, Donn Lord Excused: Lydia Christensen Staff: John Zarate; Chief Building Official, Kelly Nieforth; Community Development Director I. Call to Order Ernst called the meeting to order at 3:32 pm. II. Roll Call Roll call was taken and a quorum declared present. III. Citizen Statements There were no citizen statements. IV. Approval of Minutes – December 8, 2021 The minutes of the December 8, 2021 meeting were approved as written. (Erickson/Jevaltas) V. Board & Commission Training – City Attorney’s Office City Attorney Praska and Nieforth provided an overview of the new Board and Commission guidelines that were approved by Common Council in December. Jevaltas asked for clarification regarding having items placed on the agenda. Nieforth explained they can request to have the item added through staff, who would then determine if RHAB is the most appropriate board or commission to address the item or if another board or commission should be involved. The item would then be placed on the agenda for RHAB to decide if there is a consensus before moving forward. This process will really help from an internal department standpoint as there might be instances where they don’t have the staff time to handle the request. Jevaltas asked if there was any issue with her and another board member meeting at Starbucks to develop a brochure because the board had requested that the two of them meet to work on it. Praska replied that it would be trending into a problem. They can both do research or work on something, but then they should have that discussion at the meeting instead of Starbucks. He suggested that they delegate tasks moving forward and then come back to report on them at the next Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 2 meeting. Hutchison stated that Ernst will make changes to the brochure and provide it to staff to distribute to the board for comments. He asked if that was the correct way to do things moving forward. Praska replied affirmatively, adding that it’s fine as a long as the comments are sent to staff and not the board. Hutchison asked for clarification about alternates voting. Praska replied that the alternates can participate, but they can’t have more than seven board members participating at any one time. Jevaltas stated that she would like to know at the beginning of each meeting how many alternates are present. Praska replied that it is a good idea to have a policy or plan in place as far as which alternate gets to participate in that particular meeting to avoid any uncomfortable conversation at the beginning of the meeting. Board members should communicate with staff if they’re going to absent or if they’re running late that staff don’t have to make a decision about alternates at the start of the meeting. Nieforth replied that staff would follow up on this for the next meeting. VI. Partner Organizations Update Lu Scheer provided an ADVOCAP rental assistance update. The 68 counties covered by WERA have spent $109,000,000 toward rental assistance. Evictions in those counties are lower than they’ve been historically. A total of $204,000,000 has been distributed throughout the state. They’re pretty much finished with the first round of funding. The state average is $3,875 per household and 66.5% of the households are earning less than 30% of county median income. In Winnebago County they have people working and earning up to 80% of county median income who are receiving assistance. There are a couple of landlords who are now refusing assistance because they feel that tenants should be out there getting jobs. Lord asked when the program ends and how many dollars are left. Scheer replied that there is $200,000,000 that’s expected to go through 2025. They are starting training for the Wisconsin Help for Homeowners Program, but they’re not expecting the same numbers that they have with WERA. They’re finding people who have lost their jobs because they missed work due to COVID, or they needed to stay home with their kids because the teacher had COVID. A lot of living wage jobs do not have daycare or the hours that they need for child care. ADVOCAP has started hiring full time positions, but it’s not an easy to take calls from people in crisis all day. Hutchison asked if there is a limit to the amount tenants can receive. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 3 Scheer replied that they pay third parties so there isn’t a dollar amount for tenants, but the third parties can receive up to 18 months of assistance. Hutchison asked if that changed because he thought he remembered a $3,000 limit per household. Scheer replied that there was a $3,000 limit for WRAP. Hutchison replied that he was asking because of an article about a large landlord in Milwaukee with 8,000 units who started evictions for 800 tenants in January even though they received $7,800,000 from WERA. He’s assuming it’s because they reached that 18 month limit. Scheer replied that that was her assumption as well. Erickson asked if WERA can cover hotel stays. Scheer replied that it can but they’ve moved away from that because motels in the area were raising their rates and it’s not a long term solution for families with children. There are also some people who can’t stay at hotels anymore because of their behavior. Erickson replied that they’ve found a number of families who are forced into having to stay at hotels despite the rising costs because they’re unable to find open units to rent. Lord stated that people were almost begging for him to rent to them because they had no other options. Scheer replied that they were under the impression that a lot of the smaller landlords sold their properties when prices were higher and a lot of them have gone to larger property management companies which have very stringent policies and expectations. Lord replied that the flexibility smaller landlords have is important. They receive offers to purchase their properties at least two times per month from people with foreign accents, so it’s interesting who is out there trying to buy these properties. It’s something they need to take a look at because smaller landlords aren’t organized and they’re under pressure to sell. He also wanted to mention that the Afghan refugees are being housed in hotel space in Appleton and they’re trying to move them into housing which is putting additional stress on the market. He was approached by World Relief and he didn’t have any qualms about opening up a unit for them. Hobbs asked how they can build more units. The housing study showed that 42% of renters are paying more than 30% of their household income on rent. They know that this isn’t sustainable and they’re at risk of losing their housing. There’s no incentive for developers to invest in low income housing, so maybe they should look more closely at things like tiny homes. They are wondering if RHAB should be meeting more regularly to start a conversation about this. It’s already too late for 2022, but they have to do something for winter of 2022. They already know the new Day by Day is not going to have enough capacity. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 4 Lord replied that he liked the tiny homes idea for public health reasons. It is preferable to keeping a lot of people under a single roof like a homeless shelter. Jevaltas replied that she thinks it’s important that they meet more often and it’s something she’s been advocating for. Ernst replied that they can talk about meeting frequency and possible solutions like tiny homes at the next meeting. VII. Inspections Staff Update Zarate provided an update on complaints and social media updates. Lord asked how many complaints they received in 2021. Zarate estimated that they received around 70 complaints. Lord asked if they used to have around 100. Zarate replied affirmatively. Nieforth asked Zarate to provide a multi-year report for the next meeting. Ernst asked if they were still averaging around five or violations per week. Zarate replied affirmatively. VIII. Community Development Director Update Nieforth stated that they are seeking input for the draft housing study and will be sharing it with boards and commissions in February before it goes to Plan Commission and Council for approval in March. She shared an overview of the recommendations related to homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. Jevaltas asked if staff could share the input session flyer on the Facebook page. Lord asked about upcoming public input sessions. Nieforth replied that they had a public input session in January at the Convention Center that 17 people attended. They aren’t going to do any more in-person public meetings due to COVID. The remainder will be online and there’s a link for people to provide comments online. Nieforth provided an update on the Day by Day Warming Shelter. The Common Council approved the acquisition of the property from the Housing Authority at their last meeting. Some organizations have requested that Day by Day look at other potential locations for the shelter, but they are moving Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 5 forward with executing the option to purchase to ensure they have it tied up. They need to find a location that has sprinklers and other features needed from a building code perspective. The City is helping with that. The goal is to have a location that can be a year round facility. IX. Public Information Campaign – Tenant and Landlord Rights Ernst stated that the current version includes the feedback from the last meeting regarding the logo. There are color and black and white versions. The brochure now includes all of the sources they identified at previous meetings. He thinks the brochure is a good place to start and the poster can come later. He would still like a QR code with the poster, but they would need to setup a website or use the City’s website and he doesn’t know who to talk to about doing that. Nieforth replied that she will see if they could have a link on the Community Development website. A lot of the information might be scattered throughout the website already, so they can definitely take a look at consolidating that. Ernst asked how RHAB would like to move forward if they’re okay with the brochure as is. He thinks it would be in their best interest to get them printed and determine where they’d like to distribute them. He knows the logo isn’t very spiffy looking because he was using free software and he isn’t a graphic designer. Hobbs asked if they were unable to get approved funding for a designer. Nieforth replied that with the program not currently active, they don’t have the revenue from those inspections to support a graphic designer. They don’t have graphic designers on staff. Ernst asked if any additional edits or adjustments are needed to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Jevaltas replied that they could split it up a little bit more. She sees a few things that could be changed, but hopefully they can meet next month rather than in two months to discuss that. Ernst replied that they can call a special meeting to discuss how often they are going to meet moving forward and to come up with final recommendations for the campaign. Hutchison stated that the only feedback he had was that everything is a noun with the exception of communicate, which is a verb. He suggested responsible communication instead. Ernst replied that he will adjust that. He thought communication took up too much space in the design itself and there are other verbs in there besides communicate. Hutchison replied that there are other adverbs in there, but it’s not a big deal. He’s fine with it otherwise. Jevaltas stated that she would like to see something obvious about the city, tenants, and landlords working together. She doesn’t know if that’s communicated through the logo, but maybe something Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 6 could be added to communicate that. Ernst replied that they can table this discussion until their next meeting. X. Other Business Ernst stated that he would like to have a special meeting on March 9th to discuss meeting frequency, the public information campaign, and to identify recommendations for policies to address the challenges identified in the draft housing study. Staff will provide 2021 complaints data at the regular meeting scheduled for April 13th. XI. Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:25 PM. (Lord/Erickson)