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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04.13.22 Rental Housing Advisory Board MinutesRental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 1 Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes April 13, 2022 Present: Lynnsey Erickson, Linda Jevaltas, TJ Hobbs, Donn Lord Excused: Lydia Christensen, Todd Hutchison, Timothy Ernst, Alec Gulan Staff: Casey Koelbl; Housing Inspector, Kelly Nieforth; Community Development Director I. Call to Order Nieforth called the meeting to order at 3:31 pm. II. Roll Call Roll call was taken and a quorum declared present. Motion by Erickson to elect Jevaltas as temporary chair. Seconded by Hobbs. Motion passed 4-0. III. Citizen Statements There were no citizen statements. IV. Approval Special Meeting Minutes – March 9, 2022 The minutes of the March 9, 2022 special meeting were approved as written. (Erickson/Hobbs) V. Partner Organizations Update Lu Scheer was unable to attend the meeting, but provided a summary and data for RHAB to review. Lord asked what the sunset date of the program is. Jevaltas replied that the program was intended to last for five years. She wanted to note that 60 people reached out for the new Wisconsin Help for Homeowners program. Erickson provided updated eviction data through April 1, 2022. Lord asked if there are fewer filings overall, but more of the judgements are actually resulting in an eviction. Erickson replied affirmatively. The average for 2020 was 17% and 2021 was 51%. Even though there Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 2 were fewer filings in 2021, more of those resulted in an actual eviction judgement. Lord replied that he thinks that’s a good sign that some mediation is occurring before the filing. Erickson replied that there are more stipulated dismissals in CCAP, so there does seem to be some improvement there. Lord replied that a lot of the stipulated dismissals include a payment plan, which is better from his perspective as a landlord because judgments aren’t that collectable in the first place. Jevaltas asked if there was a way to estimate for the city instead of the county. Erickson replied that it would take a bit of time and digging Lord asked what was happening with the Eviction Prevention Task Force. Erickson replied that they are in the implementation phase and no longer meeting actively. The Conflict Resolution Center and Legal Action are figuring out how to work better together in the court system. Hobbs asked if tenants are informed of remediation options when an eviction is first filed because it does seem to be so helpful. They asked if there was a rule or a law for when an eviction can be filed and how the tenant needs to be notified. Lord replied that there aren’t many tools in the law. There’s a five-day pay or vacate and then they can go right to eviction. He agrees that there needs to be some tools in between there. Erickson replied that the task force was working on providing messaging and resources to landlords for tenants at risk of eviction. Hobbs replied that they think it’s reasonable for landlords to lead those mediation efforts given the knowledge they have and because being a landlord is a choice whereas being a renter is often not a choice. There should be a way to ensure landlords have the mediation resources that they need so they can provide them to their tenants. Jevaltas replied that programs are designed in such a way that people need to be really behind or about to be evicted in order to qualify for assistance. It’s unfortunate that the programs are not designed to help people before it gets to that point. Lord replied that it costs a lot more money to re-house someone who has lost their housing than it does to keep them in housing. VI. Inspections Staff Update Koelbl stated that he posts agendas and other relevant things he finds, but staff rely on RHAB to Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 3 provide the content. They should e-mail staff if there’s anything they would like posted. Jevaltas replied that the Facebook page is overwhelming because there’s a lot of pictures and you don’t know what it is until you click on it because there’s a lot of writing. She doesn’t know if she was looking at the right page. She asked if staff can show what it looks like in the future. Nieforth replied that it might be the formatting with Facebook. They can look to see if there’s a way to clean it up, but they might not be able to change the formatting. Hobbs suggested that Koelbl post how citizens can make statements and ask question at meetings and they might have some more public participation. Koelbl summarized the complaint-based inspections data from 2017-2021. Erickson asked what the most common violations are. Koelbl replied smoke detectors, CO detectors, handrails, guardrails, windows, and electrical and plumbing issues. Jevaltas asked if those are remedied pretty quickly. Koelbl replied that it depends on the property. Hobbs asked if there was enforcement in place for that. Nieforth replied that violation notices and reminders are sent. Depending on what the violation is, there are different timeframes for bringing the violations are up to code. Lord asked if they see certain cases with particular landlords or landlords with multiple cases. Koelbl replied that there are few that they see more often than others. Lord asked how many landlords would be included in 75 cases for example. Koelbl replied that it’s hard to say, but they could check on that for the next meeting. Lord asked if there are around 12,000 rental units in Oshkosh. Nieforth replied affirmatively. Lord asked if she could estimate how many landlords there are. Nieforth replied that it would be difficult to estimate as it’s a moving target. Staff update the rental registry regularly. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 4 Lord replied that the biggest complaint he receives is that five day notices don’t provide enough time especially when the notices are mailed. Sending the notices via e-mail would be more beneficial. Nieforth replied that they try to collect as many e-mail addresses as they can, but they don’t always have them. Staff are willing to work with people who are unable to pay, but making a good faith effort to correct the violation. Lord asked if that is included in the notice. Koelbl replied affirmatively. Jevaltas replied that she thinks it’s a good point to go electronically if possible because the mail is much slower these days. Hobbs replied that a phone call would work too. Nieforth replied that often they just have the address. Jevaltas replied that staff could ask for an e-mail address and phone number with the rental registry. Nieforth replied that they collect as many as they can that way. Lord replied that duplication in this would be a good thing and suggested sending a letter, e-mail, and placing a phone call for each notice if possible. Erickson asked if a map could be created to show where the majority of violations occur. Nieforth replied affirmatively. Erickson asked if it was something that could be put together easily for the next meeting. Nieforth replied that she would check. Hobbs stated that they’re aware of some folks in town with issues who are afraid to make a complaint because they don’t want to be on their landlord’s bad side in this market. They asked if there are channels to protect tenants from landlords when they come forward to make a complaint. Lord replied that the law prohibits retaliation. Hobbs asked if there are people to help enforce that law because the average renter might not know that. Lord replied that either party can end a month-to-month lease without reason with a 28 day notice. Hobbs replied that it could be connected to the complaint then. They are wondering if there is a way Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 5 they could help solve that problem. Koelbl stated that someone needs to let the inspector into the home. The tenant can let the inspector in, it doesn’t need to be the landlord. Hobbs replied that at the end of the day, if the landlord receives a violation, they’re going to know it was the tenant. They think the work the board is doing with the brochure is important because tenants aren’t aware that these resources exist. Koelbl stated that they are going to start the rental registry program again beginning the week of April 25th. They are going to start with a section on the south side of the river. Lord asked how many letters and replies they send out and receive for each section. Koelbl replied that they receive five to ten replies for every one hundred letters. Lord asked how many of those result in inspections. Koelbl estimated that seven of them result in inspections. VII. Public Information Campaign – Tenant and Landlord Rights Jevaltas stated that a little work has to be done to make sure it’s all on two pages. She thinks there needs to be some information with regard to student housing. She looked at the UW-Oshkosh student government website and they use a virtual student marketplace to market rental properties and provide resources about being a good tenant. She thinks it would be good to add that to the brochure. Hobbs stated that they need to figure out what to cut from this. It’s beautiful, but it’s too long. Jevaltas replied that adding the link to resources for students would be helpful. Hobbs stated that they should come up with the edits now so they can have it approved and ready for printing next time. Jevaltas replied that it’s a good thing they’re meeting monthly. Nieforth replied that they haven’t voted to meet monthly. Jevaltas replied that they were meeting monthly before the pandemic. The board made a decision to meet bi-monthly because people felt there wasn’t enough to do. She asked if they can decide as a board how often they’d like to meet. Nieforth replied that she would need to check on the administrative process for that. They can’t vote on it today because it’s not on the agenda. It can be added to the agenda next month. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 6 Jevaltas asked if they need to call a special meeting for next month to determine if they’re going to meet monthly. Nieforth replied that they said there were other items they needed to discuss, so there would be more items on the agenda. There needs to be an action item for the board to vote on. Erickson replied that they could approve the brochure at the next meeting. Jevaltas replied that without Ernst here, they should table this for next month. In the meantime, they can take a look to see if there’s a few sentences they can eliminate or make more concise. Nieforth replied that those suggestions can be sent through staff to distribute to Ernst. Jevaltas replied that the first thing would be to confirm if the brochure fits on two pieces of paper. She respects his judgement, so she doesn’t think he would send that if it didn’t fit on two pieces of paper. Lord replied that it makes sense with only four people here to table this and have a special meeting for it next month. RHAB was directed to send any suggestions or revisions for the brochure through staff who will distribute them to Ernst. The plan is to vote on the brochure at the next meeting. Jevaltas asked for board members to come to the next meeting with ideas on how to distribute the brochure. Hobbs stated that the word thrive isn’t immediately identifiable with tenant and landlord rights. They suggested that the brochure be changed to make it clear what it is about. There is plenty of space on the page to provide a description, it doesn’t have to be a logo. They will e-mail their suggestion to staff. VIII. Other Business Hobbs asked if they could vote at some point on people opening up couches, bedrooms, and apartments without penalty to their friends who are struggling since it would make sense to do that during a housing crisis. Nieforth replied that there are some requirements of how many people can be unrelated and living in a home together depending on how big the home is, but there is a point at which it becomes a health and safety building code issue. Jevaltas stated that she is aware of students who get parking tickets all the time. Several people live in large houses and there isn’t enough parking for them. She asked if the board could get a liaison from the University like they used to have to discuss issues like this and housing related issues. Erickson replied that she might have a contact with the Student Association, so she will invite them to the next meeting to see if they’re able to attend. Rental Housing Advisory Board Minutes 7 Lord stated that there was a Wisconsin Apartment Association seminar this past weekend in Oshkosh. An attorney talked about hot topics in housing and one of them was retaliation, which was very beneficial. It would be great to have something like that. There will be another one in October in Fond du Lac. IX. Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 4:31 PM. (Hobbs/Lord)