City Council - workshop

Uh-oh.

It may be in that one.

I... Oh. God.

I think I saw it. I think I saw it in the temporary...

It's the same one.

I thought I saw Moonshot. City of Flagstaff? No. That says June 9th, but is it... No? Okay.

No, and... Aren't it? Do we know...

This is where it would be. Is it this? No, it's not you.

Should be city of Einstein. OK, I will go get my.

Any of those? No, I will go grab that. Do you want?

Thank you. When you get to the video, you just hit play again or whatever.

Yeah, you can open it when I walk up. Okay.

All right, we are ready to get started today is Tuesday June 23 2026. And this is the city council's work session i'm calling this meeting to order. And giving notice to the public that the city council may vote to go into executive session, which will not be open to the public for discussion consultation with the city's attorneys for legal advice on any item listed on the following agenda. Can we have roll call?

Mayor Daggett.

Here.

Vice Mayor Sweet. Here. Council Member Aslan. Here. Council Member Garcia.

Here.

Council Member House. Present. Council Member Matthews. Here. Council Member Spence.

Here. All right. Councilmember Aslan, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

My pleasure. Please stand as you're able.

And Council Member Matthews, would you read our mission statement?

My pleasure. The mission of the City of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all.

And Council Member Garcia, could you read our land acknowledgement?

That would be an honor of mine. Thank you so much, Mayor. The Flagstaff City Council humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this area's indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands, still inhabited by native descendants border mountain sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacy, their traditions, and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past, present, and future generations who will forever know this place as home.

Thank you. Next up is open call to the public, but I do not see anyone here for that. So we will move on to June work anniversaries.

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council. Shannon Anderson, your assistant city manager. We've got our June work anniversaries to walk through with you here today. We'll start with our first year anniversaries. Looking at this list, it looks like we've got some folks from PROS, our Flagstaff Police Department, Economic Vitality, as well as Public Works Divisions celebrating their first year. So congratulations to these employees. Starting with our five-year anniversaries, we have a handful of them. We'll start with Brandon. He's one of our library specialists. Brian is one of our equipment operators within Public Works. Elise is one of our recreation leaders, part of our pros division. Gregory J is out at our airport as one of our airport operations and ARF employees. He's a lead worker there. Hannah is a GIS analyst. She actually started in PROS but has moved over to information technology. Jacob is part of our fire department as one of our firefighter paramedics. Marcela is also part of our economic vitality division in the library as one of our pages. Max is one of our fire engineers. And we have Patrick who's a mechanic also in public works, part of fleet services. We've got Sammy who's a parks maintenance worker, part of our pros division. We have Charlaine, one of our police officers. And now we'll move on to our tenures. We've got Sarah Casey, who is also a library clerk, so a few library employees this month. And then 25-year anniversary, we have Sally Page, who is a library associate temporary employee. She's worked at the Flagstaff Public Library for 25 years. She's helped countless patrons with a variety of needs, providing computer tutoring classes and promoting our electronic resources. I'm not going to know how to spell or to say that word, but a car manual is one of her favorites. She's assisting architectural students with research projects and teaching others how to read the Arizona Daily Sun online. and enjoys every piece of that. When asked about the most common and most unusual questions she's been asked in her 25 years with the city, the first was easy, where's the restroom? The second took a little more thought until she remembered a patron asking about the history of a specific Civil War battle in Southeast Asia. The question required more effort to answer than the first. In her downtime, Sally is part of a two car club, excuse me, part of two car clubs and likes to drive her vintage cars in local parades. We have another 25 year employee celebrating in housing, part of our new housing division. Harold started his career in Housing Authority as an entry-level maintenance worker one, and for the last three to four years, serving as an inspector for public housing in Clark Homes and Section 8 HCV program. There are 264 residential units in the public housing program, 80 residential units in Clark Homes, and over 500 vouchers in the HCV Section 8 program. Harold has spent the majority of his tenure working with families in Siler, Brennan, Clark Homes, and the Housing Authority's off-site units scattered throughout the East and West Flagstaff, making various repairs to just about anything that needs fixing in our communities. 25 years of experience with the Housing Authority is proving to be a valuable asset to his current role as inspector and and is a vital piece to the successful preventative maintenance program. Harold is a dedicated father and enjoys spending time with his family when he's not serving our community. Way to go, Harold. Then I've got one more to share with you today. It's a 30-year anniversary, and it's Earl Gutierrez. He's one of our firefighters and has been with us since 1996. He served our community with unwavering commitment professionalism, and compassion. Throughout his career, he's not only responded to emergencies and protected our residents, but has also invested countless hours in educating and inspiring others. His work with the fire department's clown program helped teach fire safety to hundreds of local children and earned him both a letter of accommodation and the prestigious City Manager's Employee Excellence Award. Earl's impact extends far beyond the fire station. For years, he's volunteered his own time to mentor young people, participate in career days, and share his story to encourage others to pursue their goals. His dedication to service is so deeply ingrained that on multiple occasions while off duty and near emergency incidents, he has stopped to assist crews working on active fires. Within the department, He's known as a mentor, role model, a source of wisdom whose dedication to fitness, service, and integrity has influenced generations of firefighters. Firefighter Gutierrez embodies the values of integrity, honesty, respect, and trust, and his legacy will continue to shape both our fire service and our community for years to come. Congratulations to Earl and his 30 years. That's what we have for you today. And I look forward to being in front of you again. We'll be at the end of August. Since we only have one meeting in July, we'll do July and August, that first meeting back. But if you wouldn't mind joining me for just one moment to congratulate these folks with a round of applause.

Shannon, do I see correctly that we have Earl here in the audience?

I'm sorry that I missed that.

Congratulations and thank you.

Come up and say a few words if you'd like. Sure, thanks.

I am people call me Earl, but really my name is Uriel. I was born and raised here in Flagstaff. Talking about public housing, I grew up in public housing. And as a child, I always dreamt about being a firefighter and was pleasantly surprised when it did happen. I was a reserve for two and a half years. So actually, I've been involved with the fire department for 32 and a half years. it's honestly gone by so fast. It's been such a pleasure. And, you know, I joke with these guys, but I am going to miss them a lot. And, um, in reality, we, we don't do this job without all the support of all the people that here and the citizens. Um, and we appreciate all the support, but, um, I just want you guys to know you have an extraordinary fire department with very genuine people. My first year was probably the most challenging year ever in my life, but through the support of the guys that I was working with, they are definitely my second family. And I just appreciate... the recognition and all that you do for us and my administration chiefs. I can't speak more highly of them. There's no words to really express how genuine and good they are. So I'll really miss it. I know I will, but I appreciate you all. Thank you very much.

Congratulations again, Earl. Thanks, Council.

Thank you, and congratulations to all of our employees. Next up, we have annual report for Moonshot at the Flagstaff Campus.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, Craig Zanetko, I am your economic development administrator, and Moonshot will be presenting their annual reports on activities conducted under its contract with the city. This partnership is an important component of our economic development strategy, helps support entrepreneurship, business growth, job creation, and innovation throughout our community. Through a master lease and a service agreement, the service agreement is part of your packet along with the service plan. Moonshot manages a city-owned Flagstaff campus, including the business incubator and accelerator, while also providing business development services to entrepreneurs and growing companies. These services support businesses operating in targeted industries such as technology, bioscience, manufacturing, clean energy, healthcare, tourism, and emerging technologies. Contract also provides measurable value to the community. Over the years, Moonshot has assisted hundreds of businesses, supported job creation, attracted private investment, maintained continuous occupancy within the campus and generated revenue that helps offset some of the operating costs. In addition, Moonshot partners with the city on programs like Economic Development Week. We've had some international business outreach coming. We have some coming next week as well and other programs that strengthen our local economy. And this partnership has remained stable since its inception with the current agreement extending through 2028. Tonight's presentation provides counsel and the public with an opportunity to review Moonshot's accomplishments over the past year and better understand the return on the city's investment in entrepreneurial and economic development services. So with that, I would like to invite Moonshot CEO and President Scott Hathcock to come and present.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Thank you so much for having us. My name is Scott Hathcock. I'm President and CEO of Moonshot. It has been my privilege to serve as the leader of this nonprofit for the last nine and a half years. And like Craig expressed, we are contracted to not only act as property manager for the facility on Innovation Mesa, but also to assist entrepreneurs in resources to help them grow and scale companies that create jobs here in Flagstaff. I thought it would be fun to start the presentation by showing you a moonshot Flagstaff sizzle reel that was recently created.

As always pointed skyward, every Apollo astronaut trained here. Mars explorers train here today. Pluto was discovered from this very sky. For 25 years, Moonshot has believed that the boldest ideas don't come from the center. They come from people willing to dream bigger than their circumstances. That's Moonshot thinking, and it changes lives. Moonshot, your launch starts here.

So you heard that correctly. We are celebrating our 25th year, and obviously that has a lot to do with you folks, the City Council and the City of Flagstaff as our co-founders, I guess, in this foundation that was created 25 years ago. So we appreciate and thank you all very much for that. This has been one that you took a risk on with investment. It's one that has paid for, though, through founders being able to create jobs or create companies that create jobs and help the economic development here. This year, we are also pleased to receive from the INBIA which is the International Business Innovation Association. We received the 2026 Rural Incubator Support Organization of the Year. So we are very pleased with that award. And once again, I think it speaks highly to the city of Flagstaff and what you've helped us create. So thank you. Just a quick snapshot as far as what our current Flagstaff clientele looks like. You heard Craig mention some of the sectors that we adhere to based on the EDA requirements. But I want to just express the variety of who we have occupying our space today. It goes from rocket science to biomed to wildlife mitigation, education, and beyond. So we're very thrilled right now. We host our housing currently roughly 30 companies on our campus. Although you received this year-end report first quarter of every year, I want to go back and talk about these numbers of impact. If you did not receive this report, the QR code on the screen will directly guide you to that report. And again, we put this out every first quarter of the annual year. The two main numbers that I think are always the most fascinating here are the jobs created from the companies that we host and work with. Eighty-six jobs were created in 2025 and jobs retained. 187. So we're very thrilled that we have those numbers to share. Currently, as of the end of May, we're sitting at an 85% occupancy. That's a combination of both facilities, the 12,000 square foot incubator facility and the 28,000 square foot accelerator building. When Craig was speaking to the programs or services we offer, here's just a quick list of our education and mentorship that we provide our founders. We have a one-on-one mentorship. We also offer what is called the Moonshot Academy, which officially launched about a year and a half ago, which includes not only connections to angel investors and funding statewide, but also nationwide. And we will soon be licensed by the state of Arizona as an accredited certification. We have on-campus hours as well with consultation from AWD Law. And specifically, we benefit greatly from the mind of David Johns, if you folks know him. Quarterly, we offer rocket fuel educational meetups. These are provided for community outreach to come in to see what we're doing. We have various themes around entrepreneurship and so forth. So we're very pleased to continue doing those. As well as we house periodically special educational events like this year's very first AZ Tech Week. as well as we do annual campus office events like our open house. Again, the recent AZ Tech Week, we were thrilled to be able to put Flagstaff on the main stage from the statewide initiative. We were one of the first contributors to this initiative. Our event took place on April 7th. We took the – we had – The Little Observatory and their new facility housed this event. It was a half-day event, including guest speakers and entrepreneurs, really just showcasing the work we're doing in Flagstaff in northern Arizona. And I would like to show you a quick video of that event, if you were unable to attend. All right. Good afternoon, everyone.

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So again, that was a lot of fun. That was our first event to contribute to this very first inaugural event for the state of Arizona. We are planning on Even if AZ Tech Week should not go forward, we're planning on doing a similar event in years to come. We thought it was a lot of fun. We compared it to a TEDx around the idea of founders sharing ideas and ways to help change the world we live in. A couple of other recent events we helped host or assist in. We were part of hosting the Global Ties Young Leaders of America's initiative. They did a pitch workshop with us on the campus. They were roughly 12 founders from around Latin America who came to Arizona for the month and toured various facilities, shadowed founders, so forth, and then went on to Washington, D.C. We also obviously competed or not competed. We were involved with Economic Development Week this past year. We hosted the Thai delegation. And we periodically do work with the high schools, including this past year, we did Coconino High School Pitch Workshop to help students understand what it would be like to pitch their startup ideas. This past year, we also had our annual, I should say biannual, because we're doing these every other year, our biannual Shoemaker Awards. This year, we honored Mountain Mojo, we honored Catalyst Space Technologies, and we honored Paul Chimay. But we also honored someone we'll have speaking with us later, Dr. Megan Ingbring from our first annual Moonshot Campus Community Builder Award. I see several of your faces in these photos. So thank you again for coming to that event that evening and contributing. It's also a lot of fun. And if you were there with me, very emotional. I'm a crier. So you got to witness that again. Some future upcoming events I'm pleased to share. On July 8th, we'll host our first female founders and funders. This is actually an open call to any female founder and or person who is interested in funding, being an investor. This is in partnership with Arizona Commerce Authority, Golden Seeds, Venture Cafe Phoenix, and Elemental Business. We also are very pleased to bring back to the city our annual pitch tour stop. This will be our seventh pitch tour year, Moonshot's rural Arizona pitch competition and tour. This will be held on September 8th at our campus this year. And so please, if you have not attended this event with us, I invite you to join us. Typically, the finals will start in the afternoon. Come and see. Some of the brightest founders in the Flagstaff area pitch their startups in five minutes. The winner of this special tour stop will then move on to the Phoenix finals, which will be on October 24th. I am also pleased to say that given that it's our 25th anniversary and given that it's been four years since Flagstaff has hosted the finals, we will be bringing the finals back to Flagstaff in 2027. So I hope you guys will again join us for that. It's a big celebration. 20 communities from around the state will come to Flagstaff, include hotel rooms, eating foods, all the good stuff, contribute to our economy, and pitch for the chance to win $10,000 in first place prize monies. Rather than hearing about me, talk about me and Moonshine, what we're doing, I thought it'd be more fun to actually have you guys experience stories from some of our founders. And unfortunately, as I came to the table, I received one of the founders' emails saying he would not be with us tonight, but he was having me read this email. So if I could read this email very quickly. He said, his name is Kyle Montgomery. He's the founder of Generous. He said, my deep apologies, I won't be able to make it in the end, Please read this to the council. He goes, I started Generous as a one-year-old tech startup in Flagstaff, founded by NAU alumni and longtime Flagstaff residents. We would not be where we are today without Moonshot's support, from guidance on how to form our company to being introduced to the Arizona Commerce Authority team and their Venture Start program, where we won $10,000 award to continue our beta. Moonshot has been huge for us, and we hope to grow with them along with the entrepreneurial footprint in Northern Arizona. Again, that's Kyle Montgomery, CEO and founder of Generous. I am, however, pleased to bring an actual founder to the front. If I may, please welcome Dr. Megan Ingbring to talk about her founder story with Flagstaff Optimal Health, Weight, and Management. Doctor.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for this opportunity and for having Moonshot as a campus available for us. My name is Dr. Megan Ingbring. I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been serving our community in the cardiology space for about 13 years. And speaking to having a vision bigger than circumstances, one of the things that I was seeing over and over again was people just not getting better, you know, really improving their cardiovascular disease. And so I did have a vision. I thought, you know, I think we can do this better. I think so much of this is metabolic disease that if we can improve a person's body composition, sometimes a lot of these health factors can improve on their own. And so that led to the idea of Flagstaff Optimal Health and Weight Management. And so what we're doing at Moonshot is providing full spectrum lifestyle medicine, really making lifestyle prescriptions more than medication prescriptions, monitoring body composition. We know that having healthy muscle is such an important part of our overall metabolic health and really helping to harness the power of these GLP-1 medications that are being used by so many, but oftentimes with adverse effects or loss of muscle. And so through one of the City of Flagstaff grant opportunities, I was able to purchase an in-body scanner for our office. And that helps us to make sure that we are seeing optimal results for our patients and really having targeted reduction of body fat and visceral fat while maintaining as much skeletal muscle mass as we can and teaching these healthy lifestyle habits along the way. So we've got some very wonderful lifestyle programs that we plug our patients into. I just brought on a new hire, Northern Arizona University, new graduate of their nutrition program, Fernanda. She is our nutrition coach now. And in the last year, I've also had another nurse practitioner helping build those lifestyle modules while I've been busy seeing patients in clinic and even brought on an office manager recently this year. So we've been expanding. We've been seeing excellent results in our patients in the community. We are told over and over again that this is something that the community really needs and people are so grateful to have the resource there. And the space that Moonshot provides and the resources and learning opportunities as someone that is well-trained as a nurse, but never went to business school. These things have been so incredibly helpful for me in taking this vision and really bringing it and making it a reality. So, so grateful for Moonshot and these opportunities and look forward to continuing to serve this community and its health needs for years and decades to come. Thank you.

Thank you.

She actually had to move some patients around to be with us today. So thank you so much for volunteering and sharing with us your story.

I believe council member house has a question for doctor.

Thank you so much for making the time to be here with us today. I just, I was looking at your website and was seeing the nutrition program. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail on that for the community because it looks really cool. Oh, I would love to. Especially with some of the integrations that are built into it. So could you just share a little bit more about what Fernanda is doing?

Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for asking. We're really proud of the nutrition program that we're bringing forward because it is so evidence-based. Because we have the InBody body composition scanner here, It's really important for nutrition recommendations to be individualized, right? We all have different needs depending on our goals and our body composition. So we're able to take the results from the body composition, specifically the basal metabolic rate and a person's lean mass, and we use that along with their activity level to create some very individualized nutrition targets for the day as far as proteins, fats, carbs, and fiber go. We've got an incredible app-based platform that all of our lifestyle programs run through and also our nutrition programs. So we've got some very simple tracking tools for people to use. And then we can review those both independently and when we're meeting one-on-one to help guide nutrition. And we've also integrated a program called that clean life. And it has thousands of recipes that we can provide based on a person's specific nutrition needs. In fact, we can simplify it so much that we can even say, okay, based on this person's needs, we can make a full week meal plan of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks that will exactly target their nutrition needs for the day. So they don't even have to think about it. We can take those recipes and even place an order for Instacart. They can pick it up on their way home. So we know that busy lifestyles and the high-stress lifestyles that we all lead, they have a big impact on our health. And so we're really passionate about meeting people where they are, coming up with plans that will actually fit into their lifestyle, and making sure that with all those recipes we can even take out foods that they don't like or foods that they want to eat more of and really individualized nutrition plans. So we have that as a standalone service, even if they don't need specific medication management or more in-depth cardiometabolic management from me, we can arrange nutrition consultations and meal planning services with that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you.

Thank you again. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the recent article I hope many of you just received, if you haven't seen it already, about one of our founders, Whitney Slidham, with Adeliva. She could not also be with us today. However, she's got a fantastic story that was recently featured in FBN. And again, you should have a copy of that article before you. And with that, I thank you all again for allowing me to serve as Moonshot CEO for these last nine and a half years. And I look forward to seeing you all celebrate with us our 25th year anniversary this year. Thank you.

Thank you, Scott. Counsel, do you have any questions for Scott or for staff? All right. Thank you. All right, next up we have discussion and possible direction regarding prohibiting discrimination in housing based on source of income.

The last presentation wrapped up a little faster than I was going to, but we made it.

Can we get those doors closed? Thank you.

Samara Council, Sarah Dar, Housing Division Director. Opening presentations in public. There we go.

And ta-da.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. My name is Sarah Dyer. I serve as your Housing Division Director, and today I am joined by Cherise Beredo-Aguilar, who is our Voucher Program Manager. This is the woman that I often talk about and give full credit to everything that works with our Voucher Section 8 program. She is phenomenal. I very rarely get the chance to make her blush in public, so I'm going to do it today. This program would not work without the woman standing beside me. Today we're going to go over the citizens petition request talk for a moment about what is source of income discrimination talk about the fair housing protections that already exist. Go over fair house fair go over housing choice vouchers how they work. I'll come back and cover the policy landscape and then we will seek your direction. We are here in direct response to Council moving Citizens Petition 2026-5 forward for discussion at the April 7th meeting, which was titled Prohibiting Discrimination in Housing Based on Source of Income. Action requested, we're requesting that the city, I'm sorry, the Flagstaff City Council consider adopting amendment to the 2013 Civil Rights Ordinance to prohibit discrimination in housing based on source of income. which currently state and federal law allow. So, what is source of income discrimination? It occurs when a housing provider refuses to rent to, negotiate with, or otherwise treats its prospective tenant differently because of a lawful source of income. What is a lawful source of income? It could be many things. It could be a housing choice voucher. It could be a child support payment. It could be veterans benefits. It could be TANF money. It could be social security income or social security disability income. Any source of any income coming into the house on a regular basis. That is lawful. Common forms would be refusing to accept a housing choice voucher or declining applicants who receive a different source of legal income. Um, or applying stricter screening criteria based on payment source, which is not allowed what source of income protections do not require is for landlords to accept all applicants. Um, standard screening supplies landlords are still responsible to screen, um, all applicants the same way. That's part of their housing protections. Everyone treated equally. It does not require units to pass inspections that would otherwise fail. And a source of income protection does not require participation by landlords who do not otherwise meet program requirements. Well, what does that mean? Charisse is going to tell you in just a minute. For quick background, there is a strategy in the 10-year housing plan that talks about exploring expanding state and local fair housing protected classes to include items such as age and source of income. We mark this complete as staff in fiscal year 2425 based on legal guidance that cities are printed in Arizona by the state from adopting local fair housing ordinances we did the exploring we found out we were preempted we marked it complete. Because we're talking about fair housing protections or adding a source of income to protections, we wanted to give an overview of background of the protected classes. You see them here, race, national origin, sex, disability, color, religion, and familial status. This is from the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and is within federal law. You'll notice that source of income is not a federal protected class. And I think it's important to point out that sex includes sexual orientation and also gender identity. We currently have just over 557 vouchers. Why don't I know the exact number? I do, but that's right now. Bless you. The bottom line is foster youth to independence vouchers, and that number changes. It's not a voucher allocated to us. It is a voucher allocated to us when there is a young person exiting foster care or who has exited foster care and is experiencing homelessness. So it's not a voucher we hold. Is it not DCS anymore? What is the thing? For Child Protective Services, it is DCS, Department of Child Safety, refers a kiddo to us. We then ask HUD for a voucher. So that's why you see the plus sign is because that number varies. depending on kiddos rolling on and off of that program so in the meantime public housing authorities are allocated a certain number of number and type of vouchers that are managed within a specific budget this is really important trees is going to hit it with a little more detail in a few minutes, but we are given let's say 557 vouchers and we're given a budget to pay rent on behalf of households and it's not a magical calculation. We have to make our 557 vouchers fit in this budget allocation. And so, sometimes, for example, real life now, HUD told us last March to stop issuing vouchers. They were worried the federal government did not have enough money to pay the HAP expenses, the housing assistance payment expenses, and they said don't issue vouchers. So we have not issued vouchers per HUD's guidance since last March. We think that we're out of the woods on that and we're waiting for final notification, but we have not yet received it. So you see the number of vouchers that we receive. Some of these are specialized, such as the vouchers for veterans named VASH. Mainstream, which I usually joke about because mainstream sounds like it would be for everybody, but it's really households with a non-elderly disabled member. So it's actually pretty specific rather than mainstream. Housing stabilization vouchers. We partner with the Guidance Center on some SRO units for seriously mentally ill, and then I mentioned the foster youth to independence. Council, what you notice is not on this list is the emergency... Thank you, UHV. Emergency housing vouchers where HUD discontinued the funding early, and we came to you and said, can we shift these households to regular vouchers? Even though we were not able to issue vouchers, we were allowed by HUD to shift those households because of Charisse and her team's work. All of those households were shifted in a timely manner and will remain securely housed. They're no longer in danger of losing their housing subsidy because of HUD discontinuing the program. with that, I'm going to turn it over to the person who knows really how all of this works. Cherise.

Thank you. Mayor, vice mayor and council. Thanks for having us here today. Um, this is going to be a quick overview. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. Um, the housing choice voucher program is pretty simple. It starts from eligibility interview. Well, it starts from getting money from HUD, um, finding clients that are, are, in our community that need the assistance. Normally those are eligible low-income households. They're interviewed, they're screened, they're given a voucher, they're sent out into our wonderful public to fight for their right to get housing. They select a unit, the unit's inspected, and then we assist with subsidy. Most clients are responsible for 30% of their monthly adjusted income they are not allowed to pay more than 40%. That's a HUD regulation. Cause then after that, it's really not affordable. Um, and then the landlord receives a reliable government issue payment, and then they collect the, the, the tenants portion from that household. So that's kind of the quick overview of that. Um, these are HCV, which is housing trace voucher, landlord requirements, unit standards and contracts and how, um, and, uh, in a small view of how this works. So, Units must pass inspection in order for them to qualify for a client to move into that unit. This is a directive from HUD. Sometimes you may have clients that already live in that unit, and we have to go into that unit to make sure that that unit is under quality standards. And again, even if it's not, we are not allowed to assist until that unit is at quality standards. So our goal is to make sure that they have safe, sanitary, and stable housing. So that's our goal with the HQS. Again, failed items must be corrected. And this is after tenancy. So after about a year, we go back and we do inspections again. So we are required annually or biannually per HUD. We prefer to do it annually. But if units aren't up to date or up to standards, we can actually hold payment back. So we try to make sure to work with landlords to make sure, hey, you know, this light bulb is broken or this door is broken, and we've got to make sure that gets fixed. The Housing Authority and landlord, we execute a HAP contract, so that contract is very specific. They do get a tenancy addendum that says these are the rules and these are non-negotiable. So this comes from HUD. This says you are now a housing choice voucher landlord. These are the policies and requirements that you are required to follow. Um, if they sign that have contract that says that they have read that hopefully, and that they have agreed to those terms. Um, for most of our housing trades voucher program, we do require an initial, um, 1 year, um, tenancy. Um, and then during that time, the landlord is not allowed to make any changes. That is also part of our landlord tenant act. So during that 1st year. You're not allowed to change that, um, that rental amount or any terms to that lease. we are required to make sure that the units are rent reasonable. So that means like if I have a unit and I'm saying it's $2,100 and that's what I'm charging, but every unit that's similar in that area is $1,600. We want to know why. And we can deny that. We can say you're charging 2,100, but the other units that are similar within that area, it's usually within a one to five mile radius. So it's pretty, pretty big area. And if it doesn't fall within that, then we can say, hey, we need to bring that down a little bit. And they can decide not to rent. And that's completely a choice of the landlord.

Cherise, excuse me. Council Member Matthews has a question. Yes.

Cherise, thank you. Just for clarification, the landlord executes the HAP contract with Housing Authority. So can you just restate or clarify that? If I have a housing voucher and I'm a renter and I just go to the market, I can't just go to that landlord and say, would you take this and go apply? Can you just clarify that a little bit?

Yes. So the lease is different from the half contract. So if I'm a renter and I go to a landlord and I say, hey, I have a housing choice voucher, do you take this? They say, yes, I qualify. They run all basic checks. then that lease is then executed. The HAP contract is the housing assistance payment. That is the contract between the housing authority and that landlord. So that is what's executed saying that they agree to the terms of the housing authority. Do they do that first? No. The lease is always executed first. Thank you. Yeah. Rent increases require housing authority approval and must continue to meet the reasonable standards. every year they are asked if they would like to raise the rent. If they do, we do a lot of negotiating. Um, uh, I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd have to like ask people to like, can you lower your rent? Um, but it is very real. And, um, I'd probably say about 80% of the landlords that we work with are super wonderful and they will say, yes, let's do this. Let's lower the rent for you. Um, or let's include the utility so that we can get these people housed. So, um, we appreciate every landlord that does that. Um, however they may decline. So if we're saying, Hey, you know, this is what our payment standard is. And they say, well, I can't do that. That's too much. Then, you know, that's absolutely their choice to do that. Um, ongoing tenancy obligations. Um, so the landlord as an, and the tenant are both required to make sure that they notify us of any changes. If they're being evicted, if there's lease violations, Um, they have to follow, um, anything that's related, uh, especially for federal fair housing requirements, um, inspections. Um, it's really not a lot that the landlords have to do, um, except just, you know, just be that good landlord and the tenant of course has to be a good tenant. What landlords are not required to do is accept every voucher holder who applies. Like they don't have to do that. Um, we've had, we've had, you know, people put themselves out there and, And say, hey, you know, I'm a good renter. Would you like to, you know, be part of the housing choice voucher program? And you'd be amazed how many landlords if you just ask, you know, and explain the process. And we're very open to be like, hey, if they don't know what it's about, have them call us because we'd love to talk to them about it. They do not have to rent below market. They can decline and say, you know, we can't we can't make that adjustment for you. they are not required to waive any part of the lease terms. So if a garage is included and they're charging for it for every other tenant, just because they're a housing choice voucher holder, they can't say, oh, well, we'll waive that for you because we want every household to be, every renter to be fair, whether it's subsidized or unsubsidized and participate beyond the current HAP contract terms. So they can't go outside of the HAP contract and charge other things that's not already in the lease. Um, no on standard screening. And I think Sarah touched base to this, but, um, landlords retain the right to screen applicants as the same criteria applied to all applicants. So we, when we do eligibility interviews, we're not looking at, um, rental history, credit checks. We're not doing any of that. We are looking at criminal activity, um, sex offenders. So we are looking at those basic, um, screenings, but other than that, every landlord is required or should. do every subsidized and unsubsidized criteria when someone applies the same. Payment standards. So every year around September, HUD comes out with these magical numbers and says, hey, this is what your fair market rents are. And then we say, OK, well, they give us the opportunity to go 90% to 110% over that. there was a period of time where we were able to go 120% over that. And we were just, we were paying a lot because we wanted to keep up with the market. And then as of recently, this past year, the last two years, they said you can't do that anymore, but you can do the max at 110. So we take advantage and we're like, we're doing the 110%. So we want to make sure that, because like if you see the two bedroom is what they usually use as a standard. And so they're saying that the fair market rent within Coconino County is 1921. And so, correct me if I'm wrong, they're using Coconino County. Yeah, it's all of Coconino County. So if you know Coconino County and the cities that reside in Coconino County, that's like not fair. Because then you're using like cities, like the biggest municipality, and then you have all these other small cities like Williams and Fredonia, you know, all these really small towns. So we do take advantage and go 110% over that. And if you want to know what a payment standard is, that's just the maximum monthly amount that we can pay towards someone's unit. So if it's a two-bedroom household, then they qualify for the two-bedroom voucher. And that payment standard would be 2113. For us, it includes utilities. So when we are out there, we're asking people, make sure that when you're out there searching, if its utilities are not included, we kind of have to bump it down and say, that means you're looking at a unit that's about anywhere between $1,700 and $1,850, depending on what those utilities are. So if that's what we're looking at, and if they're telling us that the fair market rate is $1,921, that's over what we are projecting that most of our clients can look for. Local impact. So like Sarah said, we have about 557... plus or minus vouchers. We have about 121 participating landlords. And then in 2024, we were averaging about $600,000 paid monthly to local landlords on behalf of our participants. What is utilization? So Sarah touched base. It is a balancing act because they say these, you have 557 vouchers. We're giving you so much money and you have to figure out how you're going to do that. And so as a cost saving measure, and I just want to throw this out there because what we've had to do as of late is we were doing like mid-month move outs, you know, and we were paying two months rent. Like we would pay 10, like the last 10 days in one unit and then a full month in the other unit while we paid the full month in one unit that this one person or client was in. So we had to change that so that we could save a little money because we knew that HUD was saying you need to figure out how to save money. And so we had to move to only leasing up at the first of the month. which for us is kind of, is kind of good because the money that we get from HUD, it says, if you can lease up at the first of the month, you're going to get money for that month. If we lease up at the 15th or the 20th, you're not going to get money for that, or you won't get the admin fee for that. And the admin fee is what pays like our salaries. That's important. Um, but it is an ever changing market. And so, um, they are using two year old data. Um, if they could just catch up, I think would be great. But side note though, um, The fair market rents and what HUD has projected, it's coming to very close. Because I know that Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona does a study, I think it's every year? Every year. And in the past few years, you can see it doesn't, it's still costly, but it doesn't cost as much to be able to rent a unit. You still need a two-parent home or a two-family unit or two working families or however you want to say that to be able to afford it. a decent unit in Flagstaff. And federal budgets are decided months into the funding year. This is our utilization. So for over the past 15 years, we have been at 98% or more for utilization. Our issuance to move in, this just kind of varies on the year and the times of the year and how we're leasing up. when we were issuing vouchers, um, it, it averaged about from zero to 60 days, it was about 60%, um, issuance to move in. So that was pretty good for us. Um, and then 10 to 15% of vouchers issuance lease in place, not just means they've already lived there. Um, like say you may have clients at Sandstone, they already lived there, they got the voucher now they're being assisted. So, um, our wait list is open. Uh, we do currently have about almost, close to 3000 on our wait list. We do have a preference. So that means that 950 of those clients, um, would come, would, would be, would be, um, service first, um, because they have that preference because they live or work in Flagstaff. Um, average wait times, uh, depend. Um, we do have local preference except for those mainstream vouchers. And then our wait list is about right now, about 18 to 36 months.

Can you say again what the mainstream vouchers are?

Yeah, mainstream vouchers are designed to aid families that have an individual that is disabled between the ages of 18 and under 62. And they just have to qualify under that. Any questions? That was a lot.

Thank you, Sharice. I want to go back and hit on one thing, if I can. You see how long the waiting list is, even with the 950 residents. And our annual turnover is about 11%, which means annually we only issue about 61 vouchers a year. That number can vary, but it's been right in that neighborhood of 11% for quite a while. And so, we really only issue about 61 vouchers per year. And the other piece is the housing assistant budget utilization. You see that it goes to 104 percent. How do we do that? Why? Why do we do that? Because it is a terrifying balancing act. How does somebody give up a voucher? Sometimes folks pass away. Sometimes they move out of our community and leave the voucher behind. Sometimes they go into default with their lease and they lose their voucher. It's completely unpredictable. We don't know for month to month how many vouchers are going to be surrendered that we may be able to then issue back out. So it is this balancing act where HUD scores us on this utilization and we must be at 98% and above to remain a high performer. but we don't know from month to month who's going to, or how many we're going to have to do. So it truly is this. So sometimes we do what's called over-issue because we're anticipating that folks will roll off the program and then they don't. So when we're over-issued, we wait until we have some folks roll off the program. So then we're down to the number where we're supposed to be. So don't worry about that 104%. We do manage within it and we are not overspent or in shortfall. Okay, let's talk about the policy landscape for source of income protection. So, federal law, source of income is not a federally protected class. HUD encourages but does not mandate that localities adopt source of income protections, and complaints can be filed with the HUD Fair Housing Office or referred to the state fair housing agency. In Arizona, we do not have statewide source of income protections. However, 23 states plus DC have enacted statewide source of income protections as of January 2025. So that's about six months old, could be higher. In Arizona, the source of income protections where they are enacted are established by local ordinance, not by state law. So local adoption. Arizona law preempts all municipalities except Phoenix and Tucson from adopting local fair housing ordinances. Three Arizona cities have enacted these protections by ordinance. Those cities are Phoenix, Tucson, and Tempe. Some cities have adopted supplementary ordinances that prohibit housing discrimination, not source of income, but these only impose small penalties for violations. The Fair Housing Act, excuse me, filing a claim with the state agency Attorney General or the Federal Department of Justice is the most powerful tool for prohibiting discrimination and providing relief. When someone calls our office with a fair housing complaint, we refer them to agencies within the state that specialize in these complaints. So, for the localities that have adopted such ordinances, the scope, enforcement mechanisms, and exemptions vary by jurisdiction. They are almost as unique as they are numerous. For example, we're not going to discuss this. However, Council, if you do suggest that we come back to you with an ordinance drafted, these are the types of things that we're going to be seeking answers on in order to craft something. Which landlords are subject to the ordinance? Which income types are protected? What enforcement mechanisms would we use? Types of penalties, education and outreach, exemptions? It is not as simple as you can't do this. We would have to go through a process in order to determine these types of things. Options for council consideration. So, factors to consider in making a decision. Are voucher holders currently able to obtain housing? Are Flagstaff residents experiencing source of income discrimination? Are there concerns from landlords? Will a source of income ordinance cause an increase in some rents? Why would that be on here? Charisse mentioned our payment standard. That is how much a voucher is worth. We can't go above that, except in very, very limited circumstances. If a landlord does not want to accept a voucher, they can establish their rents above what that voucher is worth and then say, it's not that we don't accept the voucher, it's that your voucher doesn't meet our rents. And so therefore, They're not turning down because of the source of income. They're turning it down because the voucher isn't worth enough to meet the rent for that unit. City time and expense to implement a new program, including education, outreach and enforcement. Any risks related to the adoption of an ordinance and anything else? Options for council consideration. You can direct staff to not draft an ordinance. or to not draft an ordinance but provide educational outreach to landlords in the community about source of income discrimination. We could draft a source of income supplementary housing discrimination ordinance and provide an estimate of anticipated cost of implementation, or you could provide us with other direction. Staff is not making a recommendation for your consideration under this matter. And I'd be happy to answer any questions or punt to Charisse if they're technical and not for me.

Councilmember Garcia.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Sarah, for coming up here and responding to the citizens petition. Nice work. Can you go back two slides? Appreciate that. So you said I heard something in between your words, and I want to see if I was correct in that how do I phrase this? So even if we did a source of income, um, amendment, there's other ways that landlords could opt to stay kind of stay away from the program. Is there a, is there a fear, not a fear, but is there an understanding that this is the type of stuff that happens to combat these type of amendments that we could make for sorts of income?

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Garcia, there are programs across the nation that we can point to where this has been the result. First source of income protection started in California in the 70s, and that was the type of behavior that happened immediately was rents went up and then they don't qualify. If someone does not want to rent to a voucher holder, There are lots of ways around it. You create criteria that does not violate fair housing discrimination pieces. Your rents are higher than what the voucher is worth. You set your, so quite often apartment complexes will have a ratio of, you must make three times the rent in order to qualify to live in the unit. And even if they don't, if they take the voucher into consideration, that voucher is, um, premised on a 30%, um, rent to income proportion. So they changed their criteria to be 3.5%. You have to make 3.5% of the income, which would wash out voucher holders. There's a number of ways that it could happen. Um, I don't want to catastrophize or say, this is what's going to happen. I want to help people be aware that if a landlord does not want to participate, there are other ways. Um, around just saying, I'm not going to accept vouchers on their other mechanisms that they will apply equally across the board to all tenants that they lease to that then exclude voucher holders. We're not seeing that in our community now. Um, it's not something that we're seeing. Um, it is something that we have seen happen in other communities in, um, bigger cities where you can drive to qualify or you have suburbs or you have, um. Phoenix, but you can then go Renton Chandler. Those things are different. Up here, there's not another option.

Yeah, thank you for answering that question so candidly. And I wasn't asking you that question to shine the light on you to answer it. It was mainly because during doing my research, I found that that was one of the larger downsides is ways for voucher holders to kind of get priced out of the process. and actually lose ground in voucher holders in certain places historically that has, that they have evidence of. So, uh, I appreciate that. So do we, um, participate in the fair housing act under the voucher system that we use now?

Absolutely. We're federally required to do so. Um, April wasn't too long ago. We had a number of events including education, et cetera. We host landlord events. Um, and all of our, everything we put out has the fair housing logo on it as reminders, et cetera.

And I heard it laced in the presentation. Um, but I'm not sure if it is a direct correlation to the fair housing act, but you said that the, uh, source of income protections can be filed through HUD. Is that part of the fair housing yet?

Source of income protection is not part of fair fair housing act. However, anybody can bring a discrimination complaint. for really any purpose to be investigated. However, it is not one of the seven protected classes.

Oh, okay. So that's why we have it here today in front of us, I think. Okay. So let's see here. Has your department experienced issues with source of income discrimination to date through people complaining? If so, how did you deal with it with your department?

Thank you for the question. We went back and looked at logs back to 2022. We discovered that we had two phone calls discussing possible source of income protection discrimination. One was not when we got into the details, and the other was possible, but the caller declined to share enough information with us for us to determine if it was or not. requested no follow-up okay I just have two more questions so hang tight Charisse anecdotally Charisse do we have folks coming in regularly unable to use their vouchers based on not being able to find a place she shook her head and said no for those that can't see her okay and I went outside the departments to do investigative work and met with folks that are also in the field in our region

And they told a similar story where there was a couple of occasions that may or may not have risen to a source of income complaint that could actually be either verified or justified or followed through with to the point of making a difference up till now, which is neither here nor there. It's just part of the context. All right. This is tied to the previous question. No, it's not. If council decides to move forward with the amendment to the 2013 Civil Rights Ordinance to include source of income, how do you envision this amendment for you to be tasked to write it? And what do we currently have on the books that is addressing the issues that the source of income petition is asking us to look into?

Excuse me, I'm picking through your, I'm finding the question.

So I noticed that you said that we're going to have, so maybe you could just walk us through kind of what you envision as the process of if we move this forward. Are we going to have another work session where council battles out the list of questions that you had up? Is that the next step in the process to where we write this as a community? Do we hand it off simply to the housing department and say, since you're the experts, figure out what you need to do and bring it back. Just walk us through the next steps if we were to move forward with this.

Mayor, vice mayor, council member Garcia, that's a fun question. It could go a number of different directions. depending on what council directed us to do. If you directed us to create an ordinance, we would come back to you with, that would be option three, where we would come back to you with a draft and also an estimate of the anticipated cost of implementation, as well as what that process could look like. Right now, there is not a mechanism within the housing division or within the city itself where this could be plopped easily

into an existing enforcement structure cool so you also mentioned budged on the last one to an extent and that was my next question i guess it was probably more to the city manager's office and that's how would implementing this amendment um affect the current makeup of the department what would we have to do to expand the department or would we be pushing more responsibilities into the current placeholders of our department or the current workforce of our department to be able to carry this out as far as enforcement and processing and the like.

Mayor Council and Council Member Garcia, I think we would need to come back you know, under number three and provide an estimate of anticipated cost. But I do see a cost with enforcing and making sure that we have staff available to do the enforcement. I think I would liken it to, you know, some of the things that we have in Stacey's division related to minimum wage compliance. but that's something that we would need to discuss internally and bring back.

If I may add, when the City of LA put theirs in place, they did not create a mechanism to follow up. They put it in place and were relying on others to bring enforcement action on behalf of folks complaining and found that that didn't work by putting the onus out on nonprofits and they ended up contracting with someone in order to do the follow-up on their behalf because they were, um, they were sued for their lack of enforcement action because they were depending on others at the time. So it would be something we would want to approach very carefully and make sure that we have the ability to enforce effectively and meaningfully anything that we put into place.

Thank you. And I told you too, but that spawned another question. And that is probably to the city manager again. Um, so, Do we know, like, would we have to take away from the HUD funds in order to finance this other person? Would we take it out of the general fund? How would we get the money if we needed to increase staff for this project?

Mayor and Council, I can speak to the HUD funds because this is not part of the federal fair housing protections. We would have a hard time justifying using existing HUD funds to enforce a local ordinance.

Thank you for that.

Council Member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. Sarah, go back to the slide where you showed the 2935 voucher on the waiting list. So I was just confused on identified residency preference, the 950. Can you explain that a little bit?

Absolutely. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Member Matthews, anybody can apply to be on the waiting list. We have a local preference, meaning we hope we house local residents first before others from outside our jurisdiction. And so we ask on, um, the base application, do you live in endless stars that codes as our service area? So 950 of those almost 3000 households have said they live within our area now. This is one of the areas where when you hit the top of the list and we usually take 25 households at a time and invite them in for further eligibility interviews, we have quite a number that have declared, yes, we live in your region. And when they get to the top of the list, they don't. It could be that they did when they applied. It could be that they checked that box hoping to get in faster, et cetera. But you have to prove that you live here. And so we have quite a few people that wash out at that point. But if we take it purely on its face, 950 of the almost 3,000 on the waiting list say that they live in our service area without verification.

So I remember a conversation I had with a voucher holder that was coming from Oregon and wanting to relocate here and having an Oregon voucher. Is that kind of the scenario we're talking about to the other 2035?

It's not. That is a more complex element of the voucher program. As a voucher holder, you have the ability to do to port and the program is called portability so that folks are not stuck in a community because of that's where their voucher is. Vouchers are attached to people, not housing units. So you can take your voucher anywhere in the U.S. that has a housing authority. Anywhere in the U.S. that has a housing authority, you port to that housing authority. Your home housing authority continues to pay your rent while you are in the other jurisdiction while the housing authority in that jurisdiction provides the annual recertification, the inspections, et cetera. And so, to make it even more fun, housing authorities can absorb that and say, okay, now that's ours, which frees up one of ours. It's another part of that balancing act that we talk about of, and there's kind of a handshake deal around Arizona as far as absorbing vouchers near the end of the year. Because our funding is based on our utilization on December 30th. And if we had ported a bunch of people to Phoenix and then Phoenix absorbed them to make their numbers go up, then our numbers would be down. So we have a handshake piece of no late year absorptions. But what you're talking about, the household from Oregon, is they could come here. Their housing authority in Oregon would continue to pay their subsidy, but we would serve as the voucher.

Thank you. And one last question right now. Um, if, if when somebody comes and gets qualified as a voucher, you're not vetting those future renters on other qualifications, credit, and you're just, our department just issues a voucher based on income eligibility, um, overall for the voucher. And then when they go and seek, um, a place to rent, they still have, that's when they qualify, be it credit, any other criteria that the landlord may have. Is that correct?

When they identify a unit to rent, that is when the landlord's eligibility criteria would be applied. I'm going to let Cherise answer the question as to whether we check how deep we go on portability or if we accept the income verification from the other agency. That's a little too detailed.

I just meant anybody coming in for a voucher, not out of town ones.

Oh, anybody coming in.

Yeah, to get a voucher issued, like I come in and apply, I need assistance in rent. All our department is looking at is income-based, and if they qualify, we're not looking at if they have credit, if they have other issues that maybe disqualify them when they go out in the market and try to rent a place, correct?

Yes, that is correct. Outside of criminal activity, because we also check for criminal activity. And the sex offender. And sex offender.

Vice Mayor. Right now, my question was answered. Thank you. Council Member House.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sharice. I think this question might be for Sharice. I know from experience that the, our housing authority has done a lot of work to establish strong working relationships with property owners and management companies that work with the housing choice voucher program. I'm wondering what, if any conversations the team has had with property owners and managers about why, who are not participating in the program about their rationale for not participating or not accepting vouchers, um, or any conversations about perceived or known impacts of SOI ordinances.

Thank you for the question. Um, mayor, vice mayor and council member house. Um, we do hold landlord briefings every year with the anticipation that current landlords and, um, landlords that are interested or have questions would attend. And unfortunately, that is the attendance is very, very low. As far as I've recently had a few conversations with a couple of landlords that own various properties around the city that have become interested in offering their units for housing for our housing choice voucher. And in those conversations, most of the concerns were well, if I rent to this person, they're going to damage and who's going to pay for that. Or, you know, unfortunately we don't have the funding to be able to help landlords, you know, if they have tenants that were just unruly. However, my answer to those comments are usually, or mostly are you screen your tenants. So you are responsible for making sure that they are, that you have that comfortability with them, that they pass your screening and it's equal across the board. Um, not a lot of landlords that I have spoken to are aware or have any concerns of SOI. Um, so that was very interesting when this topic came up, um, to, you know, as I was diving in and trying to figure out where is this coming from? Um, because it just wasn't anything that I've been seeing. Um, we, we work with, um, there is a apartment complex that, um, takes our vouchers, but again, as Sarah had mentioned earlier, they kind of cap out on what the rents are, and so we are unable to send our voucher holders there. We don't stop them from going because some of our veterans may be able to qualify because their payment standards are a little higher. But to answer your question, hopefully I answered it correctly, is that no, I have not heard or have had any deep conversations with landlords about SOI And then main concerns are just, you know, what if I have an unruly tenant? What am I going to do with that?

Thank you very much.

Before we take public comment, I have a question. So we've received some emails that have this statistic And it says, every year, SOI discrimination contributes to 30% of Flagstaff Section 8 housing vouchers expiring. And that's the equivalent of 176 voucher holders losing their vouchers each year. Where does that number come from?

I can only guess based on math is that there was 30% of our total number of vouchers. However, we only issue around 60 vouchers a year. And I'm guessing it's this, I'm pointing at my screen, which is not helpful for any of you to see anything I'm doing. The success rate of 70% locally is the rate of issued vouchers that result in a lease versus 60% nationally. So I'm guessing based on basic mathing. However, what I can tell you is that there are a number of reasons that folks do not lease up when they have a voucher. The first one and the one that where folks wash out the most is that they don't have the money for the deposit. That is what we hear back from people the most. We do have a modest deposit assistance program for some households that qualify, but most households that end up not leasing up are because they don't have the funding necessary to pay their deposit. Other reasons would be that we've had some households who have chosen not to make the time to go seek new housing. And they call us and say, well, you haven't found me anything. I'm like, no, we've talked about this. This is yours. People decide they don't want to deal with all our paperwork because it's not easy to maintain a voucher. We're going to crawl into your finances every single year. So, they choose to live with a roommate instead of obtain a unit on their own. Some move out of town. I mean, the reasons are vast, but the primary reason we see vouchers expire um, between being issued and being leased up is a lack of, um, deposit. And if I said down payment earlier, that's just my brain, but deposit on a rental unit, not down payment.

Okay. And so that voucher expires for that person, but it's not taking the voucher out of the community. Okay.

Marijuana voucher expires. It means that that household, has their time to utilize that voucher for themselves has expired, and then we issue it to a different household.

Okay. And is there any community assistance for deposits and down payments and all of that? Besides, you said we have a modest amount. Are there other agencies that have it?

Mayor, Coconino County Community Services has a deposit assistance program. I believe St. Vincent de Paul has a deposit assistance program. Ours is a revolving fund for very low-income households that we were able to establish with some of our COVID money. We were able to set aside and create a small revolving fund for very low-income households. Sharice is going to know more than I do on this one. or did I cover it? You were just supporting me. All right. She's supporting me. Yes, there are community agencies. However, there's never enough funding. And so quite often community services will be out of funding by the second of the month. Um, if people waiting for funding on the first, that funding's allocated and it's done. So it's a, it's a tough piece. I'm sorry. Yeah.

I did want to add that, um, Flagstaff shelter services, and they partner with the Continuum of Care, and sometimes they have extra funding, and we attend those Continuum of Care meetings every Thursday, or when we can, every Thursday, and they put out there, hey, we have funding available, let your people know. And so it's good to have that Continuum of Care because then we're able to get out there in the community and say, hey, you don't qualify for our deposit program, but go here, because then you may qualify there.

And when you've talked about the success rate previously, there's been information about, and maybe it's not the success rate, maybe it's the utilization rate that I'm thinking of, the 98%. And I believe that you said this earlier, it's not 100% because people are moving in, people are moving out, people...

right there are if you were at a hundred percent there would be a possibility of going over the amount of money that we have for vouchers is that does that sum it up mayor that that's close sometimes we're over a hundred percent recently we were at a hundred and we won't say how high um but we we were over leased because we were trying to strike that balance sometimes that number is over 100 That's why HUD's standard for measurement of a high performing agency is that you're over 98%. The other thing that goes into that utilization calculation is that you have not overspent your funds. So if you're over 98%, but you've overspent your budget authority, then you are not a high performer. And so it is at 98% or higher, and you have not overspent your budget authority.

now hopping back to the previous question so contributes to thirty percent of flagstaff section eight housing vouchers expiring and that's the equivalent of a hundred and seventy six voucher holders losing their vouchers each year can you I understand the math and I understand the 70 percent. Was that on the previous slide or the slide after this? But does 70 percent locally equate to what this says with 30 percent expiring and 176 voucher holders losing their vouchers every year?

Mayor, members of council, we don't have 176 households losing vouchers annually. I'm going to refer you to our turnover rate, where our max numbers are around 11 percent, which is 61 issued every year. That is, that takes into account surrendered vouchers. So, it's not, I'm having a hard time answering the question because what you're reading me is not factually correct. And so, I'm trying to figure out how to fit it in. But the success rate is the rate of vouchers once issued that result in a lease. We only issue about 60 vouchers a year. And so, there can't be 137 losing their vouchers due to this because we only issue approximately 61 a year. Now, we haven't issued a voucher since last March based on HUD guidance and federal budget uncertainty. However, these numbers are based on when federal funding is not quite so nebulous.

Okay, thank you. I think it's finally clicking.

We can go through it again if you want, because I'm not sure that I answered correctly.

Did anyone on council have that same question? Oh, you did, okay. And it was answered. Okay, good, thank you. So I'm gonna take public comment and then we'll come back to council. So thanks very much for that presentation and answering our questions. Michelle James.

Hello, Mayor and Council. I'm Michelle James, Executive Director, Friends of Flagstaff's Future. F-CUBES supports the citizen proposal to amend Flagstaff's 2013 Civil Rights Ordinance to include protections for source of income. We urge adoption of this proposal to make it illegal for landlords to reject prospective tenants or alter lease terms based on how they legally pay their rent. Federal Fair Housing protections do not include source of income, as we've just learned, as a protected class. Therefore, it's up to cities and states to do this. And multiple national organizations, including the National Fair Housing Alliance, National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Equal Rights Center, the NAACP, actively advocate for legislation banning source of income discrimination. The proposal in front of you today provides a legal means for Flagstaff to address discrimination in housing based on a person's income. Adoption of an amendment to the city's civil rights ordinance to include SOI would prohibit housing discrimination based on how individuals receive their income, whether through government assistance such as housing vouchers, child support, alimony, social security, disability benefits, or any other lawful means. Preventing SOI discrimination is included in the Flagstaff's 10-year housing plan. The city of Tempe, Arizona, legally bypassed the Arizona Fair Housing State statutes by incorporating source of income protection as a recognized protected class under the city's broader non-discrimination and human relations ordinance. This occurred over two years ago, and it has not been legally challenged. This seems to me to prove that cities are not preempted by the state from adopting local fair housing ordinances, as stated also in a legal opinion by Arizona Attorney General Chris Mayes. Council has the ability to enact a positive change via a simple amendment to the Flagstaff 2013 Civil Rights Ordinance. We urge you to take this step and join the more than 100 other cities in the country that have chosen to protect and expand housing options for their residents. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Michelle.

Kyle Nitzke.

Good evening, Mayor Daggett, Vice Mayor Sweet, and Council. My name is Kyle Nitzke. I am here today on behalf of myself. I want to speak to a very narrow point of the housing discrimination ordination, and it's really what Michelle said about the legal stuff. I think we regularly get some very conservative legal opinions from our city attorney here, I think that's fine because of our history of the plastic bag ban and the state going after us on the minimum wage. And there's reasons to listen to that conservative legal opinion at times. I think this is one of these issues where we've seen the city of Tempe and the attorney general speak out on this. I don't think that this should be a reason that you guys don't move forward with the source of income housing discrimination. Also, I've just learned a ton from housing staff over this these last 20 or 30 minutes. So I don't know if this is the right decision going forward, but I had some questions that I kind of raised throughout it. One, for me, the source of income protection issue that we have in the city is around our students and student housing. Is there a way we can write a source of income protection to protect our students? And I don't know if that's whatever. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. Number two was I think where there are not protections or any protections are around sexual orientation and identity. I had a friend who had a trans flag who, I don't know if they lost their lease or just getting renewed, but I think that's somewhere we could put some protections in on the city. And then my third piece was that deposit assistance program. I think looking into expansion for that seems like a way that maybe we can address some of this source of income stuff. So I pushed the council to continue looking into that. And that's where I've got. Thanks for your time.

I have a couple questions for you, please. What was the third thing that you said?

That was brought up by the housing staff. The deposit assistance program.

Deposit.

Okay.

That sounded like a cool idea. That was a reason that folks weren't able to use these vouchers because they didn't have deposit money. And with our housing bond, maybe we can help that out.

And then you said that you, you see a problem with students. Is that like scholarship money or right?

Like could stuff be written into protect about that? Cause I, I see, you know, when I was looking for rental stuff, like no students in certain places and you know, I, I understand why, whatever. I don't know. Yeah. It's something about, I don't know. I haven't thought, you know.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks.

Ace Overman.

Hello, mayor and council members today, I'm asking you to take a clear. And devices stand against discrimination in our community. I'm asking you say yes to fairness, yes to dignity and yes to housing opportunity by directing staff to draft a measure that prohibits source of income discrimination here in Flagstaff. This is not a symbolic measure. It affects real people every year. As we went over earlier, about 30 percent of Flagstaff's housing vouchers expire. Family, seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans who lose their chance of stable housing simply because they cannot secure a lease in time. Source income discrimination is a major contributor. As stated by the National Fair Housing Alliance, it is the most common form of housing discrimination in the country. And you'll hear from my friend Rick later on, case manager, that he has seen this happen here in Flagstaff. If we say we want to protect and enhance the equality for all life as in our city mission, then we must mean all. That means stepping in when discrimination blocks people from something as basic as a home. Prohibiting source income discrimination would bring real benefits, fewer expired vouchers, faster access to stable housing, better access to jobs and resources, more diverse neighborhoods, reduce inequality, and making affordable housing more accessible. This measure is already identifying the city's 10-year housing plan as a way to move barriers and protect residents it also lines of the housing divisions mission mission to address housing needs and expand opportunities for our community. Flagstaff has a rock has a rare opportunity to support its most vulnerable residents cities like Scottsdale Chandler Glendale Tolson Sedona Winslow and Tempe all of the population under 350,000 has straightened had strengthened their non discriminating non discrimination ordinances to prohibit lgbtq plus discrimination housing. Tempe has gone further by prohibiting source income discrimination specifically. None of these cities have faced any legal challenges from the state. Flagstaff can follow their same clear legal path by amending its 2013 civil rights ordinance. Across the country, 16 states and more than 100 cities, Democrat and Republican, have taken this step, and it works. Tucson reduced unused vouchers from over 300 to under 200. Phoenix dropped from 503 to 171, and Tempe went from 102 to just 4. When discrimination goes down, housing stability goes up. I know STAT has raised concerns about potential rent increases or administrative burdens, but in speaking with other Arizona cities, none reported higher rents as a result of these protections, and the policy has caused them little to nothing. So I ask you, if you have any more questions about implementation regarding this or legal, talk to Tempe City staff. Talk to Attorney General Chris May's office and plainly ask them, how can we do this like you did? Thank you.

I have a question for you, please. You said something about decreasing something in different cities and you listed some percentages.

Yeah, so that was their... That was their vouchers on the street, their unused vouchers.

There are cities who have unused vouchers?

Yes. It was their vouchers that go expired. So I referenced that here in the city of Flagstaff, you were asking staff about this earlier, that 30% become expired. That was the cases in D-City. And now they see that expiration go down quite considerably ever since they've implemented source of income protections.

Okay, so you're not saying that they go unused?

Yeah, I should have phrased it better. They're expiration rate lowered. So, yeah, they still get used, but they're expiration rate lowered.

Okay, okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And Councilmember Garcia has a question for you.

Thank you, Ace, for spearheading this project. We've been working together for a year or more now on this project. So I feel like I can be candid and vulnerable with you in asking tough questions. If it comes across as something that you don't want to ask, it's understandable. But it's because of our relationship that I feel I could ask this question. So we got a canned or a form email basically by a lot of residents. And it's a little doom and gloomy when I read it. And I wonder if you could speak to the author's phrasing of just the first statement. Could you or do you not know who the author was? Can you read the first statement potentially? Yeah, it just says, I urge you, speaking of the city council, to end source of income discrimination in housing and flagstaff. And if you could speak to that, what basis do you have to say that it's actually happening?

Well, you'll hear from a case manager here shortly who has met with some of you that has seen source of income discrimination really take place here in Flagstaff. They are a case manager. They've worked with people. Again, I don't want to steal all this public comment, but he has seen and he has had called up apartment complexes and they've told them they don't accept Section 8 vouchers. That's source of income discrimination right there. It wasn't because of their rent being too high or anything like that. It was because they don't want to take those people of that type of income. And I also do want to speak that it is a little hard to really determine how much of this is going on in the city. Other cities have done studies before implementing this type of policy. A really good one happened in New Orleans. They did a study. They called up apartment complex. Instead of people coming to them, they went to the source of the problem. And they called various apartment complexes and just simply said, like, hey, I have a person here who has a Section 8 voucher holder. Would you be willing to take that? And the apartment complex would say no. And so I think it's, again, telling stories about discrimination because, one, people don't realize that they're being discriminated against. Two, it technically is a legal form of discrimination. So that makes it even harder for people to, like, what's the point of even speaking about this? So I think, again... I'm just going off with the National Fair Housing Alliance also says that it's the most common form of housing discrimination we see in across the nation today.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah. So I, did that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah, it really did. And it was just, um, so I had been doing a lot of research over the past week on this myself and, and well, over the last year, but really, um, going into different places with my research over the last week. And, um, I'm struggling to see the way that this email was worded seems a lot more doom and gloom than what I'm actually experiencing myself. So there's a lot of people that signed onto that email, and I'm wondering if they did any of their own investigating before they put their name on it. And it was just a point of reference so I can contextualize the conversation for myself. So thank you, Ace.

Yeah. And again, real quick, like, yeah, I know Flagstaff is housing staff, and the housing staff is doing a great job here. We have nearly 100% utilization rate with our vouchers. And so it is not all doom and gloom here when it comes to housing. But I think, again, prohibiting source income discrimination is a small tool, but we need all the tools that are available to us to address the affordable housing crisis here in Flagstaff. Thank you. Welcome.

Thank you, Ace. Tyler Denham.

Hi there. My name is Tyler Denim. I'm speaking today as a private resident, so wearing that hat. I support adopting a source of income non-discrimination policy and appreciate the work done by Flagstaff residents to bring this forward. Beyond that statement of support, I would like to hear more about the mechanism by which Tempe was able to pass a source of income non-discrimination policy and how that could potentially work for Flagstaff. Also, to the extent that there are diverging opinions about the legality of source of income non-discrimination, could the city add support for clarifying bill language to its list of priorities to support at the state legislator? I'm thinking something similar to what it does for short-term rental regulations, where it passes a list of legislative priorities to the League of Cities and Towns. And yeah, that's all. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Tyler. Rick Michaels.

Hello, Council.

Hello, Mayor. My name is Rick Michaels. I'm a case manager with Coconino County Health and Human Services, and I'm here just to kind of speak on my own experience and what I've seen with my clients. I have seen two specific cases of source of income discrimination throughout my time as a case manager, which has been in the past three years. One, a client had a Section 8 voucher. Their apartment complex decided that they did not want to accept that voucher any longer, and so the client had to find a new place to live. When I was trying to help the client find housing, I would call landlords, both larger complexes as well as smaller landlords, And I would ask if they would be willing to rent to somebody with a Section 8 voucher. I would explain the process for that, how that would work. And in many cases, I heard excuses such as, no, we don't accept those types of vouchers. And in some cases, even folks saying we don't work with those types of people. I have another client who received a housing voucher through a nonprofit, well, not a nonprofit, through a federally funded program. For folks living with HIV, that was not made known to the landlord, just that they were going to have their housing paid for for at least two years. The landlord said that, no, they did not want to work with anyone receiving government assistance. That might sound like not that many to clients. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but at the time, my caseload was about 40 clients. So that's about 5% of my caseload. Out of that caseload, only about 10 of those clients were receiving some form of housing assistance. So if you break it down to those numbers, two out of 10, that's actually 20% of clients on just one case manager's caseload. So that's just one case manager, one caseload. I've heard similar stories from other colleagues. I think importantly, in both of these cases, the clients did not feel comfortable filing a complaint because there was no legislation locally that they could point to that made them feel confident in coming forward, especially since, as has been referred earlier, it's not a protected category under HUD, and it is an area that people can kind of get away with. I do get that this would not solve the problem overnight. This is one thing, but as a case manager, and I'm sure other social workers would concur when we're helping our clients try to find housing, having something in writing that we can point to would be tremendously helpful. The stakes are relatively low for something like this. I think that very worst case we could withdraw it if there ever is a complaint. But I don't think that's it's a pretty low hanging fruit. And I don't think that there's an excuse really to not pass this given that Tempe was able to do the same. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, go ahead, Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Rick. And thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I asked you this during our meeting. I just want to clarify, your colleagues, do you all talk about your caseload and how many they have looked into regarding this? I know you talked about your two. Just wondering if you can expand on that.

It's a good question. I mean, obviously we're limited in what we can discuss with other case managers in regard to our clients. In terms of, like, you know, numbers from them, I haven't heard, like, but definitely at least a handful in each case, which, you know, considering that each case manager probably has around anywhere from 30. Sometimes if it's really, you know, a heavy caseload, like 80, that's still a pretty good chunk of folks. So, yeah.

Thank you. Council Member Garcia has a question for you.

Thank you. And thank you, Rick. It's good to see you again. I had a learning that we already have some protections through HUD to where they can reach out to HUD as long as it's, you know, underneath that umbrella of funding. I think I'm saying that right. If it was HUD, if I'm not, they can correct me. Do you know in specifics if these two cases that you spoke about could have been dealt with through the HUD system?

So that's a good question. I mean, yeah, there is a process for a complaint, but since it's not a protected category, nothing would really come out of that. The client in both cases looked into it and said that they didn't want to because of that.

Okay, so it was going to be they just didn't want to, or there's going to be too much work for them to have to deal with.

I mean, for, yeah, that's partially it. But then the other side of that is, you know, they don't want to go through all that work just to be told no.

Yeah. I think that's a really, um, important illustration. Thank you.

I have a quick question too. Um, you attend the continuum of care meetings. I'm, I'm guessing. Okay. Great. And, um, I'm wondering, have all of the housing experts, our staff, and everyone else who serves people in Flagstaff, have you all had a conversation about this particular issue?

Not within the COC recently. Lately, my caseload went up quite a bit, so I haven't been able to attend the last two. That may have been brought up, but at least since I have been now. And it's not to say that that's not a topic on folks' mind there, but yeah.

Okay. And have you ever spoken to our staff about it?

About source of income?

Yeah. And just problems, the problems that you've illustrated here.

Yeah, leading up to this, I had the chance to meet with a couple staff members and was able to explain sort of what I have seen in my line of work. Yeah.

Great. I'm just looking for all of us who are involved in this issue to be, not just this particular issue, but just all of the housing, any obstacle to housing for people in Flagstaff. And so I'm glad to see... people talking to each other so that we make sure that we're all aware of the resources that are available and the problems that are out there.

Right.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Crystal Diaz.

Mayor and council members. Thank you for moving this citizen petition forward for discussion tonight. ACE has done a lot of work over the last 10 months in reviewing legal approaches, collecting signatures, talking with Flagstaff residents and leadership, and even reaching out to the staff of other Arizona cities. While source of income is not a federally protected class for housing like race, sex, and national origin, residents who use vouchers or government assistance also face systemic discrimination. A housing case manager has confirmed that such cases do occur, and more may likely go unreported due to the current legality of source of income discrimination. We're not just talking about voucher holders, I know that comes up a lot, but also people with disability and social security income, court-mandated payments, and so on. The Council can make this small effort to prevent future cases. It has been six years since the city declared a housing emergency and four years since the adoption of our 10-year housing plan, a plan that we know seeks to expand fair housing protections. I'd say it's about time we take this next step toward making Flagstaff a more equitable and affordable place to live for all residents. Thank you.

Thank you, Crystal. All right, so... Council member Garcia. Well, you had question. Oh no, sorry. You got your question answered. Forgive me. Council member house. Um, you had a comment.

It's okay. Thank you, mayor. Uh, thank you, mayor. Um, I had a couple of questions and then I have some comments here. I think this might be for Sarah. So I know in Tucson, I was looking at Tucson and Phoenix specifically on some of what went well, what were some of the challenges that they faced. And in Tucson in particular, one concern was that adjustments to rental subsidy amounts increased the ability of property managers to participate in programs but also decrease the eligibility of families and households to participate in programs. Given how our market rates already have not kept up with market realities and so tend to negotiate or necessitate some of those negotiations, have we looked at what that might look like here I think they went from 100% to 110, and we're already at 110. So I don't know if that's actually a challenge for our community or what your thoughts on that are.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Member Howes, could I ask you to read what you read again? And I promise to listen better.

No, it's a long one. Basically, it's that in Tucson, one concern was that adjustments to rental subsidy amounts increased the ability of property managers to participate in programs like housing choice vouchers, but it also decreased the eligibility of families and households to participate in the program. So there was an article from Tucson.com that was stating one of their council members said, because of the increase from that 100% to 110, they were actually seeing families that were no longer eligible to participate in the program. But we're already at 110, so I don't know if that's actually a concern for us or if we had any thoughts on if this would impact people's eligibility to participate in the programs.

Mayor vice mayor councilmember House can I ask if you think it's possible that they're talking about an increase in area median income versus rent was it clear that it's right, I'm having a hard time following yet they said specifically rental subsidy amounts. An increase in rental subsidy amount would mean or the one 10 means that we really really have to carefully watch. what we're spending out of the HAP money we get, the housing assistance payment money that we get, because they are assuming that we are abiding by the fair market rents as households lease up. And it is only because we have not everybody leases up at the maximum amount that the voucher is worth that we're able to manage that piece. As far as households becoming ineligible, My thought process on that is what they could be talking about is that the rents go up the voucher amount does not go up and that means that the household would then be responsible for a greater amount of rent on their own behalf meaning it's not only 30% but we can approve a cost burden up to 40% per household. But only for one year correct who see I sometimes I do pay attention to how works so that would directly impact a household's ability to participate in the program and perhaps require them to move within 12 months of their lease renewal. If that housing cost rent burden became too big, please keep in mind that that percentage is based off of gross income within a household, not net of households. So while 30% of gross income is a large commitment, 40% is a significant, it means that that household is choosing to be cost burden, which HUD allows them to choose for up to 12 months. That's my guess of what that is speaking to.

Okay. Thank you for that. Um, that's my only question for now. I have a couple other, but they're more directed towards council ourselves and in our considerations. Um, so, You can sit down because I'm going to go through my comments and I don't want you to have to stand there for the whole thing. So one of the things that I think is important to recognize from what we were seeing in the letters that we were receiving and some of the comments that we heard, there's a little bit of a distinction in what the National Fair Housing Alliance states about what they consider to be the greatest barrier to affordable housing. They discuss considering systemic discrimination and exclusionary policies to be the greatest barrier to affordable housing. What they do consider, though, with that is that source of income discrimination is a deeply entrenched systemic barrier to housing access and attainability, particularly because it disproportionately impacts people of color, women, people with disabilities. and other underserved and historically disparately impacted groups. They also more broadly define systemic inequities and discrimination in both financial and housing systems as including exclusionary lending, insurance and land use barriers, redlining, and economic and racial biases, which includes income-based discrimination that limits renters' choices for housing. And I raise that because I think that we are faced with doing two things at once as we're having this conversation. We're doing a lot of the work now to examine and adjust land use and zoning codes to create better pathways to affordable housing. And the work we're doing in this and other areas policy-wise have us addressing historically discriminatory systems, systemic biases and barriers, and place-based inequities that have limited access to community opportunities like reliable transit, well-resourced schools and neighborhoods, and access to healthcare. resources. One thing that's frequently missing is addressing those long standing barriers that may not have been designed as discriminatory, but that clearly disparately impact choice in where and how we live and how accessible and attainable those housing choices are. I know a lot of people have written about how source of income protections will help create more affordable housing. This was part of a conversation that I had with ACE just yesterday. In recognizing that that's a statement that needs to be slightly corrected because. So I want to slightly correct it, but maintain the hopeful recognition of what this type of ordinance can do. because SOI ordinances don't create affordability or necessarily compel communities to create more affordable housing. What they do is they work to make housing attainable under current circumstances while simultaneously improving circumstances for future affordability. I think that's important because we can't move forward on this and think that we've won the battle against our housing emergency. This is a battleground for sure, but it's not the battle. And that said, I would encourage us as a council to take the bold step of moving forward and pursuing this alongside the other grounds that we're gaining to increase supply, create more housing options, increase both affordability and attainability, and work collaboratively to meet our various housing needs. A couple questions that I or cautions or caveats that I'd have on this is recognizing that it's never as simple as just passing an ordinance to fix decades of systemic and institutional harm that we're trying to address. If we're moving forward with an ordinance, we have to be dedicated to full engagement to understand all the implications of what we're doing. I'm looking at both the pros and potential drawbacks of what's been passed in Tucson, Phoenix, and other communities that have put these protections in place. And so recognizing some of those drawbacks that those communities have faced, I think that we have to account for those unforeseen and unintended consequences of any action, even ones like this that are aimed at serving the public good. I was grateful for the comments that we received like those from Friends of Flagstaff's future. that reiterated the importance of providing education and making outreach to all people impacted by this type of policy adoption, including renters, property owners, and managers, real estate professionals, and the general public. Because the last thing that we want to do is try and solve a problem that in trying to do so, we create another challenge or barrier to housing for those already facing limited choice and access. I think the main question that I'd want to ask of council now is a, what does passing something like this look like for us as a community? And if we believe that we're not able to pass an ordinance like this at this time, are we able and willing to table the conversation rather than letting it die? and reach out to legal teams and other communities that have adopted this type of ordinance, the Attorney General's Office, and others for guidance on next legal steps or options. Because I think it's something for us to consider and consider very seriously. I know that there may be some hesitation based on what we know of current legal challenges that our communities face. But if there are pathways forward, I think that they're worth us exploring. So if we don't decide tonight to advance direction on drafting an actual ordinance, I do think that we can still advance conversations about what would it look like to do this and move that conversation forward. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Council Member Garcia.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And can I ask Council Member House what the first question was when you were asking Council?

I don't know. I think it was just what would passing this ordinance look like for our community? So we, yeah, we've had those conversations about we don't have a fair housing ordinance to amend. We do have our non-discrimination ordinance. uh, policy, but it doesn't include housing at this point. Um, and so doesn't include source of income either. And so I think there's just some questions on what it would look like, like what's the chicken and what's the egg in, in making any sort of amendments there.

I really appreciate that question because it lets us dig into both sides of the issue. And, um, so I, I guess the trepidation that I'd have, uh, would be, um, the concerns that housing staff spoke to where it kind of changes the culture of renters because maybe of a misunderstanding of what they think this means to our community on a political level or something. And then changing rents accordingly to price people out of the system without necessarily being discriminative but doing it in a way that they could still get the same job done. A little concerned about that, but this isn't, to me, this isn't about the lack of how many folks we see getting discriminated on up till now. It's about the future of discrimination. And I'll just be pretty simple and say that my recommendation is that the city manager directs the housing staff to draft an amendment to the 2013 Civil Rights Ordinance and for council as a group to work on this to see if we could put something together that doesn't put fear into the the rental industry out there that doesn't, you know, make people on a political level, start raising red flags for no reason. Like we, in my opinion, I want to make it to where we can help those that are getting discriminated against. And that, that is fairly simple in my opinion. I, I, let me see here. I wrote something down while you were speaking. I, I, I personally haven't seen substantive evidence, although doing plenty of investigation, that Flagstaff is currently having a source of income discrimination problem. And I think that that's important to state. So in a sense, we are potentially solving a problem that is rarely occurring. And I think that this is the perfect time to be proactive in having this amendment on the books so we have an apparatus for investigation and to provide solutions before they become problems in the future. Um, so it's, it's as simple as that. I am for moving this forward and working together with housing staff to see how we can do something that's different than Tucson and all these other places. Like let's do things the way Flagstaff does it, um, in, in, in, in a crafty way that isn't excluding people, um, But it's also not turning this into some weird political discussion for the sake of politics. I want to see people not get discriminated against. If we need this apparatus to do so, let's do it.

Council Member Aslan.

Thank you. I really like what I'm hearing. Thank you. I like what I'm hearing so far, so I'll try to keep this brief for Councilmember Matthews' sake. You know, I didn't fight my tail off to be able to sit here in this seat, which is a real privilege, in order to protect or make excuses for types of discrimination. I am up here, however, to protect and advance housing opportunities for Flagstaff residents. And denying a Section 8 voucher on the basis of the voucher itself let's call it what it is, it's a form of nimbyism, a not-in-my-backyard sort of attitude. And it shouldn't be legally protected, at least not through my own inaction on the matter. So tackling the affordability crisis in Flagstaff is a task that requires a lot of small victories, as we all know. That's the only way we can do this is incrementally. And giving case managers something in writing to point to in the form of an ordinance when they're trying to help discriminate it against clients is actually a not so small victory, I think. So I am supportive of moving this forward and choosing language that does the overall job of strengthening residents' access to housing and not creating endangerments or entrapments in other ways So you use the word crafty. I think we do need to be nimble about this and be thinking proactively of how to best implement this. And additionally, I'm all in favor of deposit assistance programs vis-a-vis housing bond. A lot of money that we have. I heard that idea come up. I like it. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much.

Council Member Matthews.

Thank you, Mayor. Sarah. Can you step up to the podium? I just have a few questions just because we're learning so much tonight. So thank you for the deep dive masterclass in housing vouchers. So legally, if a landlord, like, you know, I'm thinking of things that are at will, like an employer can fire somebody at will, at least in other states i think in arizona too so legally can a landlord um just without reason just i like my kids went to rent on multiple occasions down in phoenix and they would pay the but you know to get their credit check and everything only to be told oh you didn't get it because there is you know 20 people in front of you i mean what would I'm just thinking of ways if a landlord really wanted to not rent to a voucher holder. I don't know how often that happens up here, but I know both of my kids who rent struggled with that and struggled to find a rent for no other reason than they just weren't first in line. Does that make sense, that question?

The facts make sense. I'm struggling to find the question.

So the question is, couldn't that happen up here? Like we're trying to, we're wanting to solve a problem to make sure that there's not income discrimination. But how easy is it for a landlord who didn't want to accept a voucher to just give a general excuse? And you can't prove it otherwise, right? Unless they came out and said, I just don't want to take your income because we don't accept vouchers.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Member Matthews, a landlord should be treating all prospective tenants equally across the board, and if a tenant doesn't meet a screening criteria, they can be turned down. The issue brought up as far as how many people might be in front of someone. Voucher holders would be in that same line. We have seen, however, that many of our local landlords work to not charge an application fee to voucher holders if they know that there's 12 households in front of them so that they're not always out that that's not across the board. I think in order to prove source of income discrimination, it would have to be a statement of we don't accept housing choice vouchers or there would have to be some piece in that. When we talked to the city of Tempe, They had a number of complaints come in. They had two that were potentially founded. One was not. The other they were still looking at. But it was from a lack of understanding of why someone was turned down. And so the bulk of them folks were turned down for not meeting the credit criteria or not meeting the X, Y, and Z criteria. And the household had a housing choice voucher, not necessarily turned down because the household had a housing choice voucher.

So Tempe went ahead and did an ordinance change just to do it. You're saying that they really didn't have many complaints. Is that correct?

That's after they put it in place when we said, because the number was high that we had initially heard. And when we said, okay, we'll have you. looked at these, is it that many? And that's how many complaints they had versus how many were founded. So it was things that they weeded through in order to get down to that. And what it was, it was an and they had a housing choice voucher rather than, excuse me, the reason the household wasn't rented to was because of the housing choice voucher. There was another reason and they had a voucher.

And then real quick, can you explain to us again, me again, how does a voucher expire? That's been a real center of this conversation is that these vouchers are expiring 30 percent and, you know, they're claiming it's for income discrimination. So, how does that, if I have a voucher, how does mine expire?

I can give you a very generalized answer, but I'm going to let the expert provide it.

And she's also going to talk about how we renew vouchers or we extend that deadline when asked.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Member Matthews. So when a voucher is issued, initially they are given 60 days. They have 60 days to search. They have to prove that they've searched if their voucher is set to expire. They come back, they ask for 30 more days. With that 30 days, we ask for contacts. Where have you gone? Have you contacted people? What does that look like? What are you running into? If they do it in that timely manner before that 60 days up, then they're given another 30 days. Then after that, they get another 30 days if they still couldn't find a suitable house or unit.

And during that process, and you're asking where have you gone, and they're giving you feedback on why, what's the general reason why? I know housing is rough up here, so what's the general reason why they can't secure housing?

So most of the – we have them do a survey, so there is a survey that we have them fill out, and most of them is security deposit. They just don't have the money for security deposits. Legally, it's one and a half times the rent is what they can charge, and a lot of households that are income-based don't have that kind of money. Again, that security deposit assistance program is offered. However, most of the time it's the security deposit or there's a wait list there. There's like a two or three year wait list. And it's like, put your name on the wait list. If it doesn't cost you to put your name on the wait list, put your name on the wait list. Rarely do you hear that because we provide a resource list of landlords, realtors that say start here. this is where you want to go because this is, these are the landlords and property managers that know the program and that take the voucher. A lot of time we hear, Oh, they don't take vouchers or they're not taking the voucher. Um, we work with, um, a few, uh, property managers and apartment complexes that they offer 8% of their units to voucher holders. If they run out of that, um, allotment of eight to 10% of those units, they'll tell the client, we don't take vouchers at this time, or we can't accept it. And that's not because they don't take the voucher. It's just because they don't have any available units that they've already offered out to our community. So you'll run into that. So deposits, wait lists, some background checks, you know, they don't pass background checks. And those the ones that expire right at the 60 day we know is because they didn't qualify for anything that they tried to apply for. So those are probably the main three ones that we've seen across the board.

And Sarah, I hate to make you get up, but I will.

It's all good, you know, four steps, four steps.

It's been mentioned a couple of times about looking into deposit assistance, increasing that within our bond money. Is that a possibility?

Mayor, vice member, council member Matthews. No, the bond categories were very, very strict as to what that money was for. One of the categories is completely spent. One is completely dedicated. The other is chap, which is under contract. And the fourth is for rad. And so we don't have the ability under the housing bond approved in I'm not going to give you a year, but the $20 million housing bond approved by VOTAL 2018-22, thank you, I'm like, I can't get to a year, does not have a category where we could utilize funding without going back to the voters to ask to do so.

Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that because it seems like that is the real issue. I haven't heard a lot of evidence that the income discrimination is, I mean, one is one too many, but you know, if there's several dozen that aren't getting in because of the deposit issue, that's a bigger issue to climb. So thank you for clarifying that.

Thank you. That's why we created the deposit program that we have with the limited funding we were able to identify.

Vice mayor. Thank you. Thank You ace for bringing this forward and for meeting with me I think a couple of times now and we've had some really good conversations I'm in support of moving this forward. I think that this does give those something to point to and It is another tool in the toolbox. I would like to you know, just be cognizant of our staff time and expense and And I would like to maybe get more information on what this could look like and what it would entail because I know we have a skeleton crew for our housing and I don't wanna add to that. So I would like that to come back. Education, outreach, enforcement, all very important, especially if we do move forward with this in our community. And I would like to, Explore ways to add to the deposit assistance program That was one of my first questions I asked Sarah during our last meeting and was told no that can't be in the bond But I you know, it doesn't close the door. I hope maybe there's other options out there So again, thank you for bringing this forward and I look forward to having further discussions on it But I am very supportive. Thank you Councilmember Spence

Thank you, Mayor. I do support directing the staff to draft an ordinance to prohibit source of income discrimination in our community. And I'm struck with the fact that most of our discussion this evening has centered on vouchers, different categories of vouchers, but we really haven't talked about discrimination against income from Social Security. We haven't discussed disability payments that people want to use to contribute to their rent. And most importantly, we haven't really discussed child support and alimony as a category of income that could be discriminated against. And I am Reaching this conclusion based on two things that we've included at the start of our meeting tonight, we say our mission is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all. It's my belief that having a safe, affordable, available place to live is a quality of life issue for each of our citizens. And if we're going to protect quality of life for all, this anti-discrimination on source of income will contribute to that aspect of quality of life. We also pledged allegiance to that flag with the words, with liberty and justice for all. It's my belief it is a basic injustice to consider that a dollar from child support or a dollar from housing voucher is worth less than a dollar from wages. I think it's the most egregious injustice in my opinion is to discriminate against a renter who wants to use their child support payment or alimony payment as a source of income. Specifically, this custodial parent receives that child payment or alimony to provide for housing in addition to food and transportation. So I think if we're going to be true to our values in our mission and our pledge of allegiance, we need to move this forward. And I thank you for listening.

Council Member Garcia.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. This will be brief. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't forget about the Folks out there that are renting houses locally and our real estate community, my message to them is pretty simple. I don't want our real estate or our rental industry to see a source of income protections as a burden. I want to see our housing staff and our team here at Team Flagstaff write an amendment that is user-friendly for everyone involved. I believe that this will be a win for everyone in the community because it shouldn't change anything that isn't already currently happening. We are just, we are just wanting to protect the citizens from those, you know, one-off cases or give them the ability to have investigations that will protect their rights. Simple as that.

Okay. Council member. And I just wanted to just real briefly, say that I am supportive of this, even though I don't think that it's a really big problem, but even just one or two, if we can give people some assurance. But as the vice mayor stated, I think a bigger conversation is to look at any opportunities for deposit assistance, I think will be a larger impact. So I'm in supportive as well.

Sarah? Would you mind coming back up? I'm wondering if the Housing Commission has discussed this at all. Ever.

Mayor, the Housing Commission has not discussed this. This discussion was based off of a citizen's petition and following procedure. It comes back to you first.

How did it or do you remember how it made its way into the housing plan? I do. I do.

Sorry if you're getting dizzy. It's within the protect section of the 10 year housing plan with the wording explore expanding state and local fair housing protected classes to include items such as age and source of income. It was a broad discussion based on what other areas. Excuse me what what areas were not included within the national and or state protections. I believe council member house was serving on that committee as a citizen at the time. And I would welcome any additional comment from her.

I don't think I have much to add to that. I mean, that was just the general nature of the conversation was recognizing that, um, I, what I can say is that at the time, this was also a very, um, I hate the phrase hot topic because that makes it sound kind of unimportant, but it was very much a major conversation across the state and growing in focus across the country in that years between 2020, 2022, 2023. Source of Income Protection was a huge movement that was kind of prevalent along the Southwest and um, up the Pacific coast, um, but was recognized as because of the nature of the housing choice voucher program and the section eight program and, uh, other programs like it that are, um, traditionally optional for a landlord or a property manager to opt into. Um, it was recognized that because of, um, the discrimination that exists in, um, just economic factors over time, that that was one of those situations where it was creating disparate impact for a lot of people. And so it might not have been a very prevalent thing that we were seeing many cases of necessarily, but it was speaking into that larger question of how systemic discrimination has happened in terms of economic factors, unequitable opportunities for homeownership and renting and so forth.

And the committee was meeting in the fall and winter of 2020 and spring of 2021. And so housing security was a huge focus based on the COVID pandemic at the time and was, I don't want to say the source of some of the discussions, but was part of what was on people's minds as we moved through the creation of the 10-year plan.

Great, thank you. And the rest are comments that you don't have to stand there for. Thank you. I support continuing to have discussions about this. I think of all the things that staff is working on in terms of housing, this is not going to be the biggest bang for the buck. And I don't want to see a slowdown on the redevelopment of public housing, because I think that is going to be huge, as well as development of city-owned land. So that's what's topmost in my mind, is that those will have a bigger impact on our community than will this ordinance. Having said that, I'm in support of exploring an ordinance, having an ordinance, and I've always been supportive of increased education for landlords to be able to understand that these sources of income that we're talking about, maybe not so much child support and alimony, but what we've really been discussing tonight guaranteed sources of income and so it is a benefit to them to not discriminate against this so all the education and love what you're already doing and but anytime we can reach out to a landlord and get additional landlords to come on board and accept these I think is a good thing so I am supportive of of looking at this. And so, with the caveat that I think these other things have a bigger impact, and also, I would just like to better understand what enforcement would look like, because that seems to me like the big issue that could be expensive and time-consuming. And so, I would like to know more about what that looks like. So I'm seeing kind of a general consensus up here, and I believe city manager had something she wanted to say.

I do. Mayor and council, I just, you know, it sounds like you would like staff to look at drafting an ordinance and bring it back to council. I really do want to look at what the staff impact could be, and that's something that we will have an internal discussion about and would like some time to work on this. Mayor, I think you stole the words out of my mouth on all of the things that we're working on related to housing, and this is not something that I think we would see as a priority. So if we could have some time to work on this, we would appreciate it.

Thank you. All right. So moving down to open call to the public, I see none. And then announcements and updates to from council and city manager. And I will start with council member Spence.

Nothing this evening.

Council member house.

Nothing tonight, mayor. Thank you.

Council vice mayor. I just wanted to thank my colleagues for representing this past weekend. I was out of town enjoying a little bit of a musical vacation, but I saw a lot of you out there in the community with all of the events, and I just really appreciate that you all are taking the time to be there, and I appreciate you. Thanks. Aslyn.

Councilmember Garcia.

Thank you, madam mayor. So I, this is going to be, um, the introduction to, uh, excuse me on Wednesday is going to be the introduction to me serving on the victim's compensation board for, for the, um, Coconino County superior court. So I'm excited to get started on a new path of, um, helping victims get back what is owed to them from the criminality that was caused. Um, There is something happening at NAH on that Wednesday at High Country Conference Center at 5 p.m. that I'll also be at, right before attending the youth-led town hall at the Girls and Boys Club. On Thursday, we have a library board meeting. All are welcome at the library across the street here at 1 p.m. Let's see what else is going on. Oh, yeah. I would like to invite everyone in Flagstaff, but more importantly, the Eastside and Sunnyside community to the Spruce Wash Ribbon Cutting at Ponderosa Park. It's happening at three o'clock. If you want to get there, I think there's going to be some good conversations and some highlights of the park expansion and also a direct opportunity to connect with those in the neighborhood who are getting ready to help the city staff create that new park. And that's it for me for today. Thank you. Oh, was that on Friday? Yeah, the 26th at 3 o'clock, Ponderosa Park. Thank you for that, Council Member Asselin.

Council Member Matthews.

Nothing today. Thank you.

Uh, I just wanted to say that I had a great trip to kinder camp this morning and I just love that program. Saw council member Garcia there talking with all the, the kiddos and I have a ride along with code enforcement on Thursday. Pretty stoked about that. And the, uh, graduation ceremony for kinder camp is coming up on Thursday. And I'm looking forward to the spruce wash, ribbon cutting. I know I've shared this before, but I'm really excited about the redevelopment of Ponderosa Park. City Manager.

Mayor and Council, just a couple of updates. We received word that there will potentially be an APS power safety shutoff on Saturday and Sunday. due to weather conditions, high winds. I know city of Flagstaff sent out a notice and last time APS did notify residents impacted as well. So that will likely be happening and we'll get out communication in coordination with APS. Also wanted to recognize all of our city personnel that have been assisting with the pocket fire just north of Sedona. our fire team, emergency management, and also our water services team. We had quite a bit of communication over the weekend that the Forest Service was using some new tools to fight fires, including buckets and putting water over the fire and utilizing Lake Mary. And we worked with them on a really quick agreement to get that going. So just recognizing all of those individuals, they're still there. My understanding is there's about 600 personnel still on that fire. So we are not out of the woods yet. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we're adjourned.