Housing Policy & Resource Committee - Regular Meeting

But let's, let's be concise. Good evening. Today is March 30. Or I'm sorry. March 20. Thursday, 03/20/2025. This is the housing policy and resource committee. I'd to, call this meeting to order. And, miss Gonzales, if you could please thanks.

Mayor Salinas?

Present.

Council member George Syrah? Present. Council member Daniel Goldstein?

I'm here. Thank you. Next move, public comments is reserved for anybody in the audience. I'd like to make a public comment on something that is on the agenda or not on the agenda. I have two. I have one public commenter here. Roa Aguilar.

Mhmm. I'll brief.

Yeah.

I am very happy to be here at this mini meeting. I really like it. And I just wanna say thank you to all the staff and the council members who are here using their brainpower and their time to deal with a housing crisis. And I would encourage you to please use this time wisely and that we could maybe have another item on the agenda except for one because we're all here. So I'm sure there's other items that the staff has that they would like to get feedback on housing, maybe on homelessness or maybe on affordable housing and things like that because we have some brain power here.

Let's use it. And the other item that I wanna talk about was the housing plan. I really am concerned that Hayward is going to pass a housing plan that does not address does not have solutions, homelessness, and not mute its allocations in Reno. So I caution you, please do not send to the council. Do not approve a plan that does not have solutions for those issues. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Theresa Resendiz.

Good evening, everyone. I'm glad to be here. I just passed out a little bit ago this, article. It's from San Jose Mercury News entitled San Jose Launches Program to Unite Homeless Residents with Loved Ones Willing to Take Them In. And what it is is a pilot program transitioning some homeless residents off the streets to a quicker, more cost effective manner, something that isn't sustainable.

And what I wanna direct you to is the last paragraph on the second page. The city council has allocated $200,000 in this year's budget for the program with the goal of more quickly transitioning people off the street at a fraction of the cost, placing them into the city shelter pro system. Only those not awaiting placement in the city shelters would be eligible for the new program. And so then they had kind of a paragraph about an aunt and uncle who were willing to take someone in after they fell into the throes of addiction. And I think the latest statistics is about thirty seven percent of the homeless are drug addicted or alcohol addicted.

So anyway, this is just something to consider. I am interested in the data from this program to see, first of all, is it cost effective? And second of all, is it sustainable? Is it something that's a wraparound program not just for the drug addicted or homeless individual, but for the family? And whatever the family's concerns are, throwing up roadblocks to be able to keep a person on the verge of homelessness, how can they be best supported with data driven information to sustainably keep this, homeless individual.

Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Is there any public comment online? No. Seeing none, I'd like to close the public comment. I'll move on to approval of minutes. So moved. So moved by council member Goldstein, seconded by council member Syrah. And if there are no objections, it would be unanimous to pass. Thank you. Moving on to next item, which is, work session regarding the feasibility of a rental registration system. And I believe if I see the development services director or you know?

Pass the ball to Ayush

to help me.

Ayush the that's a new guy. I thought I'm a new guy. Have him do it.

Yeah. So today, we're gonna be talking about, the feasibility of a rental registration system. We're kind of here to solicit feedback, from the committee regarding whether the council or at least the committee, what the initial thoughts are on a rent registry or RRS. Next slide, please. So just to give a little bit of a recap of what the components, of an RRS consist of, you can see in table one of the staff report, it kind of outlines all the different, really, line items for each of these five different categories.

So for landlords and tenants, for example, you have contact information, and you also have, like, the start and end date of tenancy, the number of occupants. We're even thinking about looking at preferred language because we have such a diverse, community, especially at the tenant level. So those are some things we're kinda looking at for landlords and tenants, but also looking at the rent unit information and filing notices. As you know, the RSO has units that are covered. So, essentially, those are rent controlled units, and units that are basically not rent controlled.

So units that can be, placed at whatever rental landlord may deem unless there's state law provisions for them. So those are the things we would look at the rent level, just the amount of current rent, the date of a proposed rent increase, the percentage of a rent increase, and the date of a last rent increase. And then looking at kind of the unit information, we will look at whether, you know, how many bedrooms there are, how many bathrooms, what type of unit it is. So is it rent controlled? Is it not rent controlled?

And sort of actually the utilities as well, because we do have a rubs calculation in our RSO. So that's something that we would also look at, collecting for unit information. And then for filing information, we will be looking at documentation of termination notices, because that's something that we already collect, as per the RSO. We'd also look at something like reasonings, for our termination notice, more along a basic level of, different kinds of noncompliance, health and safety legal violations, and more. And then also looking at the notice of entitlement of relocation assistance as part of our new tenant relocation assistance ordinance ordinance as something that we would kind of compile with the filing notices.

Next slide, please. So in general, the RRS, it kind of benefits by converting the RSO from from a passive ordinance to a more proactive and, proactive and more enforceable ordinance, and it can do that in multiple ways. So we can kind of streamline the data collection. Right now, the RSO requires for landlords to or requires for landlords to submit rent increases to us, but we don't know whether or not, a landlord necessarily increases rent because we we don't have the bandwidth to go out there and say, hey. Did you increase rent?

You need to submit it to us. Right now, they need to come to us. Within RRS, they can kind of they would just come to us, by regulation because they would have to submit an annual, an annual log of really of the rental units that they own. And it would also be a better it'd give a broader coverage of the entire rental market, because, again, as I said, kind of when we have it on, people who are coming to us, but with a more expanded scope, we can look at more proactive enforcement. We can increase the transparency and communication, and we would have more data, especially, to really, inform our policymaking skills or inform our policymaking decisions, at the city level.

And that can inform us when we apply for different kinds of grants, and make policies down the line. Next slide, please. So here are some additional RRS considerations. So, you may you may not remember or maybe you do remember from the initial discussion we had in December 2023. We talked we had a little bit of a primer about what the rent registry is, and we solicited some feedback.

And we kind of looked at that feedback, and we were, thinking of, some considerations to relieve. So we remember that there was, some discussion about tenant information to collect. We we did reach out to different cities, and they did inform us that, yes, it is good to have that information about the tenants, but there was some privacy concerns to really look at. So some landlords actually were the ones who brought up the concerns about tenant privacy, and that that is something to really be evaluating if you do move forward with the rent registry. Next, we looked at the vacancy information and the rating system.

So that was, I think, some topics that were being discussed. A vacancy having a, a vacancy report would be really a good way to understand what does Hayward's rental market really look like. However, we did also look into the rating system, and, we did talk to the city attorney's office about that, but there were concerns that this could, bring about First Amendment concerns. This is because if you you could have tenants who put information out there that might not be true, and then you have staff being put in a position where we have to either moderate content, which makes it difficult because how do you discern between what should be taken down and what should be kept, or we allow for everything to be published, but then that can lead to potential misinformation, if there are people being untruthful. And then finally, we also looked at the technology and collaborative partnerships.

So we are kind of looking at the different types of technology we could use to create an RRS. So whether that's in house or, through a third party, the benefits about an in house system is that it would be a little bit more cost efficient, but there are concerns about functionality, especially when it comes to multiunit properties. That an in house system may not be the best way to really reach receive that kind of, information and data. And then and then next, there was some discussion about a collaborative partnership. So, we did talk about how this could be done at the county level or this could be done through different part through partnerships with different agencies.

However, there were a few concerns about that even though that would give a really good broad, regional outlook of what of what the broader community's rental unit market looks like. It it logistically, the implementation of that could hamper, the eventual implement the eventual enforcement of open registry because you have different cities that have different policies. Or if one city decides to withdraw, then it kind of creates these hurdles as to how do you even, really absorb the costs that come with it, really who's in charge of, facilitating the data collection. So things along the, those lines really create a little bit of a hurdle when you have, different agencies involved with enforcing a rent, multi jurisdiction rent registry. Next slide, please.

So we were looking at the different, full time employees that would really be required to enforce a rent registry, and this would entail of, two and a half, individuals. So I'll start with the community program specialist. This individual would be responsible for outreach and communication. When we talk to neighboring jurisdictions, they told us, like, look, you need to really get out there. You really need to, inform individuals who'll be using this technology, how it works, what kinds of concerns they have, because people will need training.

People will need to understand how to really log in to these, databases and really, input information. So kind of outreach communication facilitating workshops, those will be really key avenues to provide the technical assistance, that individuals, particularly landlords, will need in order to input data, regarding their tenants and regarding their rental units. The community program specialist would also work on processing exemptions. So, you know, if a landlord or property owner, I should say, is not actually renting the unit, but we, we submitted a bill to them saying that, oh, you owe this fee for the rental unit. They could, in theory, provide an exemption and that they would be working on processing that exemption.

And then, of course, the the specialists will be working on monitoring compliance, and enforcement of the collections of the annual bills that we'll be sending out. So we also have, we would also propose getting a senior secretary because that individual could better respond to inquiries from the public. We were told also that there was gonna be a lot of paper records, because not everyone might have the the tech savviness needed to use a rent registry, so we need to be equitable and provide a paper avenue for individuals to submit their data, hard copy if needed. So we were told be ready if you do implement this because there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different applications or different, paper records to really process and to manually enter, which will take time. And finally, we would have, a housing division manager that we would need because right now, we currently report to deputy director Morales.

That's how the housing division is really structured, but we would need an additional housing division. We would need a housing division manager to supervise the rent review side of the housing division and resolve sensitive matters and oversee the implementation and long term, policy direction for rent registry. But I do wanna clarify, as you can see, the rent the housing division manager would be a 0.5 full time employee. We would need to have, an additional funding source to cover the remaining half of that housing division manager because while we do, the rent review side of things here, there's also the development review side.

Okay.

We need oversight of that oversight of that side of the division to carry out our goals. And I also wanna highlight that this is just for the housing division. Code enforcement would also be using this rent registry, and they may also need, additional staff should they pursue, should they see that they have needs for the rent registry and, enforcement. Next slide, please. So we did a little bit of fee analysis to understand really how do we really absorb these, how do we implement this cost, looking at the cost?

Right now, the current rate for our units, the covered rental units is $66 and for rental units is $32. In order to really establish a rent registry, these fees would have to go up. So for the covered rental units, it would go up to around a $140, and for rental units, it would go around $90. So as you can see, these fees are in line with neighboring jurisdictions. The one exception would be the city of Berkeley.

They do have a a significantly higher fee rate, but for the most part, these fees are not they're line with what, our friends in different cities, are charging. And I I do wanna also point out that there was some discussion, from the last meeting or the first meeting that we had about our rent registry about, you know, could be potentially subsidized costs for landlords who submit, you know, timely, documentation or timely information into the rent registry. However, our, we we are not generating a revenue through our fees. So if we were to subsidize, we would be operating on a deficit for the review program. So, unfortunately, if we were to subsidize, we would need another revenue or we would need another funding source to contribute to this.

Next slide, please. So we highlighted some overarching questions for this committee to think about, in order for you all to get feedback. But, of course, feel free to give any kinds of ideas or thoughts that come to your head. But just to get kind of the ball rolling, the first category is we're looking at funding and sustainability. So does the HPRC support continuing the development of an RRS with a clear understanding of the costs associated with it?

Next, looking at data collection and transparency. So does the HPRC support the proposed data in table one to be collected? And if so, what, if any, of this information should be publicly accessible? And finally, compliance and enforcement. So does the HPRC agree that enforcement of the fees and penalties, should be conducted through an assessment process? So with that, happy to take any questions, or any feedback that you

may have.

Can you go back to the the the slide? Just yeah. Just so we can see it. Alright. We'll skip first.

I'll go. Yeah. Okay. We have how many units that are currently being granted that would be subject to this? We hit 23,000 units. Yeah. About 23,000 units. So have you done the math? Because at the top of my head, it seems like an awful lot of money. And the reason that I'm asking is if rather than collecting that money to have a database, if we had a different way of allocating those funds to help people meet their housing needs, might that be a better strategy?

I know you don't have that answer, but just something to think about. I wanna be brief, but I do have a couple of other questions. One of them is if we looked at, for example, any third party partners that might be able to do everything. In other words, do the tenant onboarding, do the landlord onboarding,

manage you know, people call on contact support line, so completely farm it out to a third third party. Is there any opportunity to do that? So we haven't particularly looked at completely, like, completely really contracting it out to a third party, but we do if we were to do so, we would lose some critical oversight of really what's being done at that level because we also wanna make sure that they're, in line with what paper values, especially at the equity level. So things along so for example, when I mentioned the community program specialist with the workshops and the kind of technical assistance. We wanna make sure that that's available for in different languages, or we wanna make sure that's available for, individuals to kind of come in multiple sessions.

And it might not be, we might lose some of that oversight if we completely, or if we contract out the bulk of the the red registry.

So look, my my concern here, of course, is primarily around the ballooning cost. So even if we build it in house and take all the privacy considerations and manage all all of that data, we still have a liability versus and I'm talking about the information security liability. And so people from foreign countries that rent in this in in our city are protected by GDPR. And in any event, it can become very ballooning expense. And so my recommendation would be to see if there is a third party, see if their security protocols cover international as well as US, and they they should know what all the relevant, you know, HIPAA compliance, SOX, all of that stuff.

If there's any kind of money transaction, you know, stuff like that, credit credit card security and all the other personal information privacy. They would have all of that stuff, and that's basically means we have less risk if you know, for containing that data. The other question I had is if we, whether we hire a third party or do it in house. Another point we have to consider is data portability. When you hire a third party company, they sometimes store that data in a mechanism that becomes nearly impossible for you to extract it so that you can't change vendors.

And so we need to consider that. And then similarly, if we build it in house, we wanna make sure however we build it aligns with what they would need to import it. And so you wanna get some clarity on that. And then one way to simplify the transaction overall is if we have the means to integrate with our current I don't know if we're calling it GIS or whatever other automation systems. So if we know that the property is four unit property and the person says this is my property and I rent it, can't we just automatically populate that data in into the system?

So that would reduce the burden on processing, most likely, fewer cost. And sorry. I just have one more. But, you know, I covered it. That's the rest. That's everything. Thank you. Oh, I know that you guys were hungry. I don't ever wanna be the guy standing between these guys and the corned beef.

Before I forget, do wanna open up? Yes. Absolutely.

Yes. Yeah. I okay. So I apologize. I jumped. I I went straight to questions. What I should have done was open up for public comment. Is there anybody who would like to make a public comment?

You can make it kind of.

You go ahead. Okay. Well, I I support the city moving forward with the RRS proposal because I think this will give renters another tool with which negotiate with landlords and give the city a tool to hold landlords accountable to city codes and state laws. As we move this RRS forward, I encourage the council to also pursue collaboration with the county and other willing cities and aligning these systems to strengthen their effective effectiveness and even offer cost savings. May Selena, she recommended a JPA way back in December that look into the JPA thing, see if we can get some cost savings from that, see if we can reduce duplicate duplicate of efforts that may be something we do.

And I do think that the this cooperative approach with benefit renters what I see in my mind is the cooperative approach with benefit renters countywide to be able to compare availability countywide to all of all the participants and, the cost of rental housing countywide, and it may even create a more competitive market among the landlords because they're not just competing with Hayward landlords now on this database. They're competing with San Leandro and Fremont and all these other landlords that are on this database. So that's my thoughts, but I think it's worth moving this program forward and charging the landlords for the cause of doing business in the city. They're a business, so they should pay for their business. And I I don't have a problem with that.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I can? Yeah. Mayor, council members, Vasco, community member, member of house here right now. Yeah. I echo that. I think we should move forward with, a further review of how the renting registry can be implemented by the city. Great appreciation to staff for the work you've done to, you know, see all of the pros and cons of implementing this. It's not reinventing the wheel. Right? There's other cities that have done this.

There's plenty of examples that we can look to, and I think it would be a real benefit to our city. Especially as a renter, I think this is something that would really allow us to have a better picture of what the rental stock that we have as a city looks like, which is a huge step to actually addressing the homelessness issue and the housing crisis that we have in our city. So this is a way to arm ourselves with tools to further, you know, implement good changes in our city. And, you know, just looking at the cost, it is you know, I recognize that it is an increase and landlords are businesses. Right? There is Yeah. An additional cost that comes with that, but it is fairly de minimis. I think it's a $60 increase on average maybe per unit for landlords. So I think the benefit to the city outweighs that increase. So, yeah, that's my perspective.

Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing that, I can close-up comment and then Comment. And then Yeah. I

found the other comment that I was looking for. That was on the rating system. I think, like, a Yelp review thing, I think it was a waste. We think we don't need that. It doesn't really serve our purposes. It encumbers us with a whole lot of other First Amendment issues, and there are other platforms that do that. They can go to Yelp. Right? But if we implement a rating system, it could be to our advantage if we're holding landlords and tenants account to some kind of a metric. In other words, if we say that this landlord reports efficiently, we get updated data.

We're not, you know, not chasing them for for the fees, etcetera. And all of that doesn't have to be, you know, completely advertised at Some kind of a rating system that the landlords and the tenants know that that's how we're rating them might promote their participation. So yeah.

One other thing I would like to quickly bring up. I like the

I I I I have to keep public comment closed. I'm gonna go to councilor Cruz on that.

Thank you. I really like that idea around having some type of internal metrics. That's not necessarily about someone's free speech, but it is objective around, you know, how on time are they with updating the data and information. What percent of time does a tenant receive the security deposit, within a month after exiting a a unit? I would I would say with those metrics, I would see that as maybe a phase two if you move forward with this project.

That level of detail takes a bit time to build it up. I just wanna get the foundation set if we move forward with this. So to just kind of address some of the questions here, funding and sustainability, I, of course, support the continued development around this, this project. I think this is a great way for us to strategically grow our housing team with a purpose, not just to say, oh, we have a housing crisis. Let's add more people to the problem, but saying, okay.

We have a strategy here, and that's why we're bringing folks to the table. Public safety and the cost of living are the two biggest issues in our city. We don't blink when it comes time to budget 19 new police officers and recruit them in one year. And I think this is our other big crisis, and we have a small housing team of eight people throwing two and a half more employees towards it feels like a very reasonable ask for our other major issue in this city. I wanna be mindful around the efficiencies we get from technology.

I was a little bit worried when you said when we put somebody in, they're gonna get inundated with paperwork. I think we wanna set this up in a way where that paperwork is minimized, where, you know, there might be some kind of self-service that we broadcast broadcast to to the the community, community, and and we we notice the community and say, go here and fill it out digitally so that there's not someone under a thousand different updates trying to, you know, manually enter it. I understand there will be manual entry in any kind of database system, but how do we minimize that is really significant here. The proactive enforcement and compliance is, to me, the most important part of this. I'm not interested in passing another ordinance and going through a long workshop process to have something that has no teeth.

We've seen other cities implement something similar. We've seen over 90% compliance. If it's not broke, don't fix it. That approach of having a simple enforcement mechanism of saying, hey. If you wanna raise your rents, you gotta register it with the city. Something as simple as that is the the small stick we need to have people just, you know, comply. And I'm also curious too what automated compliance might look like. I don't want somebody on staff to have to look at who's late. I want the software to say, hey. This person's late, and we've already sent an email noticing them.

Right? Like, the purpose of the technology is not to blow us, but to help streamline services so we can provide better services for our residents. Something else that's like a phase two request, if we move forward with this, would be regular rent reports for the community. Right now, we only get rent and vacancy information from the census and the American Community Survey once every ten years and sometimes in every two year chunks. And if we're trying to address a crisis, waiting that long to have an understanding of what's happening in our own neighborhoods is insufficient.

So finding ways in which we could present and maybe this is the committee where that data gets presented if we have a registry, but that's that's a a longer term thought. We received an email from a property manager that has had excuse me, has struggled with Open's rent registry. They're using a company called 3DI, which is a vendor for a number of other cities. And I I'm not sure how much flexibility they have in modifying their program for specific cities, but I do wanna make sure this process is streamlined. We recently improved our tenant relocation assistance.

We saw how the old version of that took a significant amount of staff time. It was also cumbersome for a landlord. I I support the idea of having community workshops to figure out how do we make this registry as painless as possible. Is there something a landlord's already filing with the city where we can include an additional piece of paper on the back of that so we're not asking them to go and find another form and submit a different you know, how do we simplify the process? Let's look at what we demand the landlord to do and then say, okay.

How do we minimize the pain of adding in a few extra fields for them to fill out so we have this data? Or how do we digitize all those other files so that it's all done in one place online? Those those efficiency savings are gonna be really important for making this successful. Privacy is also a concern, I think, as well. I think it'd be helpful way this question is phrased, I'm gonna kinda bounce it back to you on what should be publicly accessible.

I would like to see staff suggestion around what's publicly available and facing, what's available to staff in the city, which, you know, I I recognize we probably already have a lot of already, as well as what's not available, but visible to the landlord and the tenant. So there's kind of three different there's three interfaces there. Right? And there might be overlapping information and might be limited information, especially to the public facing side of things. So I'd love to see your best guess on what that matrix should look like for us to maybe provide feedback from there since there's a lot of data here. I don't wanna go to the right now.

So

what's significant about this is we're covering all rental units in the city. Is that correct?

That's

correct. Okay. So we have really robust data, data that we don't currently get through our rent stabilization ordinance. Is that right? Okay. So that gives us a lot of clarity into how we're addressing the housing crisis. Right now, single family homes, even if they're rented out and older, aren't covered by the RRSO as well. Is that right?

It's it depends on certain criteria. So even if it there's a different criteria like ADUs Yeah.

And the

year it's built. So really depending on that Yeah. It could be a crew or it could be a room, but for the most part, single family homes are just considered rental units.

Are considered, but they're not covered.

So to to clarify Yeah. All rental property in the city of Hayward is covered by the rent stabilization ordinance. Within the ordinance, there's provision for rent increase protections. Yeah. Single family homes are not covered under that portion of it, but it is covered under the rest of the ordinance.

Gotcha. Okay. And does every home, even if they're not covered by the rent cap portion of it, still have to pay into the overall rent stabilization ordinance. Yes. Okay. Just wanted to make sure everyone was contributing to that. Okay. And then the reason we're looking at the fee option is so we can avoid having a toll or taking a toll on our general fund. Is that correct? So this would be a self funding program if we increase this amount.

That is correct. However, we do want to emphasize that the other portion of the housing division manager Yeah. The council would need to identify some funding source for covering or reaching half of that position.

Yeah. I understand that. And that's why I'm really pushing on this efficiency angle because if there's a way to push this down to two FTE and have it funded versus that half that we have to find another half, I'm wondering if you're if you, are able to map out the process after having some conversations with vendors to see if there's any potential savings there that we could, you know, limit the staff ask of this position. And if that's not feasible, let me know. I mean, I I'm sure you've done your homework on this too.

I would just add that since we we've discussed with other cities, and they've found themselves caught off guard

Yeah.

Because they were overwhelmed by the amount of work it was to stand up the rent registry, and so they found themselves flat footed.

Okay.

They were had to, like, delay implementation. They had to go back and modify ordinances because they were not prepared, with the amount of training it was gonna take for the stakeholders.

Yeah.

And then just knowing the population that we serve and how they respond to our existing programs, a lot of them do want analog Yeah. Options for submitting information.

Okay.

So they're not necessarily utilizing technology that we have

Yeah.

In order to pay off the or to engage with us. So we're aware that there might be this very this push from the from the landlord population that they need a lot of support and that they will need some sort of paper way to come up with the information.

Okay.

That said, we are also very cognizant of the fact that we don't want this system to be burdensome.

Yeah.

I'm really trying to find a vendor where a property owner could download the information from their system and then upload it into our system. So far, we've only found one that said, oh, well, we could do that if you send the data to us Mhmm. At a cost, I think. Yes. Right? So we're exploring those options because we would really like we would like that email that was sent. We would like to be as little as to minimize the burden on the user so that it's something that they could easily comply with the ordinance.

Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. And it sounds like we're aligning what we're trying to accomplish with how we stand this up. I wanted to acknowledge the comments around interjurisdiction collaboration.

I recognize that maybe standing it up with somebody else at the same time is difficult, especially as it relates to funding and coordination. As another what I'm calling phase two bucket is, what would a data sharing agreement look like or coordination around data sharing look like between different cities that already exist currently between, let's say, the city of Alameda and the city of Oakland, which both have rent registries to help staff within cities get a better idea of more regional trends? As well as, for example, Alameda signed a five year maintenance agreement with three d I with for the rent registry. Would there be a way for us to, let's say, bring five cities together to have economies of scale and bring down the overall cost, but sign a contract that way.

I think do wanna make a quick comment on So we did actually talk to some of the different cities and the different technologies that kind of implement the rent registry. Yeah. And their costs are actually per unit. So Okay. I do wanna just put that out there that if we do do a collaborative kind of rent registry, it would increase the cost because the number of units would increase.

Yeah. I think we can negotiate a little bit there, though. I mean, the per unit is kind of a made up economic, I guess, that they're setting the price that way, but we're large customers that are bringing, like, you know, $100,000 contracts. I think there might be some wiggle room there, and maybe we could explore if they're open to it. I understand what you're saying, though. It's per unit, but that's how they're making their money is charging for each row. It's just like they were sneaking that up. Yeah. I do like hearing that that code enforcement would benefit from this. I think we've had a lot of conversations around code enforcement over the past year, and I think giving them more data to work, helps just benefit residents across the board.

And then I guess my last question here would be, next steps. Like, after this work session, is this gonna go for the full council based off the recommendations we're hearing here? So, really, what we're looking

for is direction from you all regarding whether or not you want to move forward with referring us to the full council. And if you do, then we would take this for a work session in June. Okay. And then between that time, we would really do more, additional stakeholder engagement with tenant groups and landlord groups to kind of solicit that feedback and provide to the whole city council Yeah. A bigger picture of what's what really the the feedback is from the community.

Okay. And I I do I think the community engagement's very important. I don't want us to be, I don't wanna extend it more than we need to just because, you know, this is something that's been implemented in a lot of other cities with success. We wanna make sure we're implementing it right for our community, but I also don't wanna get so bogged down. But And I just say that because I I brought up this idea two years ago, and I was told as a freshman council member, like, let's bring it to the committee. Let's work it out there, which I think was the right approach. But it's already been two years. Right? And there's been multiple opportunities for folks to come and weigh in on this idea. There's folks that could be here tonight. So engagement's important, but I don't wanna drag it out unnecessarily long. Okay. Those are my comments. Thanks, Mayor.

I was as I was looking at the presentation and even here in the the staff report, it would have it would have been nice to see sort of a graphic or or, you know, some information around the current workload on the housing department right now. What do you guys you know, do we have another project? You know? Can you guys handle another project like this?

With two two additional staff and the housing manager, I think right now, the because we the work is so it's heavy in public inquiry. It requires staff to be responsive to people regarding their questions, then to comply. We know they're probably gonna comply last minute, which creates kind of a huge spike in the workload. I think the challenge is increasing this workload does increase the need for staffing and make sure we have the housing manager who can help with all that escalation. So I don't think we could do it with less staff than what was proposed.

We just can't give it to Auschel.

As talented as it is and as talented as my whole team is, I think acknowledging that really half of my staff works on the rental housing, programs, and the other half is working on develop development programs. We really do get a lot accomplished, but it would trying to do this without the additional staff would be problematic. I think we would be able I think there are some economies of savings here, that's why we're not asking for more. I feel like other cities had a higher portion of of staff that they had used to implement the programs. But part of this is we'd be able to shift some of the work that we've been doing by manually, data entering, termination notices and rent increase notices.

So we would get some sort of savings by property owners being able to self enter the information. And so I do think there is that kind of economy of savings if we do this. So I think our estimate of the number of staff was pretty decent, conservative Yeah. Because we think that it will save us some time, and I think we will also be able to under our kind of our ordinance being passive means that we might get, somebody coming in. They ask us a question, and they go talk to their whole building, and the whole building's submitting a petition.

And so this way, if it's more proactive, we might be able to kind of address the concerns as they come up, or at least the system will say, hey. That rents increase is too high. Mhmm. So we do think that there that that's one of the benefits of it.

And then the the the 2.5 positions that we're sort of tinkering around here, do they are they already on the books room, or would they we would have to bring upon 2.5 brand new positions?

And that's in the general fund, though.

I get that part, but but there'd be two, well, 2.5 Correct. Positions. Now so the funding of those positions would come from I know, the funding of it would come from where? The the fees that the fees that they proposed increasing of the proposed rate. It

would be proposed to be a 100% cost recovery like we do with our rent review staff right now.

Have we run this by, the landlords or landlord groups?

We have so I brought this up yesterday after, after the the the little reading that they had. I did tell them that we are gonna be talking about a rental registration. Let me guess what they said.

No. I'm kidding. Go ahead.

And and, I told them to come here to give their, you know, input and thoughts, but, it was really subject to their availability. So Yeah. They you know, some of them have thoughts about whether or not they should move forward. Some of them have talked about that they would not really like to see this move forward. But, again, I encourage them to come here and kind of share that with you all so that they, they provide kind of the transparent insight of the about what they want to see, and what their concerns are with the rent registry.

Yep. And then, you know, data collection. You know, you know, my, well, my concern about the funding of it and and well, let me get start. Let me see this. Let me start.

My central concern right now is the amount of work that the housing department is already doing right now. We have put upon the housing department a lot of work. And and and I also wanna say that, in terms of our commitment to housing and to unhoused, I don't think our personally, I don't think our commitment has been deferred or, you know, misappropriated or not appropriated in comparison in comparison to other priorities we have in the city. And I think we have done our part, and we continue to do our part when it comes to housing and homelessness. And so I think, you know, I would push back on on that comment a bit.

But I personally feel that, you know, the, going to, you know, landlords as a default to finance this, I think, is we would really have to spend some time in talking with them, and and really vetting this with them. Also, you know, I understand the the the, you know, the, you know, perhaps the, you know, tenants may support this. But whatever we whatever costs we put upon landlords, they're gonna pass it on straight to the tenant. It's half and half grand. So just I'm just but Yeah.

It'll get passed on. So That's sounds good. So, I mean anytime we start tinkering with our fees, we have to think about how it's gonna go down to the to to the ringer. The data collection, I mean, you know, data is great. I like data.

We always like to make data informed, decisions. You know, you know, income, we start talking about third party people. Not only data security is concerning, but just the handling of data, privacy issue. I mean, you know, look what look at the pressure we get when we start talking about putting traffic cameras or when we start putting, you know, cameras around town on, you know, the fault cameras and all this. And so, you know, I I my my my concern is there's other areas that we are hyper conservative about or hypersensitive to, but then there's other areas that we're, you know, we're full, you know, we're full throttle ahead when it comes to collecting data, and and sharing data, and so forth.

You know, I was a renter. I was a renter for many years, and I don't know how comfortable I would be if I had to go to a database and report it was in my own apartment. I don't know. I'm just, you know, I'm just saying. But, you know, the so I'm sure it's gonna help.

I'm sure it it'll help us to to dial in and and and calibrate. If we can do that, you know, I'm fine with that. I'm not familiar with the databases and and and the and the and the platforms that we'll be using here. But, you know, for me, you know, it's it's an issue. The other issue is, getting people to to put data in there, both landlords and tenants.

And, you know, there's 23,000, apparently, you know, units. In a perfect world, all 23,000 landlords will run to this database and start uploading data. That is not gonna happen. And and, I mean, we can barely, you know, we can barely, inspect all these units. Right?

And so, anyway, so the you know, I just feel that this to set up a system like this is gonna be, you know, a gargantuan, you know, process. And compliance and and enforcement, I mean, sure. You know? You know, I I I just look at some of the other stuff that we can't even you know, are having a hard time. I mean, code enforcement.

I mean, all we have to we can't even hold, you know, street vendors compliant on things. And here, we're gonna stand up another whole other program of 23,000 individual units to enforce compliance and enforcement. I just you know, my concern is we're going to stand up this whole new infrastructure, and we're gonna increase fees to landlords, which will get passed down to tenants. And we're gonna have this system. So, you know, I I'm I'm right now, I have a lot more you know, I'm just very hesitant right now about this.

And so that's that's that's where I'm at right now. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead. What I was getting at with the 23,000 units and the cost so I misread the cost. I think we're we're proposing here is a $140 per year for some of the units and $90. So I don't know. Just quick math here.

We're looking at 2 and a half, $3,000,000 a year. But so far, what I can tell from the rental registries that have been implemented across the county, there's not really any data that they have succeeded in meeting what the intended objective was. So I don't think we can unless I'm wrong. I mean, if the data's out there and it says, this is what we're trying to do with the registry and, you know, our $3,000,000 a year investment shows that we're actually achieving that and and over. But right now, we're looking at, you know, funding a $3,000,000 project that right now, there's no proof that it actually does what we're hoping that it will do.

Matt? Good. So

I hear you. The city has done a lot on housing, and I I I I respect your comment and your pushback a little bit. I I agree. Our housing team is overwhelmed, and that's part part of the reason why they're overwhelmed. So I'm like, let's let's help these folks out. The police are overwhelmed. Let's help these folks out. Let's recruit. Right? I'm interested in recruiting to help these folks out. So I think we they're doing a great job, and we've done a lot. Now there's more that we need to do. Compliance, there are 23,000 units, lots of landlords. Are they gonna do it, or are they not gonna do it? In our earlier work session, we heard that or in our earlier presentation that 90% compliance rates at cities that implemented are benchmarked.

Every enforcement mechanism is different. Cracking down on street vendors is different than getting a landlord to file a little bit of information. A lot less complex than the union. So they are getting the information they need, and it's allowing staff to enforce their other work a lot more easily by having that data. When a tenant gets told, hey.

Your rent's going up. They might not be aware of the rent stabilization ordinance, and that rent increase might be above 10%. By registering it with the city, they have a centralized place where they can look to say, what is the landlord telling the city, and is that legal? Right? So if this helps keep even 20 families housed, right, per year, and we look at the cost of providing emergency services for them if they're homeless, each of those family members on the street, the savings to me become pretty apparent pretty quickly. So I I don't wanna shy away from this. And I think I'm just I myself am a renter. I know you were a renter before too. It's it's if I asked you what the cost of your first apartment was versus what I'm paying right now for mine. Right?

It's a very, very different landscape. And Mhmm. I know you know this. I say it all the time, but as the only renter on the council, like, I'm asking you in the same way there's things that you guys have areas of expertise in. Like, this is the thing that I, like, really throw in on because it affects me day to day. I talk to a tenant lawyer that go to affordable housing, six month long with leadership networks to study this issue deeply. I go to regional tenant organizing conferences. I'm not making this up, or I never I didn't push this because it's a fun thing to do or I see it as bad as best night. This is this is a critical piece of infrastructure for us to get very serious about the housing crisis. And and all I'm asking for is can we get some data to address the problem?

Right? I know we care about this problem. So I I just I I I just wanna offer that because I I think there is proof around this. And if we need to do a better job of surfacing that, I think that's totally reasonable. But Please. I just genuinely like, in my feel like if there's one thing we we gotta do to to engage with this issue and do better with it, like, it's it's this. Yeah.

So I I I get it. Yeah. And and I'll be honest with you. Mhmm. You know, if I had, if I if I had a decision Mhmm. To generate $3,000,000 a year Mhmm. To stand up an infrastructure like this that would be housed within the city. Or if we had an opportunity to a a revenue source to generate $3,000,000 a year that would go to providing direct assistance to tenants Mhmm.

I would

do that. Mhmm. Yeah. You can Rather than, you know, investing in a in an infrastructure into the you know, into this, you know, rent registry Yeah. Where, you know, where the overwhelmingly, the majority of the help that we would be providing, or the the the the resources we're generating is being applied to this infrastructure rather than to to tenants.

This also goes to, you know, sort of my main issue I have with with what we have done and I'm just not talking about the the city of Hayward, but regionally, when if you look at the work we have done regarding the unhoused Mhmm. We have put hundreds of millions of dollars in strategies, services, and programs for the unhoused. Mhmm. But if you look at where those dollars yes. Some of those dollars have reached people.

Yes. Some of those dollars have reached, you know, individuals themselves. But, overwhelmingly, those dollars have been put into professional staff, professional people who are benefiting from those resources that we are generating to help be unhealthy. Dollars Theresa, please.

Yes, sir.

Those dollars very, very rarely ever get to the people themselves. And so I fundamentally, I look at if we are going to go down a road, if we are going to increase of of fees, you know, who are we helping? You know, where where are these where are these dollars going? And for so for me, fundamentally, I that's where that's where I'm that's where I'm stuck. And, you know, I'm you know, I think that that's where my level of frustration

I think it's a really valid point. Right? I think when you say, let's spend 3,000,000 on direct services, but then at the same time, when we do that, it goes to a bunch of professionals and their money disappears. Me, that's kind of why we need a better way of measuring our success in our in our in our traction because my concern is, okay. Let's put 3,000,000 into direct services. Let's up the community services commission budget tomorrow, and and let's let's do that instead. But then how do we know it actually worked? Right? Or if it just went to a bunch of professionals and the money disappeared. We're looking at spending a 100 or $200,000,000 for a potential new police building, which I understand the need for.

It's infrastructure. Right? We're investing in that infrastructure. It's the long term benefit and improved customer service and experience of our residents. This is a much smaller investment by comparison that affects 47% of the residents of Hayward. Half the people of Hayward would benefit from this. So this I know 3,000,000 sounds big at first, but this seems like a relatively minimal investment to help look after half our

The problem is is you keep saying that it's gonna benefit half of our residents.

Yeah.

What we're saying is that the evidence isn't there.

Yeah.

That that $3,000,000 is gonna benefit anybody. Mhmm. So conceptually Yeah. You're right. And I feel your passion, and I feel your pain too. And those are right at one point, and, you know, subject to all of you know, those were, like, tiny dollars in those days, I admit. But until we can say with some concrete evidence, some concrete data that having a rental registry will actually solve a problem Yeah. And do it the most efficient way possible. We can't, in good conscience to the taxpayers of this community, say that we're gonna allocate $3,000,000 to it. So the evidence isn't there yet. So let's get the data. Let's get the evidence.

So I guess here's the thing is if we want the evidence, let's give staff time to collect that evidence and bring it to the full council.

That's what we're saying? That's what we're asking.

I just wanna make sure if we're clear, like, the ask then would be, can we have this discussion as a full council member accession? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm agreeing

with that. Okay. In case that part wasn't clear, I'm just saying that we're we're not at that point yet. We're kinda can we can advocate for

Sure. And I'll and I'll also do my own personal research so we can continue the conversation. The way I'm looking at this is if a landlord knows that their rent increase is going to be available to the city Mhmm. It creates an incentive for them to be a lot more honest about what they're able to increase it by. For versus right now, it's the Wild West where if I have a tenant that may be English in their first language, I just submit a rent increase. I know, oh, they probably don't have a lawyer, so they're never gonna challenge it. There's no place they can access that. Right? Mhmm. This is really to help us prevent illegal rent from happening and be able to enforce it better when they do.

I totally understand what you're saying, Bennett. So far, we don't even have a scope of the problem. We don't know. We have

no data

because we don't have the data.

Yeah.

But are other jurisdictions that are generating the data. And so I'm saying, let's look at the data that they're generating. Are they actually solving the problem? Okay. Or is it just another good idea?

Yeah. It's just it's a kind of a chicken and egg because it's just

how do you Yeah. Look at

data to solve it without ever having had the data in the first place. And that's where my passion is coming from. It's like we are confronting this massive problem. We're doing the best in the region that's trying to confront it. And even still, we're in this position where we can't even answer these questions for ourselves. And so I just I just want us to modernize the same way we wanna modernize the parts of our city. That's all. So thanks thanks for hearing me out, and I appreciate your conversation.

Okay. So it sounds like you wanna bring it to full council to a work session. Yeah.

If we can get that

was not ready to bring

this to a full work session. But You wanna you wanna you know, if you're still having a heartburn on it and you wanna go with one more session with these guys and hear what data they send back, I'm okay with that.

No. I mean, if we do we wanna have another meeting here? I would really prefer just I

don't wanna belabor this. Right? Like, if if the council's not into it, they're not into it.

Well, it seems like two of you guys wanna bring it to work session. We'll take it to a work session. If it was up to me, I would stop it here, but it'll go to a work session. And so okay. So I will close this item, move on to, staff future agenda items. Right?

Yes.

Smoke free multi multifamily rental housing work session, that's gonna be in June. How long did So last time, there, there is a group let me let me say it this way. There is a group right now who, who has been reaching out to us about this. And, you know, in fact, I think I even said from you know, on, on the day, I even said, bring me an ordinance. Bring me an ordinance, and we'll look at it.

I haven't seen one yet. I don't know if you guys have seen one. But, you know, I'll I'll be honest with you. This is something that I'm very, very interested in. And, you know, if if we can move this up somehow, you know, I don't even I mean, I don't even think we need to see it in here first. I mean, unless you guys want to, I'd like to move that straight up to a open to a a work session to be quite frank with you. But I don't know.

We just kicked it off with our consultant. Yeah. And so I just I think that there might be some questions that might make sense for

for this body.

Okay.

But we do have plans, I'm pretty sure, for work sessions with the full panel as well.

Because this is a big deal. You know?

Yeah. I know it's been asked for a lot, but there's definitely some intricacies in related to some of this that I think will warrant conversation. I'm not saying that we're not doing this, but I think there's some different options.

And Okay. Good.

It would be worth having it's worth the conversation. I think it could benefit from from this group. And, you know, if it if it if it if it ends up not being that case, you know, then then we know, and we'll we'll just move

where we're going

to. I say that. And and the only reason why I would like to see this moved up is because, I think this issue, to be quite honest with you, and and this is a purely political statement, that issue, I think both tenants and landlords can see eye to eye. This could be a good thing. And and I think if if we are going to, you know, if we could end this season with a slam dunk win, then I think, it'd be nice to have them.

We'll see what we can do in our conversations with the consultants.

And I know you guys have I mean, I I don't wanna hold on. Yeah. Good. Alright. Anything else? Yeah. Rod had

a question around our affordable housing numbers. I don't know when it feels appropriate on the agenda to maybe do an update on how things are going with. Maybe a regional comparison just to help give perspective on how hard it is to hit numbers.

That's when the council Yeah. So the general plan update will be presented to to council on the twenty fifth. Okay. And then as a part of that, it includes the APR, our annual, report, and all of that has to be submitted to the state on April 1. So there will be information

Okay.

That will be available twenty two weeks.

Our next meeting?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So come to our next meeting, Rob.

And and no irony there that we're that its deadline is April 1.

No. But, you know, but, yeah, it is kind of

Or is it? Right. Okay.

And I would like to add to the June 19 meeting an item we just heard from Central Legault, who is our contractor for eviction prevention, that we will probably be finished expanding the contracts either the end of this month or early April. And so the plan is to have them do a closeout report to show any kind of data that they have and findings. So if it's the desire of the body, if we could bring that report with information

on Yes.

Please. Please.

Because I think that actually relates exactly right on topic with what we're trying to accomplish with the. So, yeah, definitely, let's hear from them.

When would you think is a good time? In June as well? Or

So, yeah, the June 19 meeting, we would have it available for the next meeting. We may wanna chat about that.

June 19 is a new holiday.

Oh, yeah. And Oh, yeah. Understand.

Oh, yeah. The general June meeting.

The general June meeting.

So we may have to poll folks, committee members on maybe a a different

Different date. Date. Okay.

We'll be in touch. We'll figure that out, and then we'll notice properly with whatever date it ends

up working out. Yeah.

That's Perfect. Okay. Anything else? Staff announcements, committee committee member announcements?

You have one announcements.

Seeing none.

It's a

good one. Yes. It's a good one. So the the application period is open for the remaining SOMI affordable units. So it is open starting March 28, so next week through May 8.

There are orientations for interested buyers that will be posted in the main library in the Fremont Room, Tuesday, April 22 at 5PM and Tuesday, April 29 at 5PM, and then the lottery will take place on May 20. If people want more information, they can go to the Housekeys website at www.housekeys8.com/sony for more information on the project. Feel like green nails.

Thanks, Kate. You did good.

Great announcement. On Sunday at Casa Del Toro from 03:00 to 06:00, there will be a fundraiser. At Tennyson High School, there's a group of kids participating in a program called We the People. It teaches high school students about government, government process, and politics. Were you

a We the People student? Children of the school.

There you go. And so and so a group of students at Tennyson High School who are in the We the People class, I guess,

it's called. Okay. I was in a different school.

Oh, okay. Yeah. But so they're they are in We the People class, And they are going to Washington DC, and apparently and and I'm just I I just read the talking points on this. But they are recipients of the John Lewis Award, which only goes to, like, one high school in the country, and they're it. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah.

It's phenomenal.

And it it yeah. And it is a pretty, high award. The students are going in late April, and, they have they have money, but they need more money to go. And so but but this is sort of the caveat to the to the fundraiser. We were able to organize all of the Hayward and Hayward area elected officials to get on board and host this event and use our muscle to raise enough money to send these guys to Washington DC in April.

Excellent. So I'd like to invite everyone to Casa Del Toro on Sunday at 03:00. Bring your checkbook and Sounds like to donate online? You can donate online. If you look at the flyer, there's a but if you go to We The People website, We The People California, there's a donation link there. Right? But, yeah, it should be fun. You'll get a chance to see and meet if you haven't already. All of the local electeds will be there. Be there or be square.

Remember, we are the people. If there are no other information or items or business meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Natasha, for the You