Rental Housing Committee - Regular Meeting

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Good evening. Welcome to the 08/28/2025 rental housing committee regular meeting. This meeting is called to order at 06:03PM. Now I will proceed with roll call. All community members are present.

Moving on to item three, the consent calendar. These items will be approved by one motion unless any member of the committee wishes to remove an item for discussion. The purpose of the consent calendar is for the committee to efficiently and quickly consider routine or administrative business items with one motion. Public comment will occur after the discussion. We invite you to submit a speaker card now if you would like to speak on this item during public comment or raise hand on Zoom.

Would any member of the committee like to pull an item? Seeing none, I now invite public comments in person public comments to call the speaker first. Any member of the public wishing to provide virtual comment on this item, please click the raise hand button on Zoom or star nine on your phone. Seeing none, I will now bring the item back for committee action. If motion to approve, the consent should include the reading of the title of the agenda item vice chair Cox.

I make a motion to approve the consent calendar including item three point one minutes for the 07/24/2025 RHC meeting and 3.2 community stabilization and fair rent act and mobile home rent stabilization ordinance financial expenditures for fiscal year twenty twenty four five. Second.

Motion made by vice chair Cox, seconded by member Brown. Any discussion or questions on the motion? Seeing none. Let's go to a vote. Motion passes unanimously.

We will now open the meeting for oral communication from the public. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the committee on any matter not on the agenda. Speakers are allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes during this section. State law prohibits the committee from acting on non agenda items. Would any member of the public like to provide comment on non agenda items? If you're on Zoom, please press raise your hand or press star nine. Seeing none, we'll now move on to item 5.1, rent stabilization division fiscal year twenty four twenty five activity report for okay. Public comment will occur after the presentation item and committee questions. We invite you to submit a speaker card now if you would like to speak on this end or public comment. We'll begin with a presentation from staff.

Good evening. Thank you committee members. Can you give me one moment please? Sure.

Through the chair, sure.

Hey. Good evening. Thank you, Chair Ma, and good evening, committee members. Agenda Item 5.1 is a presentation from staff regarding the activity report for fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five. You'll see here the first few pages of the activity report, which was also provided in the agenda packet and is available online at mountainview.gov/rentstabilization.

So the first thing we'll go over is the first section. These slightly represent our programs, and you'll see one of our major programs here, community outreach and education. And we have three main topic areas: information requests and inquiries, community outreach, and education and information. We'll go over those now. So the first section is information requests and inquiries.

You'll see here we responded to 3,369 inquiries from the public. And I would like to note that this does not necessarily reflect all of the inquiries and touch points related to onetime utility petitions and petitions. So obviously, provide a lot of support during those processes, and that is not necessarily reflected in this number. This number represents the number of times that we receive questions and inquiries from the public, not necessarily the total amount that we support. We received about 50% of our inquiries from tenants and about 50% of our landlords from of our inquiries from landlords and had approximately 1,100 phone calls and sixteen seventy eight emails followed up with four seventy three walk in visitors and 117 scheduled appointments.

The inquiries were 12% Spanish language, which actually represents more or less the population the Spanish speaking population in Mountain View. And you'll see here this year tenant petitions were our most major area of inquiry, followed by property registration and utilities, and then one on one utility petitions. These are separated into two categories because of the type of inquiry that was received. Next up is the community outreach section. We gave 44 workshops with a total of three eighteen participants and eight twenty four views received through our YouTube channel.

21 of these workshops were bilingual, so just about half. We had fifty office hours with 99 participants who joined us virtually, and we participated in 109 outreach events and reached 3,639 community members. Next up is education and information. These are the types of actual documents that we create. We have about 43 web pages that we support, 12 informational documents, 44 fillable forms, and we actually did not send out any NV Voice ads this year.

We mailed out 13 postcards and flyers to the community at large or to landlords, all landlords, or to fully covered landlords as a group or to all tenants or fully covered tenants as a group, and nine newsletters. We also sent targeted mailings to specific landlords, specific properties and specific tenants. That represented 2,739 mailings. We also sent out quite a few email updates, 17 committee updates, 47 workshop updates, 38 general community updates, six e newsletters and those were sent to 3,568 subscribers. Next up is information about CSA covered CSFRA covered properties.

We have six eighty two properties representing 12,753 units for fully covered properties 12 partially covered properties representing sixteen eighty six units. And of those for the current year to date for registration cycle, this does not land on the fiscal year, this lands on the calendar year, 96% of our properties are registered compared to 95% last year, and 96% have paid their rental housing fees, which is the same as last year. For petitions, you'll see here details of the petitions that we received for the fiscal year as well as petitions received over time. In the fiscal year for this past year, we received 39 tenant petitions and eight other types of petitions. And for the most part, those are decided.

We are a little bit moved along in this process now for petitions from the past fiscal year and have quite a few that have actually made it through the process. We have had very few that were actually appealed relating to this fiscal year. I know that you've heard a lot of appeals during this fiscal year, but they were actually related to petitions filed in the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four fiscal year when we had around 80 petitions. You can see here that we are working still with the Mountain View Mediation Program, which assists the rent stabilization division by providing free education mediation and conciliation services to landlords and tenants. We had 71 cases that were educated, mediated or conciliated, and 68 of those 71 have been resolved.

As for the housing help center, you're well aware by now that we have two housing help centers, one for landlords that has been every week for quite a while to help support with those one time utility adjustment petitions. We held 43 of those last year with 68 landlords who were helped, and the top three reasons that property owners and landlords attended the housing help center was, one, for utilities assistance and assistance with those utility adjustment petitions two, for property registration and finally, number three, for the rental housing fee. Next up, we can talk about tenant housing help centers, which happen every other approximately every other week on the first and third Thursday of the month. We held 22 housing help centers with two thirty tenants assisted tenant households assisted and the top three reasons for attending the housing help center was rental assistance, affordable housing and below market rate housing inquiries and legal assistance. Forty eight percent of the people who attended the Housing Help Center required assistance in a language other than English.

61% heard about the services through word-of-mouth in the community. 50% have a household with three or more people in them. And the majority, 83% of the people who are receiving assistance through a housing help center for tenants live on less than $55,000 a year for the household annual income. And our Housing Help Center has community partners that join us every first and third Thursday of the month, and those community partners include the Community Services Agency of Mountain View and Los Altos, as well as community legal assistance through CLSPA. And we have 31 households that received rental assistance through CSA with an average rental assistance received for the fiscal year of $7,495 85 tenant households received free legal advice through CLASPA.

75% of those that received legal advice had received a termination notice, and 12 households received legal representation allowing them to remain in their home. Next up is our eviction prevention information. Required noticing wise, we had two sixty six bank rent increase notices that went out, ten seventy five termination notices. Approximately half of those were for unique households, which means that there were repeats that received termination notices. Two tenant buyout notices went out and no additional occupants notices were filed with our system. In terms of evictions, there were 21 units withdrawn that

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past.

Failure to pay rent notices, you'll see they actually dropped a little bit from last year. We had about ten twenty six failure to pay rent notices that were filed with us. You can see that trend during the quarters there, and five sixty nine unique households received failure to pay rent notices for the year. Next up is tenant relocation assistance and property sales information. You see here one property went into redevelopment in twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five with eight units that were affected and one household that received assistance.

For property sales for fully covered units, we had 14 properties that transacted, representing 172 units, still well below our average of three twenty four there. And there are currently four properties for sale representing 104 units. Again, we're not really seeing redevelopment on these properties right now, it's more just properties transacting. Next up is information about mobile homes. We have as you know, we have six mobile home parks in Mountain View representing eleven thirty mobile homes and 182 rented mobile homes according to our rent registry system.

100% of parks have registered, 100% of those rental space fees have been paid. For information requests and inquiries, we received 18 inquiries from the public. You'll see the breakdown there. And the biggest inquiry topic was registration. We had no petitions filed or received for the MHRSO related coverage in twenty twenty four-twenty five, and we had no no fault evictions over time and 24 failure to pay rent notices were given during that time period.

Next up is market conditions. We'll look at average market rent. You'll see here the average market rent has gone up and continues to, but is, you know, up significantly from our low dip in 2020. We're now at about $2,894 for fully covered units, and you'll see the breakdown of how that looks by the number of bedrooms as well. Vacancy rates have declined.

We are below the 5% threshold for the year. We have a current vacancy rate of four percent for fully covered units, 3.2% for partially covered units, and 14.6% for newly built units. That spike in newly built units is because new units came online. And this concludes staff's presentation of the activity report for fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty five and happy to take any questions on Now this

we move on to questions from committee members. Does any committee member want to ask a question? Member Hizlip?

I apologize if I didn't do this in advance. I think I've asked before, are were any UDs received during this past quarter?

Andrea, do you happen to know the answer to that question?

Yes. There were, but I don't have the number off the top

of my head. But it

it would only have been a few.

Okay. And the other question I had about the notice to cease, like, do you recall, like, what the common things that were supposed to cease? What the common issues were?

They're they were kind of all over the map. I I know there's some belong ings in places where they're not supposed to be on balconies and things like that, a few other hoarding issues. Mhmm. Noise, flight enjoyment issues.

Were some of them repeats?

A few. Yeah.

Mhmm. The numbers were the same. Do you does staff do any proactive outreach when there's a notice to cease?

We do something similar that we do with the termination notices. So we we mail out a letter directly to the tenant with a copy to the landlord. So the landlord also knows what the city is sending out. But it just says basically that we've received a notice to cease from the landlord, and then it also provides information about our housing help center so that they can come and get assistance there as well.

If I'd recall there being hoarding issues in the past. Do you I know it's a little tough to get tenants engaged, but is there any kind of extra work you try to do getting them connected to legal?

We connect them to CLASPA for their fair housing and to ask for accommodations to make a plan. Okay. Thank you. I think that was that was the extent of my questions.

Alright. Member vice chair Cox, do have a question? No.

I'm gonna make the time.

Okay. I'll I'll ask a question if no one else wants to ask a question. My question is just really minor. I saw on the report that there have been zero additional occupant notices. Is that expected? Because I feel like at least we would see a few.

I'm gonna refer to Andrea for that one as well.

Thank you. We don't normally get that many additional occupant notices. It seems to me from what I've heard throughout the community that for the most part when tenants and landlords are discussing people moving in and out, they usually can handle it between themselves.

Okay.

And then when that's not the case, they'll come to us for assistance and then we usually assist them with that additional occupant notice. So we usually only see them when maybe they're not coming to an agreement by themselves.

Okay. Sounds fun. Alright. I see no one in the audience. I see no one on Zoom. So we'll move straight into committee deliberations and feedback. Vaishra Cox.

Sure, sure. Thanks. I really look forward to whenever these reports come out because as I mentioned before, it's the thing I get most questions about in my neighborhood. So, there's a number of pluses and a number of minuses in this report. Let me go through what I see.

The number of inquiries over time has stabilized out to about 3,300 a year. I think that's good for predictability and planning. So, that's a good thing. Another thing is that it's great to see that the CFRA landlords paying the fees and registration is making a little bit more progress. 96% is the best that we've seen yet I think and always with respect to the mobile home parks the history of 100% park registration and payment of rental fees is you should get a gold star and a blue ribbon.

Also no petitions and lower number of evictions. That's a plus too. So let's see then on the minuses one of the things that pops out is that the rent for newly built units is 55% over that of fully covered units which I understand the fully covered units are usually older and you know may not wouldn't necessarily get the same rent even if everything was fully at the market rate But it's the kind of thing that it's a bit of pressure when people look at that high market rate rent and they just say wow, that's high. Anyway, the vacancy rate for the newly built units is up another 2% while the vacancy rate for the fully covered units dropped from five to 4%. So yeah, mean to the extent that that increase is new units coming online and it typically takes a year or two for a new complex to fully rent up, That isn't a cause for alarm but it is something we want to keep our pulse on over time.

Because this got discussed on two threads that people brought to my attention on Nextdoor saying that why do we have such a high vacancy rate for new units? Why don't we have a vacancy tax? So I mean we need to, it's good to just like I said keep a pulse on whether or not this is just ramping up or if this is becoming steady state. The vacancy rate is lowest for three bedroom apartments and that's kind of, you know that shows that our community could be a little bit challenged in being able to put families in apartments because families typically would like three bedroom apartments. And then I wondered you know the fact that we had gone down below the 5% to 4% for the fully covered units so this would have an impact on the bank rent increases.

And thank you for providing that information. It looks like they're on the upswing again and from 143 last year to two sixty six this year. So yeah I mean that could translate into people getting increases in their rent higher than the CPI. So, some concern, but not stuff that we can do anything directly about. Anyway, just want to note those things for the record. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Balch.

Yeah. So I see that the, once again, the capital improvement petitions appear to be zero. So assuming that's accurate, I'll remind everyone that that means that landlords are not seeing it worthwhile to really look after the long term condition of their property. There are many reasons for that, but it's definitely a warning, a very serious warning sign for the state of housing in the city. So that's my comment.

Thank you. Any others who would like to comment? Seeing none, that ends the item. Now we move on to item 5.2 amendments to the CSFRA regulations chapter one purpose, chapter two definitions, and chapter three code of conduct. Follow comment will occur after presentation item and committee questions. We invite you to submit a speaker card now if you'd to speak on this item or press 9 or raise hands on Zoom if you're online. We'll begin with the presentation from staff.

Give me one second. Sorry. Having some technical difficulties this evening. Thank you, Chair Ma and committee members. My apologies for the technical difficulties.

Can't quite figure out what's happening over here, but we will make it through. So please bear with me as I have a slightly problematic screen situation. Agenda item 5.2 is amendments to CFRA regulations Chapter one, two, and three. And for this, the purpose of this agenda item is for the Rental Housing Committee to consider adopting amendments to the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act regulations, Chapter one, Purpose, Chapter two, Definitions, and Chapter three Code of Conduct. A little bit of background on this.

The CFRA empowers you, the RHC, to establish rules and regulations for administration and enforcement of the CFRA. To date, the Rental Housing Committee has adopted 13 chapters of regulations and the intent of those regulations is to implement and administer the CSFRA. While various provisions of the regulations have been amended from time to time and additional chapters have been added, they have not been subject to a general review, and staff recommends initiating an administrative review of the regulations to be conducted over the course of the next fiscal year beginning with this item. The proposed amendments are intended to clean up, clarify and update the regulations and improve the CSFRA regulations as a tool for implementation, administration and enforcement of the CSFRA. In part, the revisions are based on questions and feedback received from the community, including from landlords, tenants, hearing officers and other stakeholders.

This item begins with staff recommendations for updates to regulations Chapters one, two and three. As noted, additional chapters will follow. Only substantive amendments will be reviewed with the committee this evening, and a complete overview of the amendments and other minor cleanup edits, including correcting references and ensuring uniform formatting, is reflected in attachment one of the accompanying staff report. So the first substantive recommendation is related to CSFRA regulations Chapter one, Section B. And the amendment is to add Section B in its entirety to allow staff the authority to amend CSFRA regulations as similar to the authority that the RHC provided to staff regarding the one time utility adjustment petition process, which allows staff to administratively make minor non substantive amendments to the regulations to make it possible to streamline clarifications and make it easier for landlords and tenants to understand the requirements of the law.

And this section will ultimately permit staff to make these minor changes to the CSFRA as deemed necessary without the need to bring these changes back to the committee for deliberation and approval. The changes will be provided in as staff reports to be on the consent calendar, and the committee can then pull these items as consent items for review if so desired. The next amendment, and I'm not going to read these amendments, but they are provided for you in your agenda packet in your staff report and in the accompanying attachment. The next regulation substantive change is related to Chapter two, Section D, and this goes and provides a clear definition of what it means to have a covered rental unit. As you can see, the text used to state that the covered rental units was just all rental units, not specifically exempted by the CFRA, and we have now provided definitions of what that actually means.

This is actually something that we have received questions on, especially for the section of fully exempt rental units, which goes into more detail about what that actually means and provides information on clarifying that rental units that are subject to housing assistance payment program, what that means, how that's affected, rental units that receive assistance under Section eight, clarifying that those units are not exempted. And it also provides clarification about duplexes and single family homes and then gives examples of how CSFRA Section seventeen oh five and coverage relates to actual properties. We do receive questions and inquiries about this relatively frequently and providing this clarification will assist our community in understanding more of the details of what is an actually fully covered rental unit versus a partially covered rental unit and fully exempt rental unit. Next up is CSFRA regulations update to Chapter two, Section L and subsequently Section X. This provides definitions for what the petitions are that are available to the community at this time and gives definitions for what a rent increase petition is, a rent decrease petition, specified capital improvement petition, joint petition, exemption petitions, and one time utility adjustment petitions.

And then substantive compliance and or substantially compliant is now defined with a nod to the table in Chapter 12. And incorporating these terms in the definitions make it easier for the community to quickly reference these terms and also provides clarifications about what types of petitions are available in the community. Finally, the last substantive change that is being reviewed by the committee this evening is related to Chapter three, Section B of the regulations, and it just simply cleans up some areas of the regulations, including clarifying that we are holding meetings in council chambers, giving some different language for the adjournment of meetings related to updates regarding the Brown Act and simplify some additional language in this chapter. And the recommended changes to Chapter three are, again, due reflecting the logistics and conduct of the committee's meetings and also simplifying the language to reduce confusion and to ensure compliance with the Brown Act and other CFRA regulations. This concludes the staff presentation for item 5.2 and happy to take any questions at this time.

All right. We will move on to questions from committee members. Has any member of the committee would like to give a question to staff? Seeing none, we move on to public comment. Any member of the public wishing to provide a virtual comment on this item, please click the raise hand button on Zoom or press 9 on your phone. Staff would display a countdown timer on the screen. Seeing none, we will move back into committee deliberations and feedback. Vice chair Cox.

Yes. I wanna thank you for my for the answers to my many questions that I sent in about this stuff. And I did want to read one of the questions and the answer into the record. I had asked if a member of the RHC disagrees with a minor amendment made by staff, what recourse does the RHC member have? Could we include some language that would describe the process?

And the answer was, as noted, the minor amendments will always be placed on the consent calendar so the RHC is aware of the amendments. If a member of the RHC disagrees with a minor amendment by staff, they would be able to pull the item from the consent calendar per the usual process and open a discussion. So thank you for that clarification. I think that's a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with it. I just wanted to make the comment about why I care about this.

The first political discussion I got involved in here in Mountain View was over the conditions on the Madera Apartments about a half a block away from my street. And what had happened is the zoning administrator had after the project had been approved had given his okay for the inclusion of a rooftop deck where party music could be played at all hours. The thing was that people on my street didn't consider that a minor. We asked him how did you do that after the approval was done. He said it's a minor amendment.

And so just as many people talking about pickleball this week are concerned about noise, we went to the city and we said that wasn't minor in our estimation, so we want to have some discussion about this and he was kind enough to let us do that and we came up with a resolution that they would not have that music playing. No amplifying equipment and they wouldn't play music after 08:00 in the evening and we've all been real happy with the result after fifteen years. It just comes around, if the issue, I know you guys would be the ones deciding what's minor and what's not, but I believe you guys will probably make all the right decisions but I just want a chance to look over it and raise the issue if I feel I need to. Thank you for accommodating me on that.

Governor Brown. Thank you chair. I just wanted to say I'm very happy with this. I think that I appreciate the diligence and communication and thoroughness. I think this is a great move and I hope the city takes notice and follows the example of our fantastic staff. Member Keating?

I also want to say thank you and that there were several places as I was reading through where my internal dialogue said that's so much better. Thank you.

All right. Any other comments on this item? Okay. A motion is in order. Okay. A motion has been made by member Hislop, seconded by member Brown. Member Hislop, would you like to say the motion?

I'm getting training.

I moved to adopt amendments to the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Act regulations chapter one purpose chapter two definitions and chapter three code of conduct.

Alright. Seeing no discussion, we'll move on to vote. Motion passes unanimously. We will now move on to agenda item 5.3 amendments to the MHRSO regulations chapter one purpose chapter two definitions. Public comment will occur after presentation item and committee questions. We invite you to raise hand on zoom now if you would like to speak. Now we move on to the presentation.

Good evening committee members. Thank you Chair Ma. Item 5.3 is a presentation on amendments to the MHRSO regulations, chapters one purpose and and Chapter two, Definitions. So the purpose of this agenda item is for the RHC to consider adopting amendments to the Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Ordinance Regulations Chapter one and Chapter two. This presentation is is very similar to the one that you've just received for the CFRA.

The MHRSO empowers you, the RHC, to establish rules and regulations for the administration and enforcement of this chapter. To date, the RHC has adopted 12 chapters of regulations to implement the MHRSO, and since the initial adoption, regulations have been amended from time to time but no general review or cleanup has occurred. Staff recommends initiating an administrative review of the MHRSO regulations to clean up, clarify and update the regulations. Revisions are based again on questions and feedback received from landlords, tenants, hearing officers and other stakeholders. Just as a reminder, the City Council amended the MHRSO in June 2022 and March 2025, and some of the changes reflected in the regulation updates are intended to address the changes made to the actual ordinance.

Only substantive amendments will be reviewed with the committee this evening. However, a complete overview of the amendments and other minor cleanup edits, including correcting references and ensuring uniform formatting is reflected in attachment one to the staff report that was provided as part of the agenda packet. The first amendment is similar to the one for the CSFRA in Chapter one, Section B, and it adds this new section for staff authority to amend the MHRSO regulations. Again, this section permits staff to make minor changes to the MHRSO as deemed necessary without the need to bring those full changes back to the committee, but the staff will provide the RHC with notice of proposed amendments by placing the amendments on the consent calendar of the agenda for the relevant RHC meeting. This parallels the authority that the RHC provided to staff regarding the one time utility adjustment petition process to administratively make minor non substantive amendments to the regulations.

Up next is similar to the one we just reviewed related to defining petitions in Chapter two, Section U. And you'll see here we now have definitions for rent increase petitions, rent decrease petitions and specified capital improvement petitions. We do not have an exemption petition for mobile homes and we do not have a utility adjustment petition for mobile homes, but we do have a joint petition and that is defined here. Additionally, we provide a definition for substantial compliance or substantially compliant. And again, this is meeting the requirements as defined in Table one of Chapter 12 of the MHRSO regulations.

These terms are used throughout the MHRSO regulations but are not defined in Chapter two, and staff feels that incorporating these terms in the definitions chapter makes it easier to quickly reference the terms for landlords, tenants, the community and staff as well. Next up is one more change or addition to Section AA of Chapter two, and this is related to the term rent rollback. While the term was previously defined in the MHRSO regulations, it was incorrect compared to the way in which the term is used throughout the regulations, so we provided some clarification there. And correcting the definition of this term will make it easier for mobile home park owners, landlords, mobile home owners and mobile home tenants to understand how to come into compliance if the term is being used. And finally up, staff recommendation is for the RHD to adopt amendments to the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance regulations of Chapters one and Chapters two.

We're happy to take any questions at this time.

Thank you. Does any member of the committee have any questions? Seeing none, we will move to public comment. If you would like to give comment on this item, please click the raise hand button on Zoom or press 9 on your phone. Seeing none, we'll bring this back to the committee for deliberations and feedback. Would any member of the committee like to propose a motion in the meantime? Member Brown? I move to adopt the amendments to the mobile home rent stabilization ordinance regulations, chapter one purpose, and chapter two definitions. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, we're moved on to vote.

Seconded by by sheriff Cox. Passes unanimously. Now we move on to agenda item 5.4, update on one time utility adjustment petition process. Public common worker, after the presentation item and committee questions, we would invite you to raise your hand now if you'd like to speak on this item during public comment. We'll begin with the presentation.

One more from me this evening. Good evening, committee members, and thank you, Chair Ma. Agenda item 5.4 is an informational update on the progress Stabilization of Fair Rent Act one time utility adjustment petitions process. A little bit of background on this. 12/18/2023 meeting, the RHC adopted Chapter 13 of CSFRA regulations to clarify that the definition of rent under the CSFRA includes utilities and to address utility charges and the use of ratio utility billing systems, otherwise known as RUVs or similar systems for shared or master metered utilities and CSFRA covered properties.

During the December 18 meeting, the RHC requested staff to provide regular updates to the RHC throughout update was provided a year ago at the August 2024 RHC meeting and the following overview provides a summary of the efforts to date, including implementation of the petition process, outreach and education and support provided for landlords and tenants. The implementation process has six phases, and you can see we have completed the first three, and the last three are all in progress. The first phase is implementations Phases one, two and three. Phase one was performing research and receiving input from the community. Phase two was adopting regulations.

And Phase three was actually building out the implementation of the petition process. Phase one involved RHC study sessions, stakeholder meetings, and staff analysis to develop recommendations for RHC consideration. Phase II was when the RHC adopted those regulations and it focused on drafting an adoption of regulations. And then finally, Phase III of the completed phases was developing the internal procedures necessary for the implementation of the utility adjustment petition process. That involved significant project milestones, including the hiring of hourly staff, the creation of process workflows and standard operating procedures and the testing of landlord submittals, tenant responses and staff processes for petitions as described in the regulations.

Upon review, areas of the regulations required refinement to ensure the process was administratively feasible. In May 2024, during the RHC meeting, staff presented and the RHC adopted recommendations to amend the regulations to address these issues. Phase III was completed in August 2024. And on to the next final phases four, five and six. Phase four is performing outreach and education.

This started way back in December 2023 when the RHC first adopted the regulations for this process and it continues indefinitely until this process is complete. Phase five is actual submittal of the petitions to the division by property owners. And phase six is the staff actually processing those petitions. These phases are all underway. Phase four, outreach education, which you see here.

We started with an insert in the rental housing fee invoice, developing our web pages, and then have gone on to have consistent outreach educational workshops, petition clinics, the housing help centers now every week for property owners, and we do send out different types of mailings and communication points throughout the process. So you'll see here to date we've had 11 landlord focused workshops with 150 participants, four tenant focused workshops with 22 participants. I think that number might be a little bit off for our totals. I'll have to double check that for the tenant focused workshops. We've had one we've had two inserts in the rental housing fee invoice, three postcards have gone out that were mass mailing related, two landlord packages, four newsletters have talked about this, and we've had three mass emails that went out to just about everyone that we possibly could touch.

And then we have targeted outreach that's been occurring per property category. We've had postcards that go out specifically based on property when the property due dates are for the submittals that provide different information related specifically to that property category, letters with pre addressed return envelopes to allow for responses, emails targeted specifically to specific properties, and then direct phone calls to targeted properties as well. We've developed web pages and information sheets, FAQs, and 15 forms and templates to help with this process. And then we also hold those weekly housing help centers for landlords and biweekly, well one to the first and third Thursday of the month for tenants. And then you'll see here the landlord submittal process or phase five of our implementation plan.

And the submittal periods were twice extended by the rental housing committee to address the level of staff support needed for properties to submit the petitions and prevent properties from missing the submittal deadlines, which as you know comes with significant potential penalties associated with missing the deadlines. This here shows you what those updated deadlines are. So we are about to hit another deadline soon for those properties with six to 20 units, and they are due September 30, and then one to five units are due December 31. For that first chunk of properties with more than 20 units, again we received a 100% submission response rate, which represents nine twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty four fully covered units. And we will go over what is currently happening with the other sized properties at the end of this presentation.

To ensure or hopefully ensure compliance with our deadlines, we will provide the same level of extensive customer service support that we did for larger properties to our smaller properties and research and contact non responsive properties through a variety of methods. We are sending out we've sent out a postcard. We are sending out targeted letters. We'll send out actually two different targeted letters to landlords that have not responded in any way. We will also do a mass email campaign and then make phone calls as well.

So we are really trying to reach all of these properties to avoid those penalties occurring. And then we have Phase six, our final phase here, which is actually staff processing the petitions. This will continue until all petitions are processed. And in the final phase of this process, we review the submitted petitions and any responses received from tenants, analyze the calculations in the workbook, make a determination of whether adjustment for the property were properly calculated, and then there's notifications that go out to tenants and landlords of the adjustment. We've worked closely with landlords for just about a year to refine the petition process to make it as easy as possible for landlords to submit petitions, notice tenants and apply adjustments.

To do this, we've created over 15 forms and templates to facilitate the process from landlords. We systematically review and revise the process and execute many of the complex steps, including creating anonymous tenant workbooks and pre filling notice forms on behalf of the landlords. And these process improvements have made it easier for tenants and landlords to understand and comply with process. Relatively, we have been seeing a relatively successful process even though it is quite to be complex, and we will continue to review feedback that we receive from the community to further streamline the process as we go along. You can see here this is the number of units that have submitted petitions based on property size or that have confirmed that they do not use RUBS.

So this is point in time information. You can see here that for our more than 20 units, we've received 100% submittal compliance that again includes the properties that have confirmed that they don't use RUBS from that or have told us that they don't use RUBS. From that situation, we either send out the follow-up information, including the notice of filing to tenants that have currently used rubs or in a situation where property is not using rubs, we send out a different packet so that tenants can respond to us to let us know if indeed they are using rubs, and then there's a different process that we follow-up with property owners if that's the case. And then finally you'll see here that we have actually finalized 3,208 units for '52 properties that have made it have made it some way through the process fully for the greater than 20 unit category. The next chunk is the six to 20 unit category of properties.

And we've had 28.5% of those properties respond, representing seven forty five units, and 66 properties have responded. We have processed and notified tenants for two eighty nine units representing 27 properties or 10.8%. And then two twenty units have completed the process in that category representing 8.4% of that type of property, completely making it through the process in some way. And then finally, our last category, which is our smaller properties, we've received first quarter the was The Us, whether that's the notice of filing or the confirmation that the property does not use rubs, representing 29 properties. And then finally, 74 units have made it through the process in some sort sort of totality, representing 21 properties or 7% of that chunk of potential submittals.

And the next step in this process is that we will continue to implement the petition process and provide updates to the rental housing committee as requested, and we estimate that the process will be finalized by September 2026. Happy to take any questions on this agenda item at this time from the committee.

Alright. Member Hislop?

Okay. I have a couple of questions. One of them is perfectly fine to do follow-up in email. I'm maybe it's numbers. Okay. So we have a 100 and in the one to five unit category, a 122 units, 11%. What does the 11% represent a percentage of?

So of the total amount of units in that category

Okay.

11% have responded.

Have responded. So okay. The question that I was gonna ask, which can be that the information I understand might take some compiling, but I'm curious to know who the owners are in each of these categories who filled petitions out. So a 100% response rate for the 20 more than 20 units. And this is just the the ones that do have rubs.

It'd be interesting to see how many owners it is and what types of owners they are. I don't expect seeing a list of them. And then having an understanding. Yes. I realize that number includes it, but the the information I'm requesting is of the ones who do have rubs and filled out the petition, like, what the the owners are.

So of the well, of the ones who have rubs in the two the 131 properties that are over 20 units, like, what's the list of owners in that? Is that Do you mean names? Yeah. I mean, it's okay. What I I'm trying to understand is what's the type of owners that might be owning a five unit property versus a larger property. If the story you always hear is it's mom and pops who own the smaller buildings, Why are they not availing of themselves or responding? Does there need to be some better outreach to them?

So I do 11% is kind of expected because their submittal date is way later than bigger properties if that's what your concern is.

Okay then let me refine my request. I'm very curious for other reasons too who the owners are in over 20 unit category who do have rubs and submitted the petition.

Sure And may we know the reasons?

I mean, some of it is in anticipation of the other jurisdiction, but I also am curious about the complexion of ownership of buildings generally. And this it seems like a you know three quarters of the units in this category are subject to reps. That's a good chunk of because that's those tend to be the larger owners are the ones that tend to use algorithmic pricing and engage in more profit making rather than tenant friendly so

we would like to understand which ones are personal property versus company properties Mhmm. Owned companies. Okay. We can do that. Yeah. Just

because that can sometimes explain behaviors. And when, as a governing body, we're trying to address certain problems, it's helpful to understand the motivations behind the property owners that might be causing our questions.

That was all.

Alright. Moving on to vice chair Cox.

Yeah, just a few questions. What you've seen so far, you anticipate for the six to 20 units that people are going to be just kind of like waiting up to the last few days before they turn their submissions in? Or do you think that they trickle in kind of regularly?

They are trickling in relatively regularly. We anticipate that a lot of these properties do not use RUBS, and that's one of the reasons why we're not seeing as many filings because they're already in compliance with the law. But again, we are going to start our we'll continue, but really start our very hands on high touch outreach for the properties that have not yet responded this week, so this coming week.

And like in this six to 20 category, I mean like can you give a ballpark estimate of how many people you think are going to need to have extensive handholding because this is a difficult process for them?

We are it's very different to be honest, it's very, very different between the smaller properties and the larger properties. The larger properties have required more extensive support for filing the petitions because they are so large. And that's the bulk of what we have been dealing with for the past year is those large properties. Properties, the ones that have just a little bit above 20 units have been very successful in their filings and have required far less support. So we're anticipating that just because it's so much easier for staff to assist a property that has 25 units instead of 400 units, we can see the information and we can see where the discrepancies or the challenges or issues might be or where the information is just inputted incorrectly, which does happen.

It was by proxy of if you have a large property, we have some of the large properties had invoices for one type of utility. So six invoices for a gas charge or six invoices for a water charge per month for a year that they had to provide to us. And those are multiple pages with multiple types of inputs in them. Those had to be inputted into the spreadsheets so that the spreadsheets would calculate and function correctly. That all is far more challenging and complex than a property that has 25 units, one bill per month or one bill every other month.

That can be really easily the potential for errors is minimized and the ability for staff to catch those errors before a submission is filed is much easier. So and for us to do a preliminary review, it's much faster. So again, the level of support is actually much less typically, even if someone has the person filing the petition has potentially greater upfront need for support, say that they might have challenges with tech and all of these workbooks are things that require a computer, we're far more able to assist quickly for these smaller properties than for the large ones.

Okay. And then just one last short question. I mean, for a property that is like six to 20 units, once the landlord has gathered the data that he needs from each of the tenants, how many hours of work do you expect in terms of him to be able to do to make the submittal?

You know, it's actually not that difficult once they have the information that they need. They don't need to gather gather it from each unit. These bills are provided to the landlord by the and most of time it's by the city, that does utility billing. So for instance, for a six unit property, the landlord would have 12 bills. So it can be relatively quick and we are happy to provide the support to assist a property owner in that process.

Mean, sounds like

when it's short.

Like an hour or two work. I mean, you know, not very much. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And those are my questions.

Member Keating?

Thank you. So there were opportunities through this process for the tenants to confirm the information that the landlord submitted. And And I'm curious, were there situations where the tenant said, no, that's not right, and the summary?

Sure. So there have been very few actually, probably because of the extensive support that we've provided to property owners during the process. There was one where it was, I think, the very first submission, and no one realized that hot water is like when you see hot water on a bill, it's not a hot water bill. It's actually a gas bill. So that was landlord had to resubmit a different workbook to fix that issue.

They had included the calculation and included those numbers. They had just included them as a water charge. So that was one of the like I said, that was actually the very first property that filed. It was one of those oh, that's just the luck of the draw kind of situations. And we had one where a landlord accidentally very accidentally put in the wrong room count. So that one had to be resubmitted to tenants as well. But that was really the major issue, the only two that had any kind of substantial issues.

And if I can add in one more question. So for a landlord who doesn't use rubs, they were also requested to submit a petition.

So they were requested to either submit a petition or notify us that they do not use rubs. Okay. In that case, if they notified us that they don't use rubs, we send out a letter to the tenants with a form that they can respond to, to let us know that they the landlord actually uses rubs or they used to include utilities in rent and now are not or there's all of these different fields that they can choose from in this form to respond to our letter of utility billing confirmation. And they have a certain they have thirty days to respond, just like the other tenants that use RUBS have thirty days to respond to the petition. And then we actually send out a final letter to them once the process is fully complete, once we know that there's we've received no feedback from any of the tenants, and then that final letter also states to the tenant that they if the landlord is using RUBS, if the landlord is unlawfully charging rent, can file they can contact us and potentially file a petition.

So we have multiple follow-up points for properties where the property owner has stated that they don't use REPS.

So then for the situation that may come up in a few days where you have the some of the six to 20 size units and it's after September 30 and you haven't heard from them, will you assume it's the same as they probably aren't using rubs and notify the tenants to inform you that they are or aren't using rubs?

That's correct. That that is our plan.

Thank you. Member Balch.

Yeah. Thank you. So I I think the committee members are trying to just get a clear sense for how the process is going, how much is labor, how much is, you know, other either errors or maybe even lack of of cooperation. What I think I heard you say is that on the large properties over 20 units there's just a tremendous amount of data input. There's a lot of multiple invoices.

I can imagine a lot of spreadsheet sessions of just entering keying and data manually. It doesn't sound like there have been any serious discrepancies except for that case with the water bill versus gas bill and maybe a couple of things. So that a fair characterization that basically the process is working, there's a tremendous amount of labor to key in numbers, but things are basically going okay and everyone's kind of playing by the rules? Or is there anything else going on that we should know about?

No, we've had wonderfully the property owners have been very willing to work through this process, and we've been staff able to provide very extensive support that we've received positive feedback on. And we have also very very conscientiously designed a process that reduces as much as possible the work that the property owners have to do themselves. We've learned ways to utilize functions in Word that pull in information from spreadsheets to automatically fill in letter templates. We've created systems so that the landlords don't have to redact spreadsheets. We created unique IDs so that the property owners could give one spreadsheet to their tenants that provided a way for the tenants to review the information in the petition for their unit without the landlord having to go through and only provide that information for that one tenancy in a way that's anonymous for the units.

We really just continuously have troubleshot and reduced potential errors and that kind of overattention to detail and to customer service has, I think, made the process what could be an extraordinarily challenging process relatively functional. I would say without using too optimistic of a tone that it has been to this point about as successful of a very large process as I could have jumped up. So yeah, the staff that is supporting this has done extraordinary work.

Thank you so much. It sounds like things are going well. Everyone's conscientious. People are trying to do the right thing. Whether it's a large corporation or a small property owner, folks are doing the right thing. Thank you very much. That's awesome.

Member Hislip?

I just had a thought, and maybe it's too late for your registration period, but could you consider the possibility of asking the question as part of the property registration to try to capture those that haven't responded?

The property registration period starts in January for the next property registration cycle. We do have a field in the registration cycle that is related to current rent and rental rates and how those are affected by the implementation of utility adjustment. And we can definitely look further into utilizing the portal in some way for this.

Yeah, I was just going to say what she said. We've added in a field so that will be in the next it's active now, but when the majority of people input their information is during the next registration cycle, we'll have that information.

That just seems like less work proactive work or mailings, and they have to interact with

petitions first come first serve or are they prioritizing larger versus smaller?

We are prioritizing based on submittal deadline date right now. So we're looking at the properties that have the largest number of units on the property. That is one of our prioritization categories. And the other thing that we prioritized was for those larger properties, sending out the notices of utility billing confirmation so that we could close out those properties as quickly as possible.

With that said, do you expect to be the rough completion date for the larger than 20 unit properties then, at least to get the note tenants notified?

I I do not have an estimation at this time. It is so very dependent upon whether or not the property owners are responsive in a timely fashion when we begin the submittal reviews. We're about 50% through, but we are through a we are just wrapping up some of our largest properties to get the notices of filing out. So I I would say maybe for those larger properties, three three to six months.

So by year end

get them completed.

By spring next year.

Either one of those would be fantastic.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. We'll see. Alright. Seeing no more questions from the committee, I'll move it on to public comment. Any member of the public wishing to provide virtual comment on this item about the one time utility adjustment petition, please click the raise hand button on Zoom or press star nine on your phone. Staff will display a countdown timer on the screen. Seeing no hands, we will move back to the committee. By chair Cox.

We do have a hand.

Oh, sorry.

I'll call Philip Cosby. Go ahead and unmute yourself.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes.

So for the tenants that are in apartments with 20 or more units, it looks like more than half of them are still receiving these RUBS bills. Is that correct?

That is correct. They will continue to receive RUBS charges until their petition information is finalized.

Phil, you're on mute if you want to say anything further. Okay, go ahead.

Is there any limitation on how long that will drag on?

We are processing the petitions as quickly as possible because we realize that this is time sensitive.

Thank you.

Alright. Seeing no more hands on Zoom, we will bring it back to the committee for full deliberation. Register Cox?

Yes. I wanna thank you for answering my questions in detail. In particular I was worried looking at just 26% of the stuff in for six to 20 units and wondering if in a month we would get this data in, but I'm feeling more confident about it now And you're letting me know and the rest of us know that based on the size of the unit and the amount of the information that generally makes the process a lot harder and so we may have the worst behind us and as Mr. Balch had said, it looks like we might have smooth sailing going on. So keep up the great work.

Over Keating.

I'd like to share with at least our audience member Phil Cosby, but, you know, if anyone else listens to this now or later, some of the reasons why it'll stretch the rubs will continue for a while. So should I do that based on the would staff like to answer that or should I? Okay. Now we'll go ahead and we'll see how good my memory is here. So there's a distinction between so first of all, the submitted petition from the landlord needs to be reviewed by staff and that is happening, I'm very confident, as fast as possible.

And then those would divide into two categories for tenant by tenant of is the calculated utility adjustment combined with the prior rent, you know, considering that and the considering the prior average bills, is it an overall increase or an overall decrease? So if it's an overall decrease, then the landlord needs to give a thirty day notice of decreasing rent and then implement that. If the overall utility adjustment results in higher considering utilities rent, overall rent, Then if the landlord had recently given their annual adjustment, they need to wait a you know, until the next annual adjustment to implement the utility adjustment, and that means that rubs would continue for that up to twelve month period. And for properties where their petitions aren't finalized yet, we haven't even started that potential twelve month period. So especially in situations where the utility adjustment is creating overall increase, rubs will continue for a while, but to those tenants, I guess that would be better good news if it's going to be a little higher with their utility adjusted rent.

Thank you.

Any other discussion, deliberation, feedback from the committee? Seeing none, we'll move on to item six, committee staff announcements and updates.

Thank you.

Alright so item 6.1, upcoming workshops and help center dates. And as usual, we continue to have our virtual office hours every Tuesday from 10AM to noon. Thank you Patricia. And people can register with the link on the zoom. Our workshop schedule for September is as follows.

On the ninth we actually have two workshops, The first one in the afternoon is focused on new landlords in Mountain View or any landlords that want a refresher on what to know about tenant protections and that will be virtual only. We also have one in the evening focused on mobile home run stabilization 101. That one is open to all and it will be hybrid on Zoom as well as at the community center. And on September 18 we have a landlord focused two p. M.

Virtual workshop again about submitting the utility adjustment petition and this one is intended to catch any landlords that need help right before the deadline. And for our landlord housing help center again we will continue to do those every Thursday. We have available both in office and on and you did hear a lot about this earlier but we are helping a lot of people with utility petitions registration and annual fee and general compliance. And we also have our housing help center for tenants. This one is running in its usual times the first and third Thursdays of the month from six to eight p.

M. In our office at Esquela and on Zoom. And this is our help center where we have a lot of our community partners including CSA, CLASPA and Mountain View Mediation Program so we will continue to hold those and we have been having very high attendance so it's going well. Any questions?

Thank you.

Okay, all good.

I can do it, sorry. Next we'll look at agenda item 6.2, future expected agenda items for our next meeting. The next meeting will be Thursday, September 25 at six p. M. And we'll be looking at potential additional potential CSFRA and MHRs the regulation amendments as well as our annual update on rent stabilization petition program.

Does anyone have any final questions?

Okay so no petitions in the pipeline? No no appeals?

I hesitate to answer, but not currently.

Alright then. Seeing no further comments or questions or announcements from members of the committee, this meeting is adjourned at 07:26PM. The next round of housing committee meeting is scheduled to be held on Thursday, September 25 at 6PM.