Rental Housing Committee - Regular Meeting

Well, I will check right now. If you can hear me hi, people. I'm I'm I'm I'm not in the Zoom

meeting. You can't hear.

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Yeah.

Do you know if the people on YouTube can hear us?

Oh, I don't know. I can check.

Are are we streaming right now? We're streaming. Mhmm. Well, she should be able to hear us if she's on Zoom.

Well, that's

Yes. So I you you can be heard on, YouTube. Hi, YouTube people. You're a little delayed, but they I can definitely hear you on there.

Okay. Thank you. Going live. Going live

Good evening.

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Test. Good evening. Welcome to the 09/25/2025 Randle Housing Committee regular meeting. This meeting is a call to order at 06:10PM. I will proceed with roll call.

All members are present. We will move 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 discussion.

We invite you to dismiss speaker card now if you like to speak on this item during public comment. Would any member of the committee like to pull an item? Seeing none, is there anyone on Zoom? Seeing no members of the public wishing to comment, I will bring it back to the committee for a motion. By chair Cox.

Yes. I make a motion to approve the consent calendar as written. Second.

That is a motion made by vice chair Cox, seconded by member Brown. Let's go to the vote. Motion passes unanimously. Now we move item onto item four, oral communications. We will now open the meeting from oral communications 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 committee from acting on non agenda items. If you would like to speak on this item, please raise your hand on Zoom or press 9 on your phone. Seeing none, we move on to item 5.1, annual update on the rent stabilization petition program. Public comment will occur after the presentation item and community questions. We'll begin with the presentation from staff.

Thank you very much, chair. Today we'll give you an annual update on the petitions that are related to the CSFRA and the MHRSO. A little bit about the background. The last update we provided was in the September 2024 meeting. And the petition process can includes rent to request increases above the annual rent increase limits or rent decreases for claims of unlawful rent increases, habitability and maintenance issues, and tenant hardship.

This past year, fiscal year twenty twenty four, twenty five, the petitions increased in volume and complexity requiring more staff staff time. We're gonna give an overview of petitions data and of trends in the petitions filing in the past year. So in general, since the start of the program, in 2017 through the end of this past year, a total of two ninety one petitions were filed. As you can see, tenants are the primary filers of these petitions. Two seventy petitions were filed by tenants and 21 by landlords.

Also noteworthy is that the petitions in fiscal year twenty four-twenty five went back to the fiscal year twenty twenty two-twenty twenty three level. Fiscal year twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four was definitely an outlier in respect. But the complexity and time needed to process the petitions have increased over time, particularly for those petitions that involve two or more issues and also translation requests. For landlord petitions, 21 petitions, were filed since 2017. 15 of those entered the formal hearing process, and six were withdrawn or not accepted.

13 partitions of the 15 landlord initiated petitions and that the hearing on process and they received judgment in favor of the landlord or were or reached a settlement agreement. Three of the 15 petitions were appealed to the rental housing committee, whereby the hearing officer decisions were affirmed. No capital improvement petitions were filed. Then we move over to, the tenant petitions. As mentioned, 270 petitions were filed by the tenants since November 2017, and 190 of which were completed through the hearing or settlement process.

95% of those received judgments in favor of the tenant or reached a settlement agreement. Additionally, 20 tenant hardships were filed in response to the landlord initiated petitions, and they are excluded from this number. Also mentionable is that six thirteen inquiries were received about tenant initiated petitions and six about joint or new additional housing services. Many of these inquiries concerned issues of unlawful rent, habitability, and maintenance concerned. Of the 44 petitions filed in 02/2521 were completed and 20 received judgment in favor of the petitioner or were settled through an agreement.

14 petitions were still in the petition process at the end of the fiscal year. Three petitions were appealed. One was decided on appeal by the rental housing committee, and two were remanded to the hearing officer. Other petitions. Since, fiscal year 2017, 15 exemption petitions were, filed and nine decision compliance petitions were filed by tenants.

A little bit about the onetime utility adjustment petitions, although you received a more detailed overview of that in one of your previous meetings. 100% of the properties with more than 20 units submitted a petition and information needed within the deadline. This consists of two fifteen properties, representing 31.6% of all the properties and 76.6% of all the units. We are now in the second phase, receiving petitions from units between five and twenty. Then we move on to the MHRSO petitions.

Since the start of the MHRSO in 2021, we've only received one petition, and that petition was not accepted since it was a tenant hardship related to an AGA. And hardship petitions can only be submitted for a banked increase or a landlord landlord initiated petition. So the trends in fiscal year twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five are multi pronged. First, there is a multi issue tenant petition filings and second, petition filings requiring translations and interpretations. So the multi issue tenant petition filings, 34 of the 50 petitions filed last year had multiple issues.

They filed for both unlawful rent, failure to maintain habitable property, and those require property inspections, legal assistance, and interpretation and filing translation and interpretation services were 17 out of the 50 petitions filed last year. And as you can see in the PowerPoint, there is an overview of what percentage of petitions have multiple or complex issues or require interpretation. So summarizing, the number of tenant petitions still exceed historical average. The decision compliance petitions have increased also because those decision petitions were developed a couple of years ago. They didn't exist since 2017.

And they offer a good insight into following through with the decision awards. Fewer decisions from filings in twenty four-twenty five were appealed. Most of what the rental housing committee has seen were still petitions from 2324 in this past year. And again, filings involving multiple issuance from a single unit or multiple petitions for the same unit continued along with ongoing need for translations, and these complexities and translations needs continue in this fiscal year. That concludes the presentation. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Are there any questions from committee members? Vice chair Cox?

Yes. Thank you for answering the four questions, I guess, that I turned in, but I just I have one follow-up one clarification question and one follow-up question. I'm trying to I'm trying to make sure I understand or need to be corrected on how an MNOI petition works. And in particular, I had asked a question about the three that were appealed. So the MNOI petitions are ones that are filed by the landlord. Okay? And so, when it comes back on appeal, is it that the landlord appealed or the tenants appealed?

It can be both. Okay. So, yeah.

Alright, but in these three cases, do you know what the situation was?

I don't have the exact numbers, but from what I remember in general, is most appeals were filed by the landlords themselves.

So why would, I mean it said here that those petitions, the hearing officer decided in favor of the landlord. In that case, can the landlord appeal? Is it because he thought he didn't get enough money?

Yep.

Okay, okay. That makes sense then. Alright, that answers that question, thank you. And I have one other question here. Had asked about, we had talked about whether or not filing a petition could affect somebody's immigration status.

And that's a troubling situation to me to think that what we were doing here might affect somebody in that way. And I appreciate that you send the answer in but I'm trying to get my head around one question, I mean one part of that where you said immigration retaliation has happened in previous petition cases. I'm taking that to mean that because somebody filed a petition, somebody was, immigration was notified about somebody. Is that really true? Can you say anything about who did the notifying? It his landlord or was it somebody on staff? I mean somebody in the audience or that I you can't say

mean that's the property manager or the landlord.

Okay, okay. Wow, okay. Well that's very disturbing but thanks for clarifying it and thank you for clarifying that referring to legal service agencies can help address those concerns.

Member Keating?

Thank you. So I'm looking at, it says 19 at the bottom of it, and it talks about multi issue tenant petition filings. And then there's this phrase requiring property inspections, legal assistance, and interpretation and translation. And the one that caught my attention the most was legal assistance. And so a tenant never needs legal assistance, but they might want it. Is that correct?

They don't need it, but, some tenants really do not understand the process or what is requested. Okay. If they file a petition, they have to provide the evidence Mhmm. Of what they're inquiring and requesting. So sometimes they do need the help of a legal person. So to improve their chances of the petition getting a reasonable hearing. Hearing.

And then do tenants turn to free legal assistance usually or they pay for an employer?

No, no, no. We use CLASFA for that. And

the property inspections, those are initiated by the hearing officer?

Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from committee members? Alright. I have a question. I did see in the charter petitions, we had a few joint petitions filed. Do we know anything about why those joint petitions are filed?

Can you repeat the question?

There and the listing of petitions in the past so a few years, there are a few joint petitions. Can we is there any details about those joint petitions Or

A joint petition usually happens when a tenant, say, wants to have a new carpet. And he's willing to go in a joint petition with the landlord to raise the rent because of this provision of a new carpet. That's example.

Okay. Just checking. Alright.

I have another question.

Go ahead, member Keating.

Thank you. On that same topic, have there been any joint petitions around electric car chargers?

No. We have not seen those yet. Thank you.

That actually reminds me the other question I was going to ask. Given the trends and petitions, do we feel like we have our hearing officers are still performing fine or do you believe there's perhaps potential bottlenecks in the number of hearing officers?

We definitely we put an RFQ out for more hearing officers and we also want to bring back to the rental housing committee the renumeration for the hearing officers.

Is that going to be part of next year's budget or would that be sooner than that?

Hopefully we can bring it sooner so we can recruit more hearing officers.

Okay. Thank you. Alright. Now we will move on to public comments. If you are you would a member of the public and you would like to comment on this item, please raise your hand on Zoom or press 9 on your phone. Seeing no one, we will go return back to further the committee for deliberations and feedback. Does any member of the committee have any deliberation or feedback? Seeing none, we will close the item. We will now move on to item six, committee staff announcements and updates. Staff? Thank you.

Hey. We'll be yep. We'll begin with, agenda item 6.1, upcoming workshops and, office hours. So we will continue as we have been to do our virtual office hours every Tuesday from ten to noon. We also have our workshop schedule for October.

So we have two workshops on October 7, one specifically for landlords in the afternoon. And this will be a presentation from CSA to explain their services and how CSA is able to assist landlords. And the reason we're doing this for landlords is because CSA has specifically told us once a landlord or a property manager has worked with them in the past and understands the process specifically around rent assistance and what landlord needs to do in order for the tenant to receive that assistance. They have a higher success rate in the future getting the the landlord to sign off on receiving some of that rent assistance. So we just wanna educate some of the landlords and property owners around the work that CSA does and the programs that they have.

And then in the in the afternoon, in the evening, we're doing a a tenant focused CSA and services workshop. And on October 14, we are continuing with our outreach around the utility adjustment petitions. And this will be tenant focused at 06:30, mostly explaining to tenants how the rent increase or the rent decrease around their utilities will look and how that will be presented to them. Right. And for our help centers, we continue to have separate help centers for landlords and tenants.

Our landlord help center is continuing to be every week, so it's every Thursday from one to three, both in person and virtually. And we have our help center for tenants. That is the first and third Thursday of every month from 06:30 to 8PM, both in person and on Zoom. And this is where we have a lot of our community partners coming so people can learn about programs from CSA, from Project mediation, from CLUSBA to get some legal resources, and then, of course, our staff is there as well. Any questions?

Alright. Thank you.

Alright. Moving on to item 6.2, expected future agenda items for RHC meetings. For next month, we will have an appeal as well as anti harassment, anti retaliation regulations. Are there any other comments or announcements from any member of the committee or city staff?

I just wanna remind the rental housing committee that we have a special meeting on October 4, which is a retreat. And next Tuesday night, there is a celebration of the volunteers of the committees.

So don't everyone got the invite for celebration of service? Alright.

Quick question. Have we received information about the retreat? Like, where? It's at Michael's, but, a formal agenda will be sent out, the Friday before, but it's from ten to four at Michael's restaurant. To four? At two. Sorry. Four hours. Yeah. I go

A long long retreats, I guess. Alright then. The meeting is adjourned at 06:30PM. The next Rendle Housing Committee meeting is scheduled to be held on Thursday, October 23 at six.