Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, Rockville. Today is 02/23/2026, and we are convening meeting five dash '26. Please join me as you're able in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you, miss Judy Penny. Do we have any changes to the agenda? There

are no changes to the agenda this evening.

Thank you. We now have the city manager's report, mister Mihalik.

Mayor Ashton, members of city council, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I'm do something a little different, Sindh, if it's okay. I wanna talk a little bit about this past month. So there's some really wonderful things that happened over this past month. It was Black History Month, and we had a number of events that were really very well received in the community.

And then this weekend, we had our Lunar New Year celebrations, a couple of them, partnering with committee organizations extremely well attended, literally standing room only and people waiting outside the door. So they're all wonderful opportunities for us to create community and hang out in the in the community with, family and friends and enjoy. Flip side, we've also had some really challenging times in the city over the past month too. We had a pretty interesting, unique winter storm. We had some very stressful calls into our police dispatch center, and we also obviously had an active shooter event.

One thing that I'm very proud of, though, even though those are all, you know, very difficult, stressful events for all of us, is that our staff responded very, very well in all three of those circumstances. I do wanna give some praise to, mayor and council. You guys provide us with the resources to provide training, and that training really does matter. And our staff not only attends training, receives certifications, but we do tabletop exercises. We do scenario based training.

And we really have plans in place, very specific plans in place, for these types of incidences to make sure that when they're happened, we're prepared, and the men and women of our staff can can can go into those scenes and respond really well and not only, protect the people that they're accessing those situations with, their coworkers, but more importantly, provide a much safer environment for our residents. So I'm just really proud of the team. I appreciate your support. Hopefully, we won't have these instances again, especially three big events in the course of a month, but just know we are prepared. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you, miss Mihilek. I wanna thank staff for responding, and I know, we were we met on the day of the Wooten shooting and really thanked the full Rockville City Police Department as well as staff because there were staff from both Wooten as well as Frost who stepped in to help and make sure that families were secure and that families were united. So I just want to commend the team. And thank you to all the parents. It was a hard night.

People are still dealing with it. And I think we have some questions about how do ghost guns make it into Maryland and how can we prevent situations like that in the future. I did want to also note that staff did a fantastic job on the Lunar New Year and also Doctor. King celebration. Interestingly, a key aid to Doctor. King unfortunately passed this month, and I wanted

acknowledge

Reverend Jesse Jackson, who also formed the the Rainbow Push Coalition, as well as a tremendous advocate for social justice King and I think has made our world a better place. Many doors are open because he was here. Doctor. Miles and I also attended another key civil rights leader. Our funeral today was Reverend doctor Ruby Rees Moon. Doctor Miles, I know you want to say a few words as well.

I don't think there are enough words, madam mayor, to express the loss that our community will feel from the passing of reverend doctor Ruby Moon. Like me, she's from Georgia. She went to Clark Atlanta. I subsequently went there to Atlanta University many decades later, but started off as a social worker I'm not a guidance counselor, actually, in Poolesville and then worked at Gaithersburg High and then has a local connect connection in serving at Wooten High School among the MCPS schools she worked at. She went on to serve as chaplain for the University of Maryland among other accolades, but the the main thing I wanna point out in the loss of this living legend, now recently deceased, is her commitment both, you know, in the classroom.

She, you know, was on the Edmund Edmund Pettus Bridge in in marching with folks on on Bloody Sunday, helped to organize folks to attend the march on Washington with doctor King when she first moved down here to or up here to Maryland. But the the best accolade I can would want to share is in part how friendly, how representative of this community she was. When I moved here about ten years ago, she welcomed me in just like any other student or or grandkid, depending on how you looked at it, and was always praying for folks. Back home, we say we we pray for you. You don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing, but I could always use it, and we will certainly miss her.

We we thank her family for allowing us to to to be with her, to to mourn with them. And, yeah, thank thanks for allowing me to say a few words, madam Mary. That's all.

Thank you. And I'll just also note that she was involved in creating the sweet hour of prayer in Rockville and has done so much for so many people in this community, whether it was through counseling or helping to support the memorial and the Museum. She just was active until the very end. And as she would say, know, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. It's a song that they played to date, and I think her goal was to be a light to shine for the community. So I just wanted to acknowledge and thank the family because we know with that kind of service, families sacrifice a lot as well. Thank you. Councilman Van Graig.

I just wanted to echo some of the comments that you made, madam mayor, and you made, mister city manager, with regard to the amazing work that was done by not just the Rockville Police Department, but also the other law enforcement agencies over at Wooten. I know that going nearby to pick up my son there, I saw firsthand how they went into the building without regard and also the organization and coordination. I have to tell you in times like this, when you have this type of serious actions and emergency needs, you sometimes have people stepping on their toes. And the coordination that came from, I know Chief West, the police department, and the other law enforcement agencies that were there, Montgomery County Police Department and the sheriff's office was tremendous. And I will also say because I know I wasn't here last time, and thank you to council member Miles for helping me to get to the reunification site.

I can tell you that the Rockville Police Department also assisted with the reunification. There was a lot of disorganization happening early. And I know, mister city manager, you and chief West worked to help better organize the reunification. And I know by the time I got there, again, thanks to council member Miles, the organization was done much better. And I heard from a lot of parents that it started to run smoothly. So huge appreciation to, I know, both city staff and all the different law enforcement agencies for truly making a horrible situation as best as it could be.

Thank you. And also just thank you to Kathy Dansler. She was also on-site, came on her day off to support the community. Council Member Shah.

Madam mayor, I just wanted to echo my colleagues and just note Jesse Jackson was quite an inspiration to, I think, all of us, but particularly his work around the rainbow coalition. And just to add, madam mayor, to to what you mentioned, the Rainbow Coalition was a coalition of working people and working families of all different backgrounds fighting for leadership and recognizing that we all need housing, we all need food, we all need education, we all need these basic things to live and thrive. And that was what his leadership was based on.

Thank you. All right. We'll now move on to community forum. Before I do that, I just want to note that the budget survey is still open. We are down from last year in terms of responses, so please share your feedback on what we should be funding and prioritizing in terms of programs and services in the city. We appreciate those who have signed up in advance. I'll also open the floor in case someone did not have a chance to sign up. We're going to open community forum now. We ask that all persons address the mayor and council. Please speak in a civil and courteous manner, and be respectful of your fellow audience members.

Each person is allowed three minutes, and we ask that you stick to the three minutes aloud. There will be a time clock in front of you. You will hear an audible beep when the three minutes are done. Please state your name and whether you live in the city of Rockville for the record. The mayor and council really appreciate all the ideas, suggestions, and concerns. With that, I'll start with those who have signed up ahead of time. Welcome, Jamie N.

Hi. My name is Jamie, and I live in Rockville. Good evening. I'm here again for either the fourth or fifth time to speak about housing justice in Rockville. My peers and I have had to come here so many times because the majority of the current city council members refuse to acknowledge that rent stabilization is the best way to protect renters. I've been trying to make sense of some of the changes you're hoping to make tonight. One piece that particularly doesn't make sense is the logic around junk fees. You don't wanna put caps on junk fees because you worry that landlords will increase rent prices to compensate. So we're in agreement that there are predatory landlords that tenants need to be protected from. Well, if you're so concerned about unfair rent increases, you should consider something like rent stabilization.

And speaking of some of your other concerns that you have about rent stabilization, I would like to address your concern that rent stabilization is going to decrease building development. If rent stabilization is such a risk to development, why has there been a significant decrease in development in Rockville since Montgomery County passed rent stabilization. You said that we were going to get all of these development deals because we don't have rent stabilization here, and therefore, we are more favorable to developers. So where's the development? Well, I've read the financial risk reports from various MoCo housing developers, and none of them really cite rent stabilization as an actual concern to their profits or developments.

They're concerned about tariffs, cost of building materials, and a weakened labor force. I only have three minutes, or I would continue to knock down every single one of your empty concerns about the risks of passing rent stabilization. You're not concerned about renters, and it is so obvious how empty your sentiments are when you say that you are concerned. Your actions are motivated by protecting your vested interests, pleasing your wealthy donors, and plotting for your next career move where you'll likely be exploiting renters from that position as well. When I'm out in the community listening to the struggles of voters and they tell me they are suffering under the cost of living primarily due to their housing costs, I bring up your names.

I make sure to tell them that it is your fault because it is because you aren't providing any true relief for people who are unjustly cost burdened by their housing. Your decisions further the capitalist establishment at the expense of working people. You are and you're doing it in one of the most unsafe and worst economic times in US modern history. History. You continue to weaken protections meant for the most vulnerable people in our community, and that's incredibly disheartening, and I don't respect that as leadership.

I hope that as you continue on your time on city council, I know you've already censored rent stabilization for the rest of the city council term, but I hope that you continue to think about how your actions really truly do affect renters because you're hurting people. You're hurting people.

Thank you. Welcome, Kathleen Kelly.

This is the first time for me. I'm Kathleen Kelly. I live in Rockville, Maryland. I'm born in Maryland. I just want to make a brief history. I worked in a women's rescue mission in Atlanta, Georgia, actually on Ponce De Leon, and worked there in the I think it was the late '70s. And then went on in my life to become a nurse. I've been a nurse forty one years. I was with Mercy ships. I was overseas.

I was in both England. We worked with John Major for the third ship, the African Mercy. I was in Africa as a nurse on the ship, and I took care of the queen's cousin. And we traveled together. She went to Africa, and I joined also a ministry called Ebenezer Emergency Fund that helped the Jewish people come out of the former Soviet Union. We were in the Ukraine, and we brought Jewish people back so they made aliyah to Israel. Those were my high privileges that the Lord allowed me to do, and I wanna give him the praise. Because the scripture tells us that without a vision, people perish. And I have a burden for Rockville, for the homeless, for the elderly people. I see walking elderly men that have to carry their groceries.

But mostly for the homeless, because I've seen them out in the cold. And I have a vision for that plate, the Marlowe Building. I don't know what you plan to do with it, but I can see since it's next to the goodwill that there would be great potential to have that made into a rehabilitation facility. That's what's on my heart. That's what brings me here.

But I wanna read a scripture, just 10 verses from the gospel of Matthew because this is what drives me to do what I do and I'm sure that does what is you as well. Verse 31 in chapter 25. When the son of man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall gather all nations and he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on the right and on the goats on the left. Then the king shall say unto them on the right hand, come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world For I was hungry and you gave me meat.

I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. Naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. And I was in prison and you came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer and say unto him, Lord, when saw we thee hungry and fed thee or thirsty and gave you drink? When saw we you a stranger and took you in or naked and clothed you? When saw we thee sick and in prison and came unto thee? And the king answered and said unto them, verily I say unto you verily I say unto you, in as much as you have done it unto one of the least of them, my brethren, you have done it unto me. And that was written in Israel two thousand years ago.

And that this was what drives me to do what I feel called to do. So I would like to see that done in Jesus' name. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Grant Sims.

Well, good evening, mayor and council members. I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight and address you. I also like to thank you for the topic that you're bringing up tonight on the table when it comes to overhauling the landlord tenant code. And I wanna first start by saying that there's a lot of really good proposals that are on the table for inclusion in this overhaul, and I would encourage you to move forward with. In particular, the price, the ban on pricing algorithms, which I know, council member Jackson, that was something I saw you in Annapolis testifying in support of.

Definitely something that should be included in this. Broader support for tenant associations. I know that's something that came up. That's something that I would strongly urge the council to make those resources available. And then also more support for tenants facing evictions are always good things.

However, I will asterisk that we need more support for tenants before they reach the point of being in court. Tenants that are in crisis, not having to add going to court and possibly losing their home at the same time that they're dealing with whatever the crisis was that led to them getting to that point in the first place. I also wanna thank the city and and city staff in particular, because they've been really good in the past couple months about seeking out the input and opinion of renters and of renter organizations about what is really needed when it comes to housing and how we treat housing within the city. But, unfortunately, that kind of brings up the gorilla in the room because the vast majority of the people that have spoken at those events have brought up rent stabilization. That is what renters and renter organizations and community advocates are hearing time and time and time again.

I wanna thank, council members Shah and Miles for your continued support pushing and fighting for rent stabilization. But it's unfortunate then that the rest of this body has not only voted down, but then also censored the topic, which as far as I can tell is an unprecedented move in the history of the city. It's also particularly sad because we were promised that if we did not have rent stabilization when the county did, that we would have development that would come into our city, and we would benefit and reap the reward. Instead, year over year in 2025, we're down 70% on new units developed. And we have got to dispense with this conservative line of thinking that giving large corporate businesses exactly what they ask for unquestioned will automatically create benefits in our communities.

Because that that line of thinking has led us in the last fifty years to a place of rising income inequality while those corporations have done quite well for themselves. So, again, the last piece that needs to be in this is rent stabilization. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome, Christine Gerbaud.

Good evening. Thank you to the mayor and council for the opportunity to speak tonight and for bringing up bringing forward the current efforts to revise the tenant code. I'll keep my comments pretty targeted. I am a Rockville renter for for the record. I think the three things I wanted to touch on briefly were the topic of fee restrictions, algorithm pricing and the potential for improved data collection around how the rental landscape in Rockville tends to play out.

So I'll just say, as far as I saw, based on just the presentation included in the agenda packet for the evening, there seemed to be concerns that fee restrictions may have a negative impact, but I would like to strongly encourage the American Council to continue exploring those options with an open mind. It's frustrating because a monthly fee is effectively rent. And the the difference between a fee and a standard rent payment that gets advertised is just that it's not visible until you are either at the point of signing a lease or, after you've done so in some cases. And treating these like, you know, it it fails to capture the full picture for what renters are experiencing to treat, you know, regular recurring fees that may be tacked on as totally separate from the picture of what they're actually burdened with on a monthly basis. Similar, in line with that, think it's also I'm excited to see that there's consideration of banning algorithmic pricing, in that those tools tend to serve to, distort the market in a way that distort the market by, allowing for, you know, effectively sharing of of private information between, renting companies in a way that is not accessible to tenants and serves its functionally price, price fixing.

And it also tends to mean that every rental unit in an area using those tools will end up suddenly with the same level of fees, because they understand from sharing that information with their competitors what the market can bear and leave people fewer options even if they would not have chosen otherwise to do so. Then finally, I'll just say, I hope that the City will consider enforcing some of its existing, data collection rules on rent increases and other types of, fees that are supposed to be getting collected, but to my understanding have not been. Rather than removing those provisions altogether, you could do a great service to the next effort to update these rules by collecting that data. Thank you.

Thank you very much. That's it for all who have signed up in advance. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Welcome. Please state your name and whether you live in the city of Rockville.

Good evening, mayor, council members, and community members. My name is Terrence Taylor, and I'm speaking both as a on-site property manager who works directly with the residents every day and as a renter in the city of Rockville. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to offer a perspective ahead of the upcoming work session on proposed updates and landlord code. Not in opposition of fairness tenant protections, but to help ensure these changes achieve their goals without creating unintended consequences.

I wanna start by emphasizing that the responsible landlords and on-site teams strongly support transparency, accountability, and safe housing. Our success depends on residents trusting us and choosing to stay in our communities. When policies strengthen that relationship, we welcome them. At the same time, policy decisions shape the financial and operational realities of housing providers. And when those realities shift too far, they can reduce investment, strain maintenance resources, and ultimately impact the very residents these policies aim to protect.

One example is a PROS ban on algorithmic rent pricing. The policy is intended to prevent unfair price and coordination, an important objective in an important objective in my opinion. However, many communities use these tools simply to understand the market conditions and respond to supply and demand responsibly, not to collude or artificially raise rents. It's also important to recognize that these platforms have already been significantly reformed following a recent Department of Justice settlement. RealPage, the largest revenue management software, is now prohibited from using real time confidential data from competing landlords and has agreed to ongoing court oversight to ensure compliance.

From a practical standpoint, removing, removing these tools entirely may actually reduce price competition. Historically, many properties set rents annually as a part of a budget and rarely adjust them because of the administrative burden. Today's technology allows pricing to reflect real time availability which often, leads to lower rents and better deals when supply increases. When these tools are eliminated, properties may revert to static pricing models that are less responsive to market conditions that impact revenue forecasting, staffing levels, preventive maintenance, and long term reinvestment in the housing quality. More broadly, several of the proposed code changes introduced significant administrative requirements, exposure, and legal complexity.

While transparency is critical, layering heavy penalties and rigid fee structures can shift resources away from the resident service and into compliance, legal review, and operational risk management. I share these concerns not as a corporate executive, but as a someone on-site, the person residents come to when someone break when something breaks, when they're frustrated, or when they need help. When operations become hard to sustain, the resident experience is what suffers first. I also want to share that I work with for Comstock, a company that is deeply invested in the community. Comstock owns and manages two of the best properties in the market and actively pursuing additional developments and acquisitions, including affordable housing project that has been approved by the mayor and council.

Well, very much. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak? Okay. Alright.

Thank you to everyone for providing testimony and sharing your concerns and ideas. We'll now be moving on to our consent agenda. We have a few items. One is 9A, authorize the city manager to award and execute a contract with Kittleson Associates for planning and engineering services for safe streets and roads for all Vision Zero intersection safety audit project responsive to RFP zero one dash 26, the amount not to exceed about $398,000 I also will just note for this project that is examining about 30 intersections across the city to see how we can improve safety. Nine b, authorize the city manager to sign a rider agreement with IPS Group Inc.

To continue service of parking enforcement management and citation processing. C, to approve and authorize the city manager to execute a project agreement with the State of Maryland Department of Natural Resources to proceed with a grant agreement to apply for $1,500,000 grant to fund Phase II for grading, excavation, as well as build pathways, bridges, deck overlook, and signage for Red Gate Park And Arboretum. This is consistent with the Red Gate Park master plan in helping us to fulfill that phasing. D, authorize the city manager to enter into an electricity supply agreement with WGL Energy Services for a term between December 25 and September 26 and E, approval of minutes to include February 2, closed session, and meeting number F4-twenty six. Those are all the closed the consent agenda items nine through nine a through e.

Just wanted to see if anyone has any questions or can we take all to approve. Council Member Shah.

I'd like to make a motion, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Do have a second? Oh, go ahead.

I move to approve consent agenda items a, b, c, d, and e. Thank you. Do we have

a second? Councilman Valery second. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you, mister city manager. I know you'll proceed on all those to move the projects forward. There's a lot for Vision Zero and our parks. And then just one thought is just if we can continue to get updates on the rising cost of electricity and see how that impacts our budget. Thank you.

We're now moving on to our work session, which is Item 12A, Chapter 18 Rental Facilities and Landlord Tenant Relations work session. I want to welcome Jane Lyons Radar radar as well as Ryan Trout and Trevor Stevens. Thank you very much. This is part of an extensive follow-up to our housing work sessions, and we are looking to update our landlord tenant code.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. For the record, Jane Lyons Rader, Housing Programs Manager with DHCD. And I'm joined here tonight with Housing and Landlord Tenant Specialist Trevor Stevens. I'm going to hand it off to him to start. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. So we'll go quickly through the outline of the presentation that we'll have this evening. So we're going to start with requested feedback before then going through, again, some of the background of the project as we worked on to this point before then jumping into some follow-up research as well as new policies, some programmatic action, and future code amendments, then finishing with next steps and circling back to the requested feedback. So for the requested feedback, we are asking whether or not you agree with staff's recommendations for background check restrictions, relocation assistance, penalties, and the programmatic action and future code amendments that we'll be presenting upon. And as a reminder for for the background of the project, housing, as we know, is one of the five focus areas for mayor and council.

And as such, we had a number of housing sessions and work sessions in order to address that. So we started in fall twenty twenty four of the work sessions on the city's housing strategies. And at that point, the chapter updating chapter 18 was approved as a strategy by mayor and council. Then we had in June 2025 the work session on data reporting and transparency. In November 2025, we had the work session on rental licensing inspections.

And of note for that, the enhanced inspection program was something that was born out of that work session and is something that is currently being implemented but didn't require any code updates from us in order to be fully implemented. And then, of course, we had our December 2025 work session on some of the existing code updates as well as new policies that we were presenting. And some of the goals that we had for the landlord tenant code rewrite based off of feedback that we got from mayor and council, providing clarity, considering alignment, improving housing stability, as well as requiring greater transparency and reviewing local and national best practices and connecting data collection and city goals. And as far as the background for the public engagement, we had two virtual input meetings, one with landlords and one with tenants. During that, we just went through some of the trends that we've been seeing citywide as far as common complaints as well as seeking feedback for areas that we felt needed improvement.

As an extension of that, we published the Engage Rockville webpage with project information and provided an opportunity for people who couldn't make those input sessions to put feedback there as well as track some of the progress that we were making throughout the process. And we also received input and met with a lot of our local shareholders and stakeholders. And just as a quick summary of the main items that we were hearing from those public input sections, specifically from tenants, they were most concerned about rising rents and a desire for rent stabilization, new fees, discrepancies between the city and county protections, lack of information regarding landlord and property, a desire for a relocation assistance policy, neglected or untimely maintenance, protection against retaliation, and lack of an air conditioning requirement. Whereas on the landlord side, the main concerns were increasing costs, including taxes, fees, HOA payments, length and difficulty of eviction proceedings, difficulty of the rental license application process, the responsiveness of city staff and lack of cleared points of contact, keeping up with and adhering to code requirements, and confusion around the voluntary rent guidelines. And with that, I'll hand it back to Jane.

All right. So I wanted to provide a few notes on some of the items that we discussed at the December work session, where there were several items that members of the body asked us to do additional research on. So the first of those was fee restrictions. And there was an interest from the body in fully understanding possible unintended consequences of providing restrictions on what types of fees landlords are allowed to charge tenants. So part of the reason why we didn't have any research back in December is because there really isn't, unfortunately, a lot of research on this topic in particular.

Although, there are thought to be generally similar downsides to rent caps when considering that and the costs and benefits there, because, there's that theoretical limitation on a landlord's ability to generate revenue. However, the way that we were proposing fee caps is that they would generally be limited to the actual cost to the landlord. And we also proposed the ability for landlords to levy optional fees that must be consented to by the tenant. And so that also provides some additional flexibility on top of that. So although there are theoretically downsides, staff doesn't anticipate them to be significant.

And then this next point here, long lasting. Another potential unintended consequence is that if a landlord is making a significant portion of their revenue from charging various types of fees and then the city places restrictions on those fees and their revenue does decrease, then they might try to make up for that lost revenue by temporarily adjusting monthly rents. So that, again, would be we would expect a more short term adjustment in response to this policy. The next item was two year lease terms. And as a reminder, our recommendation was for landlords to be required to offer a two year lease term.

The tenants would not be required to accept that, and landlords could offer other lease terms as well and offer different terms at different rates. So there was also discussion within that about there being a fair amount of reasons why it might be reasonable for a landlord to not offer a two year lease term to a tenant. So after discussing with the city attorney's office, we found that current code language that allows for landlords with reasonable cause to not provide an initial lease term of one year would also be sufficient to apply to that new requirement for a two year lease term to be offered. So that's our recommendation is to just take that current language and apply it to that new policy. Again, not really too many studies, none really at all on the effects of two year lease terms versus one year lease terms for residential properties.

But we were able to look into some of the census data and find that over half of Rockville renters have been in the same home for more than one year. So that certainly to us demonstrates that there is a certain contingency of renters that could benefit from longer lease terms and the stability that comes from that. And longer lease terms can pose benefits and risks to both landlords and tenants. And those are further listed in the staff report. But just to provide a few, for example, for landlords, a longer lease term as a benefit, it can mean a lower risk of vacancy and a more stable income stream.

But on the other hand, it might mean that the landlords aren't able to keep up with market rents because they're not adjusting rents as frequently. For tenants, a longer lease provides a more stable living situation, but can also provide less flexibility to relocate if needed. So staff's intention with this recommendation is to allow for more options with the goal of enhanced tenant stability, and, hopefully, that additional information provides some more background of how we came to that recommendation. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I have my animations to help make it more digestible.

Well, I'm glad I noticed that. I will there's a lot of animations in this presentation because there's a lot of information to digest. Alright. This page, though, last topic on the follow-up research. Some folks were interested in learning more about, or sorry, not relocation assistance, eviction assistance, and what are the ways that we can help households that are facing eviction in the city.

So really, there are five key strategies here. And the good news is that the city either currently offers, is working to enhance, or is exploring all of these key strategies. The first is emergency rental assistance, which we offer through the Rockville Emergency Assistance Program, REAP, which demand for that program has grown exponentially over the last year and is expected to remain high. So that's something that will continue to be a really key cornerstone in our programming. Second is security deposit assistance.

Sometimes the rental arrearages might be so high that it's just not feasible for that person to pay off those arrearages through even both county and city assistance and any thing that they're able to put towards it. So in those cases, it might be advisable for that family to find a different place to live that's more affordable that they're able to sustain. And in that case, we have the option through REAP to provide security deposit assistance. Third is access to legal counsel, which is something that the state offers. But we are interested, and it's a part of the Rockville Housing Strategies, work plan to, explore ways that we can expand the access to legal counsel because renters, when they receive that access, are two to three times more likely to stay in their homes.

And that's the goal. And fourth is investments in affordable housing. We're exploring ways that we can provide gap financing to different developers looking to provide or preserve affordable housing in the city. So that's a major focus for us. And then fifth is investments in preventative programs.

So that includes things like job training, financial empowerment programs like Bank On, which we have successfully relaunched our Bank On coalition and are very excited about some of the programs we hope to launch through that. But also service navigation and other social services to help households achieve the financial stability and upward mobility so that they don't find themselves in the position of facing eviction in the first place. So now on to some of the new policies that we're gonna discuss tonight, and I will hand it back to Trevor.

Great. So one of the one of the policies that we initially started researching in was background check restrictions. And as we were researching background check restrictions, we wanted to try and strike a balance between providing landlords an opportunity to still appropriately screen tenants without being overly punitive for landlord or for excuse me, who might have histories that don't accurately assess their ability to be good renters. So to that end, I I think we've noticed that clean slate policies have become increasingly popular across across the country during our research. And so one of the recommendations that we have is to align with Montgomery County's Housing Justice Act, including the Ban the Box initiative as well as anti discrimination components.

So Montgomery County breaks their process into two parts: a prescreeningconditional offer and then a secondary review. During that initial phase, the providers cannot ask about a criminal history or arrest records. And then during the secondary review, if they decide they want to conduct a check and then rescind, they have to provide that notice in writing and give seven days for a tenant to respond to what is in the report to question its validity. And at no point during that check can they they check certain misdemeanors as a part of that process. And another recommendation that we had was to prohibit landlords landlords from asking about eviction history on rental applications.

That is something that no other jurisdictions we found during our research do, but I think would be beneficial in terms of protecting tenants in that aspect. And lastly, we want to confirm compliance as a part of the rental license renewal process. Another thing that we noticed don't where we don't have a recommendation for at this time, is as far as eviction filing, we've noticed that increasingly there are a lot of tenants in our jurisdiction who have pretty high balances. So we're seeing rental arrears over $10,000, and it can be difficult to find resources that adequately address those balances given that both our us and the county require active court summons or judgment in order to release our funds. And it's a potential for bad faith landlords to abuse the system by waiting a little bit too long to file for eviction, making it impossible for tenants to address that balance in full.

And again, no recommendation at this time.

All right. So on to relocation assistance. This is a pretty meaty policy, so there are several slides here. This is just the first one. So relocation assistance, this can be required in situations where the landlord is found to be responsible for the tenant's displacement, whether temporary or permanent.

So after this, we will have recommendations for both a temporary relocation assistance policy and a permanent one. In the staff report, there are case studies from Montgomery County, Takoma Park, DC, and Arlington and Fairfax Counties and how they address this, as well as national case studies from Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and California. So there is a lot of overlap within those policies, but there's still a lot of things that are different about them. There are a lot of different ways to design a relocation assistance program. And from examining those case studies, we've taken from those policies to put together what we think makes the most sense for Rockville at this time.

So our recommendation is to establish those requirements. First, for temporary relocation assistance, it would be required when the city has deemed a rental housing unit cannot be occupied. So typically that would be due to some sort of maintenance concern that makes the unit unlivable. And again, this is only in circumstances where the landlord is found to be at fault. It would not, the landlord would not have to pay if a tenant's in a week to week lease or if the displacement is caused by something like a natural disaster or not caused by the landlord, something like a vehicle accident or criminal activity, a public utility failure, or an adjacent building failure, it would not apply in that situation.

So the amount of assistance required would depend on the amount of time that the tenant is, going to be displaced temporarily. So if it's thirty days or less, the landlord would be required to provide the tenant, to temporarily place the tenant in a safe and sanitary hotel or motel, receive per diem money for temporary housing and expenses, or alternate comparable housing. If it's thirty one days or more, the tenant would receive per diem money for alternate comparable housing plus all reasonable moving and storage costs. So to dig a little bit more into exactly what that means, comparable housing must be similar in location and have similar number of bedrooms, accessibility, and pet allowance. So you can't take a tenant who lives in a three bedroom unit and put them in a studio and have that be considered comparable housing.

Per diem payments, such as for food and laundry, would be set annually via mayor and council resolution. So for example, if somebody is put in a motel and they don't have the ability to cook their own food, they would receive, every day a certain amount of, allocation from the landlord of funds to, to purchase food. The landlord may require the tenant to use renter's insurance but would be responsible for the costs required by code but not covered by renters insurance. So that way, we're making sure that we're minimizing the cost to the landlord but still holding them to the same standard as everybody else. The tenant would remain responsible for rent during the displacement period but not for fees, for amenities or services that they can't access because they're not at the property, if they're not at the property.

And then once the unit is safe to inhabit, the tenant would have the first right to return. So with that, a landlord can't offer the unit to somebody else while the tenant is is being temporarily displaced. Now for permanent relocation assistance, this would be required in a much broader array of situations. So the first being when the rental license is suspended or revoked. So currently, when a rental license is suspended or revoked in Rockville, the landlord must provide the impacted tenant with a sixty days notice to relocate.

So this policy would remain the same. The only thing that would change is that the landlord is also responsible for providing this permanent relocation assistance funds in addition to that, should the tenant relinquish the tenancy. Second is that the city deems the unit uninhabitable and cannot be made habitable. Similarly, the tenant relinquishes tenancy in unpermitted rental housing that cannot or will not be permitted. Next, the tenant relinquishes tenancy following temporary displacement of at least six months.

And if the unit is about to be demolished, remodeled, redeveloped, substantially renovated, or changed in use, requiring a tenant household earning less than 50% of the area median income to relocate. So this is the only one of these circumstances in which it would be, focused on just households of a certain income. And the goal of this policy is to really prevent displacement and homelessness. So a tenant may have to be displaced from their current rental property, but we want to ensure that those households are given what they need to smoothly transition to somewhere else, hopefully not too far from where they currently live. So what would the payment include?

First, a full refund of the security deposit with the accumulated interest and the pro rata rent for the remainder of the month. These first two things are things that the landlord would very likely be required to provide anyways. Next is the cash equivalent of three months median market rate rent for a similarly sized apartment. And this is really the biggest part of the relocation assistance is those three months of the median market rent to provide that three month gap to help somebody find somewhere new to live. Next is all actual reasonable moving costs.

And if applicable, an additional sum for households where one tenant is over 62 years of age, handicapped, disabled, or legally dependent child. And this is in recognition that if a household has somebody who meets these characteristics, it can be a lot more difficult to move and to find somewhere else to live that fits those families' needs. So an example of how much would this actually be for a landlord, it of course depends on a lot of factors. But take for an example an apartment that costs $2,000 a month. Somebody's lived there for five years, so their security deposit interest has accumulated over five years and they must vacate in the middle of a month.

So they would receive an estimated $9,782 in permanent relocation assistance. And similarly to temporary relocation assistance, tenants would have the first right to return should the property operate as rental housing again in the future. So that would apply in a situation like you currently live and maybe an older 20 unit apartment building. It's more affordable, but it's getting redeveloped into a 120 brand new unit apartment building. So in that case, the landlord would be required to provide that relocation assistance to help with the tenant displacement.

But then once that new building opens up as rental housing, that household would have the ability to be first on the wait list for applying for that new housing. Alright. So that was relocation assistance. Now onto penalties, which is much shorter and sweeter. So penalties can be things like municipal infractions, license penalties, or legal action.

The current maximum fine in Rockville for a violation of Chapter 18 is $100 and that's for any violation of anything in Chapter 18. And that is very out of alignment with Maryland maximums and some of our regional counterparts. For example, in Washington, D. C, penalties range between $100 to $5,000 and $2,500 in Virginia. And in October 2025, Maryland increased the maximum penalty for infractions from $1,000 to $5,000 So we would like to take full advantage of this range and amend the fee resolution to allow for a range of fees up to $5,000 with varying fees depending on the violation.

Next section here focuses on programmatic actions and future code amendments that would be outside of chapter 18. So we recognize that chapter 18 is really only one facet of what creates a strong ecosystem for landlords and tenants in the city. And so we want to make sure that through this process, we're primarily focused on updating the code. But we want to acknowledge that there are other things that need to be done as well. So first with this is to increase landlord and tenant education.

So after we complete this update to Chapter 18, we have the new code to base it off of. We plan to create a landlord tenant handbook and other educational materials that we can translate into different languages and provide to both landlords and tenants to help them understand the code in plain language. And also, we hope to host regular events. We've started to host some events through the Housing Action Team. We want to continue that and host events for both landlords and tenant audiences.

Second is to support tenant outreach and organizing. This could come through providing grants to existing or nascent tenant organizations or contracting with nonprofits who specialize in tenant outreach because we believe in order to spread the word about the different policies and protections and resources that we have, we need to connect with people and to provide them with those educational materials, and that additional work and outreach will be needed. Third is to continue and expand support for tenants facing evictions. So we already talked about that at the beginning of those five strategies that most of them we're already doing or we are intending to explore and implement more in the future. Four is to consider amendments to other chapters of city code that impact landlords and tenants.

And again, these are all items that would require their own due diligence and research. So these, at this point, are not concrete recommendations and would be significant undertakings to their own. The first is the tenant opportunity to purchase policy, TOPA. So right now in the city, TOPA only requires to, only applies to condos. And state law does not cover tenants and buildings with four or more units.

So there's a pretty significant gap there of, providing tenants with the opportunity to organize and to purchase their buildings when it goes on sale. Next is cooling requirements. So currently, the city code provides for heating requirements of 68 degrees during the cold weather months, but no cooling requirements. So for example, the county's cooling requirement is 80 degrees June 1 through September 30. And this, in particular, we're not necessarily recommending at this time that we should adopt what the county's policy is, but it's something that we believe would be worth doing more due diligence on and would like to come back with a recommendation at some point.

Next is protections for commercial landlords and tenants. Commercial tenants are often thought to have less of a power imbalance with their landlords because they are businesses and have more resources in order to negotiate their leases, due to being a business. And so while this may be true, the University of Maryland Small Business Anti Displacement Network identifies that small businesses, especially immigrant owned small businesses, might be at risk of being taken advantage of due to exploitative or unclear lease terms. So that's an emerging policy space. And we're lucky to have some local thought leaders at the University of Maryland with that.

So that's an area that could be worth exploring. And then finally, consumer protections for senior living facilities. Senior living facility tenants are considered month to month tenants and are provided tenant protections under Chapter 18 as such. But the state provides most of the oversight for those types of facilities. And the state is who monitors the quality and safety. But there still may be some opportunities for additional consumer protection around that, and that's something that we would need to do a much deeper dive into as well. I'll hand it back to Trevor to close us out. Thank you.

So next steps from here, then staff will draft new code based off of mayor and council feedback. We will do additional outreach and engagement for stakeholder community feedback on the staff draft, and we will consider adoption on 05/18/2026. In the staff report for May 18, we hope to include a summary of some of that stakeholder and community input. And throughout the process, we also want to make sure that we are staying up to date on some of the changes that are happening legislatively on the state level to make sure that it's compliant with some of the code proposals that we have. And just as a reminder for the requested feedback, do you agree with staff's recommendations for background check restrictions, relocation assistance, penalties, and programmatic action in future code amendments?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. There's so much in this deck. I appreciate all the follow-up. I saw that you listened to some of our questions for more information, and you dug in there and you put some also in the feature code amendments. I'm wondering if we can go to the section on background check each section so that people can be refreshed on what's included in there. And because there's so much, I'm going to go down the line so each person we can just, you know, give our feedback. So I'm gonna start with doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. We're starting with background check?

That's correct.

Great.

And if you can go to the page with background check. Thank you. Go ahead, Christina.

A statement and a question. I generally support opting in to what the county is doing with regard to restrictions on asking about and mandating collect the collection of information about background checks. But I was wondering, are there exclusions? For example, if there is a issue of a person who's committed, like, a sexual offense or a murder or something like that, are those exclusions in there? How are those handled?

Yes. The county specifically excludes offenses of a sexual violent nature.

And then, yeah, to the point, you know, is it also, you know, murder, attempted murder type stuff? Like, I don't know. I'm just asking the question.

Yes. Yeah. And the the extreme felonies, yes, would be excluded as well.

Thank you.

Councilman Fulton.

I'm also in favor of matching the county, but I guess one question, just so I understand. The inverse of the restriction, what is a landlord permitted to look into when evaluating a tenant? What remains?

With outside of the background check restrictions? Yeah. You could look into potentially credit history Okay. And then eviction history as well.

But we're restricting eviction history. No?

Outside of our proposal. Yeah. But

Okay. They would still be welcome to look up court records, but not necessarily explicitly ask about eviction history on the application. Income?

Income, yes.

Yeah, I'm in favor. Thanks.

Councilmember Valery.

Councilmember Fulton took my question on that one. I was going say, can landlords obtain eviction history any other way beyond requiring potential tenant to disclose? This is actually just kind of a thought exercise for myself. And it's kind of outside the purview perhaps of the discussion, but do we as a city actually comply with the county's ban the box initiative in our hiring process? Maybe we can put a pin in it because if we're gonna be consistent, it would be nice to also see the city in doing that as well.

Let us circle back. Thanks.

Yeah. It just popped in in my head. I think that would be great. I very much in favor of not requiring eviction history. I would like to not have credit checks. I don't think I'm going to have any other people supporting that one, but I think it also can be used punitively. Yep, I fully in support of staff recommendations in this section.

Thank you. I also see and know and have grown up around so many issues with being able to find jobs and housing for people who are trying to have a fresh start. So I totally support this. I have question. I would like if you can send us the county bill, the actual language so we can see in-depth what it is before this is approved.

I also there was one misdemeanor that I had a question about. I don't love the indecent exposure, similar to the comment on sexual offenses. Unfortunately, I've had some interesting experiences where I've seen and people who repeatedly expose children. So I was curious about that exclusion, and that was the only one that stuck out to me. But I I also note that this is misdemeanors, and if someone committed murder or that that does not fall under the ban the box. Box. Isn't that correct? Okay. I just wanted to to follow-up on that. But, yeah, for me, it's maybe not exactly the county, but I have the concern about indecent exposure. And thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. And I have additional questions, but I will restrict it to what we're doing right now with it, which is the staff's recommendations. Basically, I, the mayor, especially are concerned about the indigent exposure. Needed some clarity on that. I really like the fact that people, they're evicted due to circumstances outside of their control maybe they lost a job, maybe they had a medical issue, whatever that what we're trying to do is make sure that we don't hold that against them when they try to get another apartment, when they have a job, or when they're more on their feet.

So I totally, totally agree with what you're trying to do with background checks.

I I also strongly agree here with background check restrictions. Was there any information around, like, the equity impact? Because I know there's been a lot of studies here, and I think this would be a great opportunity to share the impact on a lot of jurisdictions that have, particularly for people of color, that have benefited from this type of policy. Would it be possible to share that information? Or maybe I I may have missed that.

We speak to that a little bit in the staff report, but don't necessarily dive into the data behind it. But we could provide that in the future staff reports.

Considering that there was a similar bill in the county, and there was the racial equity and social justice impact statement as well as the economic impact statement, I think it would be helpful to to at least see that, and that's that's that's pretty accessible. So I think I think having that information would be really helpful. Also, can you explain a little bit more about the anti discrimination components in terms of who's most impacted and to give some more examples.

Of the anti discrimination component of which populations are likely the most impacted? Yes. Sure. So with evictions, pretty much throughout the country, black and African American women are the most evicted at the highest rates. So anything that helps to restrict the amount that a landlord can look into somebody's eviction history would disproportionately benefit that population.

And then similarly for criminal on the side of criminal justice and the Ban the Box initiatives, black and African American men are the most highly incarcerated population, again, throughout the country, including in Maryland. So that would be the population to be expected to benefit the most from not having that show up on their rental application.

And I have seen some information about who's getting evicted, because I know evictions have increased in Rockville. And for the most part, is that disproportionately impacting black and African American women?

We don't know. The data from the courts does not provide demographic information at all. Research that has been done nationally, not necessarily in Maryland, that tries to figure that out does so by and maybe this gets too into the weeds does that by taking the addresses and looking at who is most likely to live in that ZIP code and area. So it's usually done by approximation. So doing that type of analysis might be a little bit beyond our ability and scope for Rockville specifically, but we are generally expected to have those similar trends that other places see.

I have seen from the racial equity and social justice impact statements in Montgomery County on housing, particularly the ones on rent stabilization that African American black women are disproportionately impacted by evictions. And I'm happy to share that information, and maybe we can get some sources of where that information is coming from.

Sure.

Yes. We can dig into those sources.

And to the mayor's point of seeing the county's bill, I know there's also possibly a state bill on this as well that could be helpful in looking at the language. But overall, yes, I I strongly, strongly support this, and I think this aligns with our 10 dash 21.

Councilwoman Grack.

Thank you. I generally support a lot of what my colleagues are saying. I think these types of restrictions and recommendations are good. I do have some, one question with regard to, the evictions and the questions regarding evictions because I read the staff report, and I think you're absolutely right. There are situations where it was withdrawn or it's won by the tenant and we're potentially of a situation where that could be inappropriately penalized.

However, what do we do and what would be the rationale when you potentially do have someone who essentially has been evicted, has continually been found guilty and they're having a situation where this is someone that would potentially be harmful because they've let's just say, for an example, had five evictions. They've nonpaid rent on numerous situations. And quite frankly, that's information that would be helpful to the landlord. And we want to essentially protect the landlord from potential tenant bad actors. How do we address that type of situation where we've got this line between we don't want to necessarily overly prejudice someone, especially if, let's say, you've got a a bad landlord actor who's just evicting everybody improperly and they keep winning versus the opposite where there could be information that would be beneficial to a landlord that wouldn't necessarily be prejudicial because this is a potential bad actor.

So this recommendation is born out of a belief that when somebody is applying for rental housing, they should be evaluated based on their income and credit history at the time of that application. They may have been evicted five times recently. They may have gone through some really tough challenges in their life that led to that. But if they can show that they they have a job, they have the income to support the rent that's being asked for the unit they're applying for, then that should really be the basis, the basis of approving or rejecting a tenant.

And just to make sure, because I know that there was some discussion earlier, what this restriction is about necessarily asking that eviction history as part of the application, whereas a credit check as well as a check-in court records could be done without restriction. And if they find something within there, that would be fine for them to act on that. We're just restricting that as part of their preliminary request.

Correct.

Okay. Good. Thank you.

Does anyone have any follow-up questions to what they heard their colleagues say on this topic? I have one one or two clarifications. I isn't there some requirement for a certain affordable housing units to do some sort of checks? I just I wanna just make I I also understand some of the public housing authorities, the vouch do they have any criminal background issues that don't relate to what we're trying to do or or would conflict with what we're trying to do?

Not that I'm aware of, but perhaps our director has more knowledge on that.

Good evening, madam mayor and council. Ryan Trial, director of housing and community development. No. It's okay. We would, we can explore that as we write the ordinance with the legal department, and we can provide any necessary caveats as needed.

Okay. Thank you very much. Alright. And then how would we deal with a landlord who's evaluating? Unfortunately, there are too many landlords who don't accept vouchers, and that's a problem because people need housing. Does this have any negative impact on people further taking in residence who should have a right to vouches? Because they don't necessarily have the income to qualify. So I just want to make sure we're looking at all unintended consequences.

Right. This wouldn't necessarily directly impact that issue, although that's of course an issue. That's something that through continuing to partner with the county's Office of Fair Housing, we want to continue to tackle. But this policy in particular wouldn't necessarily speak to that.

Excellent. Okay. That's what I wanted to check because I think we need to work to improve that. Don't wanna do anything that might hurt that situation. I also think that the government paying on time would also lead to more more acceptance on housing vouchers, but I I just wanna make sure we're taking care of those as well. Okay. That is this section. What's the next one?

Act of penalties?

Relocation. And I'll go to councilman Fulton first this time.

All of this made sense to me, maybe except one thing. In a temporary displacement for thirty one days or more, the tenant would get a per diem to cover the housing, which I get, but is also still responsible for the rent. I kind of get that because it's even Steven, kind of, but it also feels why are they paying rent on a place they can't actually live in?

So the idea behind that is that the landlord likely still has payments that they need to make, and we're unsure exactly of that temporary relocation assistance might be less and might be more than that monthly rent, but they do have a contract that they agreed to with the lease. And it is most straightforward and simple to continue the terms of that lease while also adding on these requirements for the temporary relocation assistance.

That makes sense to me. Is there a way to ensure that the per diem that is received is at or greater than the rent they're paying?

Sorry, can you ask that?

I would want the per the value of what they're getting to be for what they're paying. So I would want the per diem aggregate payment to be equal to or greater than the rent they're paying for that period of time.

Okay. We will take that into consideration when we are drafting the code of that. And then I also would want to note that it does not preclude a tenant from following the rent escrow process, where they can go to the court and put their rental payments in escrow based on maintenance concerns.

Great. Thank you. Otherwise, I'm supportive.

Looks good.

I like going after Council Member Fulton. I can just be like, ditto. I have that on my list as well. I actually experienced a month long it was a thirty day or less because of temporary relocation when I was much, much younger. And actually, during that time period, did not pay rent even on the new unit that I was in because there was flooding in my kitchen at the time, it actually then sped up the process for the landlord to address the situation.

It would have looked different if it became permanent. So I kind of see where Councilmember Fulton is coming from. I think it would have been a pretty big challenge. Granted, there was no per diem under that. And I agree completely with Councilmember Fulton's remarks on the per diem.

And I also agree and support that the mayor council the per diem would be set by an annual resolution. I think that that is good. It's a good high watermark. I guess I am challenged about being responsible for the rent during this placement period. And maybe it's something I need to sit with a little bit more, but on first reading and second reading, I do struggle with that one.

Thank you. How often does this happen in the city? I'm aware of one case, for sure, that we engaged in recently. It's a building that I had been flagging for some time, so I think there's some inspection responsibility there.

Luckily, it's not something that happens very frequently, although there might be cases in which a landlord and a tenant separately without engaging the city come to some sort of agreement when maintenance and renovation need to be done. But luckily, this does not necessarily happen too often. But it's happened enough that we want to make sure that we're putting the guardrails on and that we have something in place for when this happens, and that that way all tenants are being treated equitably whenever this occurs.

Okay, thank you. Can you share again what are the instances when this would be required versus not?

So with the temporary relocation assistance, it would only be when the city is deemed that a rental housing unit cannot be occupied. Would you also want me to go over the with permanent, it would be

What if there's a natural disaster?

It would not be required in that case.

Okay. So it's like this is pretty much when there's a code violation, significant code violation, or something that breaks in the home due probably deferred maintenance.

That's what we would expect to happen most frequently.

It could also be climate change with pipes bursting, right?

You never know. But who knows? With permanent, it would be in the following circumstances: when the rental license is suspended or revoked, unit deemed uninhabitable and cannot be made habitable, unpermitted and cannot or will not be permitted, the temporary displacement has lasted at least six months, or the unit will be demolished, redeveloped, or changed in use for households earning 50% or less of the AMI. Okay.

So I've seen the situation on this one, and you know I poked a lot to make sure we were doing right by the tenants. So I I generally support this. I do have a concern with people having to pay rent when, you there's a code violation. I would assume that the city would counsel or let people know of their right to put their funds in escrow. Would that be something that will be part of your protocol?

Yes. Yes, it would.

Okay. And then the units demolished or redeveloped or substantially renovated, do we have examples of other jurisdictions who who have have done done this? This?

Yes, so that is a policy in most of the case studies that we looked at, that component. Some of them have the income restriction and some of them do not.

So if someone is redeveloping a property, it's only if the leases exist incorrect? So once the lease expires, they no longer have to do

that? Correct.

Okay. And then they would have right of first return. What if they can't

afford? If they cannot afford it, then the landlord would be within their right to reject them, but they would have that opportunity to at least apply. And that would include if there are MPDUs or other affordable units that are included in the redeveloped property, then the tenants would have the opportunity to apply for those which might be more affordable.

And if they're gonna demolish a building, because this could happen, right? How long do they have to how much do they have to pay? I know you said it could be up to 10,000, is that right?

It really depends. Let's see. It really depends on, you know, how much is the security deposit, what would the cash equivalent of the three month median market rate rent be. Right. The the the term of the lease, do they have that household? So it would really depend, but that as an average of what we would expect to maybe be a standard case was that around $10,000 figure.

Okay. And how could we make sure that because of this stipulation, people don't start discriminating against this population and not renting to them if they know that they're going to have a redevelopment in the future?

That's something that we can think about as we put the policy together.

Okay. I'm always trying to think about unintended consequences that impact the people we're trying to help. So that's an area of concern. And then the other thing is for someone is renting out their home, for example, not a big time landlord, but $10,000 could be a lot of money. Applying to every single type of rental or some types of rent? I mean, there's a big difference between a corporate landlord that has more budget room versus someone who is like, you know, something happened and they're trying to pay their mortgage and figure things out?

As currently proposed, we intend for the policy to apply to all landlords.

Can you, when you do your research and come back to us, just see if there are any ways that other jurisdictions considering this?

Yes. Some jurisdictions do apply it to landlords of a certain size who have a certain number of properties. So there is a range of ways that you can design it there.

Can you share that information with us on which ones are doing Sure. Thank you. Councillor Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. You know, there's a downside to going after the mayor sitting right beside her. That is that she asked all the questions that I wanted to ask, which is good, actually. I really wanted to focus on the right to return provision, but I think she answered a lot of the questions that I was gonna have. So, no, I totally am on board with what you want to do with the relocation assistance.

And let me just say, I mean, the detail that you put into the recommendation is really impressive. You've thought through every permutation. And I really appreciate how much detail and thoroughness you have in your presentation and in the policies.

Thank you, Councilor Michelle.

I also wanna echo my colleagues and share that this is this is very thoughtful. I had some questions about the temporary relocation. And just to just to confirm, this is required when the city deems the unit uninhabitable?

Correct.

Okay. So

okay. So so there wouldn't be any other situation where there would be temporary. Right? It's just when the city deems it on a

Correct. Only

when the city deems it.

So just my other question about the hotel and the motel. So one of the main concerns when I'm supporting tenants when they're on the brink of eviction is having to move to a shelter or having to move anywhere where it's outside of the city of Rockville, because sometimes that's the place that's available, and that disrupts our kids' education. And so, just to confirm, would we prioritize looking at hotels and motels within the city?

Would need to be similar in location.

Okay. And can we put some guardrails around that, like a mileage, just to make sure because that that's, like, one of the greatest concerns. And I know that there are even some parents that would rather not even go to a hotel or motel that's far away just because of their kids' education and wanting to have that type of housing stability.

Yep. As we look at writing the code language and getting more specific on those things, we'll look at how other jurisdictions who have these policies figure out exactly what that similar location means and what those guardrails might be. Okay.

And then if there are more than one tenant having this particular problem, like sometimes we go into buildings and sometimes tenants have similar issues and like mold or what have you, Part of the process, and I think this is what partly the mayor touched on, but will we also share, like, the Tenant Safety Act, for example, so that tenants are aware that they can organize and put their money collectively in escrow?

Yes. That would be part of the information that we could provide when working with tenants. I

think it's important for one tenant, but I think it's really important if all if there are several tenants that can use that that act. Okay. And I do I do generally agree with this, so thank you.

Council Member Bangback.

First, I do want to echo some of my colleagues, Council Member Fulton, Council Member Vallari and the mayor specifically were talking about some of these cost comparisons. I want to make sure that we have it right. But I wanted to talk about another issue that we've got here. And I understand that our goal here, and I definitely agree with the goals here that we're talking about with the relocation assistance, both temporary and permanent. But as I understand it, we're focusing specifically at situations with the landlords at fault.

Right? And so my concern and I wanna make sure that with what the code that we're drafting, we're addressing it because you did a wonderful job within the case studies. I took a look. There's clearly differentiation of what's gonna what other jurisdictions have done in the case study. But my one concern is kind of due process with regard to landlords and the tenant.

If we're basing this decision on landlord being at fault, I think we have to make sure that we have a system that protects both the landlord and the tenant with regard to whom is making that decision and how it's made. Because we could come to a situation where landlords believe that we are favoring the tenant in those decisions or tenants feel that the landlord is being favored. And if we're essentially having an adjudication of this situation, which as we you've put together a fabulous proposal, both temporary and permanent, that, could could essentially help 10 tenants with their rights. On the other hand, it only applies with a finding. And how we make sure that finding is fair for both the tenants and landlords, I think, is critical to the effectiveness of this program.

So, obviously, I haven't looked into the codes nearly as much as you have, but I wanna make sure that with the code that we're drafting, we're being extremely conscious of making sure that there's a real fairness and a due process for both the tenant and the landlord so that whatever decision we make with regard to putting forward these wonderful proposals, we're doing it fairly for both sides. Thank you.

Any follow-up questions? Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I wanna echo my thanks to you all for this presentation. As always, I think because you all do such a great job, we give you such great questions and so many of them. To that end, the only question is just to extend a point previously stated by the mayor. Trying to figure out how to how to determine fault, particularly. She mentioned a water main break. I don't know. If it happens in the building, I don't yeah. It I'm trying to figure out how how would fault be established. Or and I think this may be obvious, but say there's a a fire in a tenant's building caused by the tenant, and people are displaced.

I'm thinking about the fireside example. Would they have to be provided relocation assistance then? The the these are all hypotheticals, but I'm just curious, trying to be mindful landlords too.

If the landlord was not at fault, the landlord would not have to provide the relocation assistance. Although part of the consideration when drafting the code will be if we can also hold if there is another party that is found to be at fault, such as another tenant or adjacent property owner or whoever it might be, if we can hold them to these standards of providing those funds as well.

Got it. And then the water main issue is just, I guess, a hypothetical way to cross that bridge when we get there, I imagine. Or okay. Thank you. I I have nothing else. Thank you.

K. Some of my colleagues have follow-up questions, so we'll just go to Kate council member Kate Fulton.

Sorry. And apologies if I missed it. But I think any of this was actually based on a finding of fault. It's a finding of habitability or non habitability, right?

It's a finding of habitability, but then we would also need to find that the landlord was at fault in order to have this policy apply. Why? Because we would need to be stating that we're holding them accountable for upholding this part of the code. And so in other jurisdictions that have relocation assistance policies like that, there are cases where landlords do claim that they are not at fault and thus not responsible for paying the relocation assistance. And in that case, we would need to be able to back it up. And those cases might go to court. Are we talking about permanent or temporary? Temporary, primarily.

But aren't we making them whole anyway? I don't see it as a punishment. I don't think anyone's being fined because we're making it even. So I'm actually confused by the fault. Maybe on the permanent, but on the temporary, aren't we just making everybody whole?

The landlord would be expected to provide funds in that case, which they could be at a loss for those months.

That complicates it, but okay.

Can I just there was an example where this one, this isn't a building that I have been flagging, but a tenant had to be relocated and the hotel per night was more than added up to what that tenant would have paid? But the tenant needed to have a place to live, and so they were paying the landlord had to pay a hotel fee for that tenant. Again, the rent was less than what the landlord had to pay for the hotel. That's just one scenario, and I'm sure there's others. Hope that helps. Comes from a Fulton.

Sorry, I'm back on this though. Faults. I'm just picking up what my colleagues are just now realizing. Negligence, malfeasance, intent. Like, how are we doing this?

Mayor, if I could jump in on this.

Please do.

I think I think we're I understand line of questioning in a big way. I really do. In fact, we talked about this in some detail at staff level, but we wanna be really careful about saying that we have found beyond a shadow of a doubt that the landlord is is responsible. But in our case, if it's something like it's very common, like the HVAC system isn't working and there's lack of heat. It's clearly the landlord's responsibility that unit is no longer occupiable because they can't meet the building cold heating threshold.

They should get temporary assistance until it's repaid and paid that much. So if it's arguable whether or not we still may ask the landlord to, relocate, we are still gonna ask the tenant to, pay their, agreed upon amount for rent that's in the lease Because the challenge is when we have experiences in the city where there's sometimes there's so many unoccupiable units. If there isn't any revenue coming back into the landlord, then there's less the chance they're actually gonna renovate those units, get them back in line, and then we'll have an affordable unit expansion throughout the city, if that makes sense. So that's how we're trying to put our hands all around this. But we do envision some cases where, unfortunately, a tenant may do something to their unit that makes it unoccupiable.

That's what we're trying to focus in on. But it's not absolutely clear cut until we look at the actual circumstances of the case, but we're not trying to be judge and judge and jury about fault. Thank you.

Yeah. I think there needs to be a lot more clarity shared with us on on those particular cases because we've seen the gamut. A lot of different situations.

So All within the past year.

Yes. Yes. So Councilman Valeri.

I have actually, it's two follow-up quick comments. One, I think we need to be really thoughtful about applying this equally between non corporate and corporate landlords. I think that especially when we start getting into the cost of temporary relocation, I would just flag that. I'm thinking of the individual that may be renting out a home and owns two or less properties versus some of the larger corporate landlords. Then my other comment super quickly is when thinking about comparable units, so we kind of touched on this, but at first I was like, well, of course it would be within city limits.

I think that that might be challenging. However, I would even, you know, we could maybe just assess some options there. For instance, you know, if they're school age children, looking options that would allow them to remain within their school boundaries, stuff like that. There might be some kind of ways to thread that needle because I think it's going to be difficult. It's difficult for larger families, too, right, to find a hotel or extended stay sort of spaces that would be able to house them.

And I think we need to do right by all families, all sizes. Those are just kind of a couple of my thoughts.

I want to pull that question a little bit more just on some of the real life situations I've seen. Sometimes people have pets. Not all hotels take pets, and so that really becomes a challenge. If someone's renting out a two or three bedroom, you will not always find a hotel with a two or three bedroom. So we have I'm I'm curious as to how we would like, I love the principle, but how would you really make that happen? Because that that is not a thing where we have three and four bedroom hotels like that. I mean, I know there's one there's a couple suites, extended stay suites, but that's not very typical. So I'm just curious about how you make that work.

Right. And it might not always be a hotel or motel. It might be an apartment at another property. It might be another apartment within the same property. That would frequently be the most ideal option if they're just able to relocate to another apartment at the same property. But if it is a corporate landlord, they own multiple properties, maybe they can put somebody a couple streets down the block to a different apartment. So it might not always be a hotel or motel.

I just think that we do need to think about the types of units as well. If someone's renting out a five bedroom single family home, you're not going to always find that. And also, our code doesn't allow you to offer leases for that short period of time, right? So, where in the city are people renting out five bedroom homes for three months?

You can rent out for shorter periods of time. So, you could find a month to month tenancy somewhere else and the landlord could pay that comparable fee for renting out if there's a five bedroom house on the market. We'll have to look more into this as we get into that nitty gritty of writing the code and the parameters around it. And so we'll certainly take those things into consideration, but I believe we'll be able to make it work.

That would be good. Just look at think of all the scenarios that you've seen and how can we plan around that and think about intended and unintended consequences. Councilmember Van Gracken and then Councilmember Shaw sorry. You know what? Just go down the line. Councilmember Jackson, go ahead. Oh, just be safe.

Thank you, Mayor. So actually, my question relates to something that Doctor. Miles was asking about. And I was curious about this, and I thank him for raising it. And so I want to pull on the thread a little bit. So in cases where the landlord or the tenant are at fault, Let's say the tenant starts a fire in another apartment and it demises your apartment, or a car crashes into your apartment. What happens then?

So the goal would be that we can hold whoever is at fault for causing that displacement accountable and to pay those fees. Realistically, that might not always happen, but that would be the goal of the policy.

So but it's working its way through the courts, I guess. And that will take, honestly, a matter of months or even years. So, I mean, what happens to the tenant who is displaced? Their their their department's not usable. So are they just out of luck? Or I mean

In those situations, we would work with the tenant and with the landlord to see what else we could find. This policy, we might not be able to be requiring them and going, going line by line by exactly what we want there, but we would try to come up with another situation that still finds the tenant with good housing, good safe housing during that time, even if it isn't necessarily applicable to this policy.

And so another follow-up question is what about the rent? So if the apartment isn't usable, would the landlord be then obligated to find the tenant something similar?

Or

If the landlord is not found to be at fault, then we would not be expecting them to provide the tenant with comparable housing through this policy. We would still strongly encourage the landlord to provide the tenant comparable is

because there's still a lease, the the center still has to pay rent. Either the tenant does not have to pay rent anymore because there's no apartment, or the landlord should, you know, find tenant a place to to live.

In those cases, we would counsel the tenant about the rent escrow process. They would still be responsible for the terms of their lease, but that's what the rent escrow process is there for.

Yeah. Maybe we should do a little bit more work on this, but thank you.

Councilwoman Bershaw. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah. I I agree that I think that, we should look into some of the details on how this could be practiced. When I think about, some of the fires that have happened in the past, sometimes it takes weeks to find what to investigate, to find what happened, who's at fault, and all that time in between, a tenant could be displaced. And so I think in practice, that could be challenging.

I would also say, just adding to the point on comparable housing, and we talked about the number of bedrooms, but also if we layer accessibility on top of that, you know, there could be less units that are available. And so maybe looking to identify possible places, hotels, and things in advance to help that process. And then,

just

I think that we have to kind of think through a lot of different scenarios, and, you know, I also agree with the intent here. But I think, in practice, there's a lot of different circumstances that can make this very tricky.

Thank you. Councilor Van Grak.

So as you can see from even more of my colleagues' suggestions, I'm still kind of wanna make sure this fault is addressed because there's layers upon layers. And just as some of my colleagues were talking about, in Maryland, we've got a a contributory negligence being that there's if there's one fault, a minor fault on behalf of the defendant, there's no fault of anybody. And I know this body and I know council member Valeri has been a strong advocate for the problems inherent in that type of issue. What do we do in a situation where there's fault on behalf of the landlord and the tenant? So there's layers upon layers of this that I think we have to make sure because we don't wanna necessarily penalize landlords for what's going on.

But just as councilman Bershaw said, there could be situations where we have to make sure we take care of the tenant. So there is a lot of layers to unpack here. And I just want to make sure that we're doing it fairly, we're doing it right, we're taking a look at all issues and isn't just something that we kind of throw up and not necessarily see how it's sticking to the wall. Because I think there's a lot of layers, and I think how we draft the code is gonna be instructive on it.

Councilmember Shaw. Thank you, madam mayor. I also just also just wanna add in practice. I know sometimes it can be challenging from a tenant's perspective a landlord to admit that there's fault, and that can take time and just something to think about, or, you know, on both sides. But I've seen a lot of issues where sometimes it can take a long time.

So, yeah, going back to what I was saying, that I think this is there are a lot of different layers to this in practice that we can think through. But I really greatly appreciate putting this together. Thank you.

Thank you. And I would just say I hope that our inspections process is improved so much that people won't have code violations. But there's work to be done there. So I think as we strengthen that program, you'll have less issues. But there are several buildings that probably a lot of people would be able to apply for this, unfortunately, and we've got to fix that.

What's the next topic? Oh, one more.

Just popped in my head and I apologize. I think another wrinkle in this is something that I keep pondering is because we do have a lot of buildings at our condo, and those individuals will rent out their individual condo units. So I just want to throw that as potential wrinkle in terms of we're thinking about property management company versus, in that instance, the condo owner being the landlord, but they have a property management company. I just wanted to flag that as it just popped in my head.

That's a good point. There was an issue before the three of you were here, actually, where there was an HOA managed company property. There were a lot of rentals in it as well, and there was two separate incidents. One was a big water issue and I think maybe water or fire, but there were two separate incidences back to back. One was question about, you know, whether someone did something. The other one was was there a deferred maintenance that led to an issue. So I there this could be tricky, and I look forward to how you bring this back. I also wanna say this seems to be like needs a lot of time, so I I wouldn't wanna hold everything else up if we need more time on this. I just want to say that. Okay.

Alright. Next topic.

Penalties.

Recommendations, and I actually also agree with the varying fees depending on the violation, and I would be open to looking at varying fees depending on corporate versus non corporate landlords.

Thank you. This one to me needs more information. I think you did a lot of nice work in the entire document, I would want to see specifically what the fees are. This is tentative for me because I'd like to be able to get the research and see what do we have currently, what is being proposed, and then use comparable jurisdictions not only in the county and area, you know, neighboring Maryland, but maybe one or two Virginia as well. Doctor. Jackson.

Thank you, mayor. First of all, I really like bringing the penalties, fees up. I think the level that it's at right now is not really a deterrent to a violation by landlord. But I would even go further. I mean, I'm looking at the provisions in Virginia, and the fact that if you have three in ten years, it could lead to a maximum penalty of $10,000 Now, there could be a landlord who has three because they have a huge number of properties.

So we'd have to investigate that and make sure that we're being fair to large versus small landlords. But I do like the fact that we would be going after the bad actors and penalizing the bad actors more so that there was a real deterrent from that behavior. I also and I I would like to maybe explore it a little bit further. I like the Virginia penalty that could stack up quickly. I mean, where you actually have a penalty that's imposed, and the longer it goes on without mitigation or being cured, the fines get more and more and more.

So I do like the penalties provisions that you have, but I would like to see something stronger.

Councilmember Shaw.

I agree with Councilmember Jackson in wanting to see something stronger. My other question is, could you share a little bit more about the enforcement capability? I know within the past two years or so, there's been more tenants engaged in the process, which is a really good thing, and learning their rights and bringing that to the city and perhaps not always having a response in terms of enforcing some of the laws that

we have right now in the code. And so could you just share a little bit more about the capability to enforce this? Yes. So we do have the capability to enforce this, and this would be enforcing of the new chapter 18 code, which afterwards we will make sure that we are able to fully support with our staff capacity and make any changes needed there. And enforcement is done in part by CPDS Code Enforcement Division, the rental licensing component they oversee, and then partially by DHCD Housing Programs, who oversees we oversee the rest of the Chapter 18 enforcement.

And so currently, there's a lot more violations tend to occur when it comes to rental licensing and property maintenance code, which is outside of Chapter 18. But with this, we hope to make sure that we are continuing to apply enforcement equally across chapter 18, in alignment with whatever those new fees would be.

Thank you. Councilman Van Grack.

I'm gonna be, quick, right here. I like the background. I like your recommendation. I think you've done a great job on fees.

Excellent. Thank you. Doctor Miles.

Thank you, madam mayor. I do request some clarification because it seems like the change in penalties to even increase the range of up to 5,000, would that also affect tenants? Because it's landlords and tenants, or these fees, right, in terms of the changes that are being proposed?

Sorry. I could not quite hear everything that you were saying. Could you repeat your question?

The penalties that are being proposed to be changed to include the increase in the amount that can be charged can also apply to tenants too. Is that correct? Landlords and tenants?

Yes. Because chapter 18 applies to both landlords and tenants in upholding their rights and responsibilities.

So, again, being mindful, one of the things that I think you discussed earlier or your colleague discussed is, you know, people already, you know, in some cases, are in arrearages in excess of $10,000. So just being mindful that sometimes things that are well intentioned, you know, like parking meter violations tend to kinda text the people who can least afford it. So if there are ways that we can be mindful of wanting to make sure we're holding people accountable but not financially crippling the individual, I'd I'd be interested in to see how that would how you square that that that that circle. Sorry.

You. Councilman Fulton.

Thank you for raising. That was an interesting issue. What what are some examples of things that a tenant would be charged fees for?

So anything in chapter 18 could have a fee associated with it. At this time, I'm not sure there's anything that specifically, since we don't have that charge or that it's just $100 across the board of any violation in chapter 18. So if a tenant's not upholding some part of their lease and if there's a delinquent tenancy found on behalf of the tenant and not necessarily the landlord, then theoretically there could be that code infraction fee applied. That's not something that I believe we've ever done, though.

So that's my question. So the obligations of a tenant in our code are, roughly speaking, to pay their rent. Right? Like, there's not really okay. Just And

then I could also just add. One of the common things that you would also see is also obligation to allow for repairs. So if there was a situation, for instance, where a tenant wasn't allowing entry, you could hold a tenant responsible in that case.

Great point. Yeah. We saw that. Okay. So I agree with everything that council member Jackson said and everything that council member Miles said. Otherwise, I'm good. Thanks.

Thank you. I'll I for me, it's just we gotta see the details. I I I agree in concept, but I was kinda thinking the same in terms of we don't know what you might be charging a tenant versus a landlord and whether it's a reasonable cost. So I look forward to more information for the proposal. You. Councilmember Vallari? Sorry. I'm

connected to that. Also, what is allowable under state law? Because, again, looking at regional counterparts, I think, is super helpful. But also having the context of what is actually allowable under Maryland state law would then allow us to see where we could be more creative and or flexible.

What's interesting, something that you said, I have asked why isn't this fixed sometimes, and you have shared someone hasn't allowed entry. Is is there are there other jurisdictions who charge for not providing entry?

That's something that we haven't necessarily dived into yet, So that's something that we will consider when looking at different jurisdictions and what types of fees they charge for what types of code infractions. And I will note that the fee schedule would be updated through the citywide fee schedule update process, not necessarily through the chapter 18 update itself, but it's connected with the update of course.

But we would be able to see what you're proposing before we agree to do these fee? Yes, of course. Yeah. Mister Mihalek?

May I have just a quick commentary about penalties. Our goal here is really not to be punitive. It's really to provide incentive to both tenants, but mostly landlords to do the right thing more than anything else to keep these, units occupiable.

That's right.

There are there have been examples, and I can think of vermin as the best example where, if someone's not keeping their unit in in a right manner, they can get vermin. Consequently, if someone next to them is keeping their unit in pristine condition and yet we can't get in there and do treatment, not we, the the landlord, then it's gonna create challenges for other adjacent tenants. In that case, I do think it would make sense for there to be a fine for lack of entry because lack of entry means lack of cure. Lack of cure means that violation could spread into other units. So that's what we're talking about.

But all this is highly nuanced, but the penalties are really being encouraged to increase from $100 to $5,000 because we want to make sure that the cost of doing business for our landlord is to do the right thing, not just go, I'll pay the $100 fine. So thank you.

Understood. And you would have to find ways to deal with the he said, she said because someone says, let a tenant won't let me in, but the tenant will say, no one came by my door. So that's another factor to consider.

Yeah. And I would agree with you too. There have been cases where the landlord, property manager, even contractor just haven't provided enough flexibility. If someone's got kids, pets, or a unique work schedule, they can't let people into their unit. So I think it's all about trying to get people to put their best forward best foot forward and and have good intent. Thank you, mayor. Okay.

Council Member Shah.

I just wanted to also just clarify with entry. The landlord's able to go in as long as they give twenty four hour notice. Right? So even if the tenant's like, oh, can't let you in. I'm at work, whatever, the landlord is still able to get in with with providing twenty four hour notice?

Unless the tenant has a reasonable right to refuse entry, yes.

Okay. And that reasonable right, is that clarified in

chapter? Not specifically, no.

Okay. But I just I do want to stress that I think some of the things we oftentimes hear is, oh, I wasn't the landlords weren't able to fix things because they weren't forgiven access. But at the end of the day, the landlord has the right to get into their property as long as they give twenty four hour notice. And then I just also wanted to clarify the increase in these fees. Will this money go back to the housing department, to help to build our capacity?

Like, this this also helps to increase or will this go how how how will we use the increase in fees to to support all the priorities that we wanna do or to support our housing?

Candidly, just like a lot of our fees, it would go back into the general fund.

Okay.

It just goes back in the budget. So we could determine what to do with those fees.

Okay. Thank you. Councilman Valeri?

I think the word of the evening for me is thoughtful, And I appreciate Councilmember Shaw and others who have talked about the allowing of landlords or property managers to enter into a unit or any sort of rental property. However, given this current atmosphere of fear, I would hope that until perhaps we get to a point where there is significantly less fear, I would hope that there is flexibility in not being punitive individuals who may not want to open their door right now. Thank you.

Next.

Next is the programmatic and future code updates section. And so what we're again, these are these first three are things that we all real already really intend to do. They're already a part of our housing strategies work plan. And then number four in the four options listed under that are things that, we would like to explore in the future. And what would be helpful to us here is hearing a little bit about what of these things might be a priority.

Okay, I think I'm up. So for landlord and tenant outreach, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. We need more education awareness. This is something we've been talking about a lot in our work sessions. 100%.

The tenant outreach organizing. One of the things I was interested in seeing if we could do just naturally is I think tenant organizations should be able to apply for our community organizing grants that we offer HOAs and community associations. That seems like a fair way to get that done, and for you all to use your funding to keep people in their homes. But I just think that they should be able to apply like like other community associations, and we should treat them as such. In terms of continuing to expand support for tenants facing eviction, I I specifically wanna speak to something I've shared before, and I hope that we can one day get there.

But I do think there should be a portion of our rental assistance that can go to helping people not to get help before they get a court order eviction. That to me is inhumane. It also would find a way to deal with landlords who may be allowing people to get to 10,000. I know that you have to keep some pots for the ultra needy when they're at that point of eviction, but what if we had a pot? There are organizations that have two pots: that one is the pre eviction filing and one is after.

And I think that would really help people. It's very stressful to get an eviction notice. It's embarrassing. You also don't want to teach people to wait for the eviction notice. There's so much about that policy that just I think is challenging.

So that's something I wanted to call out specifically when we look at the eviction prevention support. The TOPA, I think there is a state I know that in 2024, there was state TOPA. I would like to learn more about how that's working. And then also DC just made a bunch of changes to the TOPA going in the other direction, so this is one area where they see a lot of policy movement, and I think we need to learn more. The cooling requirements is something I flagged when I first wanted the landlord tenant code updated.

I do think that we should have cooling requirements. We have days where we go above 100, and I just think that that is humane. And even if they don't have HVACs full through, splits. They could do unit windows, but we gotta get people to be able to I mean, to live in their homes. I I I know that there was a building. I won't say the jurisdiction. A 100 residents well, a 100 units were without any AC. There were children and seniors in there, and it was about a 100 degrees. It was really challenging. And so I I just I think that is humane, and I I wouldn't wait on this one.

I think this should be elevated to the rest of the code updates, in my humble opinion. Just people need to have warmth. People also need to be in livable conditions in terms of cooling. Commercial landlords and tenants. I agree.

This is something we've talked about in the past. I would like to learn more about what direction you're going in. I do appreciate that Ready has been trying to create sort of a a prelease toolkit for people to be able to look at things, and there there are parts of it that tenants have to buy their own HVAC, and they're they may not be there for the full length of that HVAC. I think there are a lot of issues here where people and small businesses who are, you know, mom and pop startups may have challenges, so I'm interested in this. And then this last one is one I mentioned last time.

There are continuing care communities where there isn't clarity on the protections that people have. I've also heard in some that, like, people were doing work without permits and other so I think we do need to look more deeply about how we're protecting our seniors as well. So I would love to see us learn more and do more research on this. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. And again, you made some excellent points. So number one, increased landlord and tenant education. Yes. Trevor, you know we're working with several people.

And one of the problems is that maybe the landlord doesn't realize what provisions they have, and the tenant doesn't either. And so, I mean, we're trying to go back and forth, and I think that that just really illuminates the fact that we need a little bit more education, both for the tenant but also for the landlord, especially when the landlord is a new landlord or newer landlord and maybe is not really used to how this city does operate in the landlord tenant protections. Support tenant outreach and organizing. Yes. And I talked with the mayor earlier, and I I think the community grant is an excellent idea.

I see no reason to reinvent the will if we don't have to. Continue and spend support for tenants facing eviction. Yes. And I know that you guys didn't have a recommendation. And I know it may be tough, but I would really like to see some kind of recommendation or language that takes into account before tenants go through court, before they're actually evicted, then the provisions kick in.

I think the mayor had an excellent point, which is the earlier we can intervene, we can get assistance to people, the better. The better for the tenant, but also for the landlord. And I just had a question on that. So and maybe I'm just naive, but do we really believe that landlords would, like, allow violations to go on for months and months and get tenants kind of in the hole, so to speak, before filing for eviction? I mean, like, owing, like, 5,000, $10,000.

Unfortunately, we have those situations in the city right now.

Mhmm. Yeah. That's That's bizarre to me, but I guess some people will do what they have to do. So, yeah, it's continuing to spend support for tinnitus eviction. Yes.

Number four, the Nimitz to other chapters of city code. I really would like to to know more about TOPA. That's so I really would like to know more about TOPA and how it works. I think it's a really interesting idea, especially for the four units or more. And we don't have time, I guess, to go into all the details tonight, but that's something that I think is a really interesting idea.

Cooling requirements, of course. I mean, I'm totally in favor of doing that. Protections for commercial landlords and tenants, especially the immigrant community. You know, I know from personal experience in King Farm, some of the businesses there, that maybe they negotiated a lease that was not fair according to them. I don't know exactly what it was.

But I think that that provision and taking that into account and doing something specifically with the commercial properties is a good thing. And I totally support that. And then, finally, consumer protections for senior living facilities. That's also one that I talked to the mayor about. And I really think that treating them as a month to month is problematic.

And I know that senior living facilities, they're a combination of a couple of things. I mean, you have retirement homes, then you have end of life care, then you have dementia care, and then you have assisted living, all rolled into to the one. And I know that that's a unique situation. I know that it's tough to, like, quantify and and and down regulations, but I really think we have to. Because we're only gonna have more senior living facilities. I think that the sooner we can get our arms around it, the better.

Councilman Bouchard.

And I'll go through these. I have similar thoughts as my colleagues. I definitely agree with increasing landlord and tenant education. And I think now since which I'm really, really proud now since half of the multifamily buildings now have a tenant association, which they've built over a couple of years. I think it's actually easier now to connect with tenants because they are organized.

And I certainly agree with supporting tenant outreach and organizing. Before I was elected, this was something that I pushed for and is something that is needed. I noticed that there were already some grants provided to tenants, I think, this past year. And I can just share that some of the reasons why some tenants did not apply for them was some concerns around trust. And so I think in doing more outreach and connecting more with tenants, I think there may be an increase in tenants applying for those grants.

But what's particularly needed with tenant associations, which you have here, are money for printing and food for the first few meetings or so. Also, I think, along with that, just clarifying our rules, which we already have on the books around disseminating information. Certainly, I support continuing to expand support for tenants facing eviction. The amount of evictions have increased, But I think when we're when we're talking about evictions, I think we should think about the whole spectrum from, like, signing your lease to to the eviction. And, again, you know, I would be remiss if I did not share that rent stabilization would help to prevent evictions, because, evictions are they start off with failure to pay rent.

And so if you are being rent gouged, that is problem in your next renewal. I know a lot of tenants go ahead and sign their lease not having a lot of options, particularly seniors and some of the most vulnerable, and wanting to continue to pay. And so rent stabilization is also a very good preventative measure. And then, also, one of the other things around eviction prevention, particularly for Rockville residents or even Gaithersburg residents, is, the fact that they can get money from the city as well as the county, which is good. And the process is a little bit more complicated as well.

And I've known some tenants, they have to wait on the check from the city, or they'll have to wait on the check from the county to be able to pay. And so I know it's so just thinking about, like, streamlining the process and also the time it takes to cut the check, it can take, you know, evictions. There's the the clock starts ticking, and it's it's a really high pressured process. But making sure that we're looking at that process in a way and perhaps getting more feedback from tenants that have been evicted to share their experiences and how we can streamline process for them. But I think the biggest thing is, particularly for tenants and municipalities, is trying to figure out, like, should they go to the city?

Should they go to the county? Sometimes they can get 2,000 from the county. They can get 2,000 from the city. Waiting on the checks in between and having to coordinate between the city and the county just it's it's just a very complicated process. But it's it's also then, again, helpful because they have that additional money. And I also support everything else here as well, particularly protections for our retail tenants.

Councilman Van Gruek.

Thank you. A number of things here. Obviously, education and what we can do to support both, I guess, landlords and tenants. But, one of the things that I'd like us to focus on if we can, and it was something within your presentation. I think a lot of the support we could do if we're going to be funding and putting things through this code is less about direct support because then we're just helping a few and more about policies that we can support that can help many.

And I know one of the things you talked about is attorney assistance. Attorney assistance is huge within the renter community because I tell you, and councilor Bershaw and I have talked about that. You go into landlord tenant court, and most tenants are without counsel. There is a lot of resources here in Rockville and Montgomery County that I think aren't being taken advantage of. The Montgomery County Bar Association offers pro bono assistance, especially for younger attorneys who are looking for experience.

That can be something that can be coordinated with the city. We also as I'm sure you know, there's a number of organizations that will provide free, attorney assistance. Now that's all out there in the universe. The degree to which we can create more of a bridge, either through staff or through education or even some type of program where we have a communication with the bar association, some of these assistants, that's something that we can directly help folks who are facing assistance. We talked about earlier today, many of these evictions are necessarily not justified or have a wrongful basis, but many of these tenants might not know about it.

And that's something that we can potentially directly help them, not just at that stage that they're in eviction, but potentially early on. If if there's a tenant who realizes they have problems, but doesn't know how to either assert them or just feels that they're under the weight of the power of the landlord, there are things that we can do either through education and through potentially attorney assistance that can help them. And those would be the avenues that I'd like to see more of in the assistance. And also with regard to some of these other amendments, the TOPA, I like it in principle, but I know that there have been a number of legal concerns and jurisdictional concerns in how it's been operated. So I'd want us to tread very carefully.

Again, in principle, I like it, but not to the degree that I was bringing up with, the fault, earlier. There is it's one of these concepts great, but how we implement it could be very careful. So I'd like us to tread carefully, and I think we need to really get into more detail. Cooling requirements, I definitely approve. And I actually think it's something to as long as we're mirroring some of the neighboring jurisdictions, such as Montgomery County and others, I think it's a good idea.

And I also wanna emphasize, I know a couple of my colleagues have talked about this. I'd like to see maybe not wholesale, but a lot of the mirrored requirements that we have for tenants in residential context for commercial tenants. I've represented numerous, commercial tenants, And I cannot tell you the number of times that there is a provision in the residential rights for tenants that would be perfect, and they should have that right, but they don't. And in many of these cases, know, council member Jackson's right, and then some of my other colleagues could talk about immigrants, but it goes more than that. We have essentially sometimes mom and pop shops that are literally trying to make ends meet, and there is a landlord who we've established that type of policy is a bad actor in the residential context, but we've kind of forgotten about the commercial context.

And while I understand there's clearly a difference, and there are clearly protections when you have someone's home that we have to be more protective of when it comes to someone's business. But there are a lot of tenants' rights provisions that really could help some of these small businesses that are sometimes forgotten in the commercial context. So I appreciate what you've put here, and I just wanna make sure that we're mirroring some of those tenant right provisions, especially when it comes to timing and payment. Those types of timing and payment provisions that are often there for tenants are not often there for commercial. And I wanna make sure we're giving them some of those similar rights.

Councilmember Miles.

Thank you, madam Mayor. I'll keep it short and sweet. I support all these in cure in theory and a broad brushstrokes. There's some a number of points that my colleagues have brought up that I think are worth exploring. I will make a short mention of the tenant opportunity to purchase. I know they implemented in DC and then had to come back and adjust it, I think, for smaller scale or smaller housing units. So as we implement that, as my colleague said, we just have to be mindful about how we do it. And if if we do it, and then so, how, and then just learn from neighboring jurisdictions on these points. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Fulton.

Thank you for this. I support all of these. You had asked for some feedback on what to focus on in prioritization. So this exact order is how I would do it with one modification. I would flip consumer protections for senior living facilities with the TOPA. Think there are some TOPA sounds good, but I don't know that it has the highest level of impact, and I'd want to know more about it. So just in terms of priorities, I'd flip those. Also, obviously, I think the idea of protections for commercial landlords and tenants is huge. It's a great point. We should pursue it.

I'm rigid about how I categorize things. Right? But this is our housing priority. Can you all make sure to make the appropriate swap over to our economic development priority to just make sure everything's connected because it's it's not about housing. It is about landlord tenant, but it's not housing. I think we need

to do it, though. Thanks. Councilman Valeri?

That's a a a really good point as well. And if so, is there a component of the landlord tenant code specifically where we have to address this sort of change in terms of commercial landlords and tenants? So that would be the only other wrinkle to that. And to that extent, living in a community with some of the greatest challenges, I will put it kindly, in terms of commercial landlords, the small businesses that we no longer have in the city of Rockville due to their actions, and the ongoing issues in terms of code compliance. I would love to see it be extremely strong in support of commercial tenants.

I think that they truly don't have very many protections. And at least from the folks that I've talked to, a lot of these are first time, smaller, non retail chain, and in particular, in my neighborhood, my community, are also very recent immigrant business owners. If there's any way that we can level the playing field and be supportive of them, I'd like to do that. I support everything here with the addition of which several people have said, get the details on TOFA. I think that there's a certain level of maybe skepticism on whether or not it is, to Councilmember Fulton's point, would that have the greatest impact.

In terms of increasing landlord and tenant education, we do talk about a lot of housing navigators, but even before we start getting into that kind of in-depth navigator role, even having just maybe webinars or in person opportunities for folks to have someone look at a lease with them or review it. And a lot of times leases are written in very inaccessible language, and maybe providing that as a service might be helpful for folks before they sign a lease or before they renew a lease. That would be helpful. Around supporting tenant outreach and organizing. Absolutely full support of it, especially as a former organizer, I think the devil is in the details as far as I'd like to know a little bit more what support entails per se.

I think we just have to be thoughtful, my word of the night, and look at exactly how we're doing this support. I would like to see greater utilization of our community organizations and neighborhood organizations for this sort of outreach and organizing. There is a lot of overlap, at least in terms of the neighborhood associations that I'm familiar with. So I think that that's another good opportunity, as well as in the villages network, to shout out to the villages. I think that they have an ear on the ground, and especially if we're going to look at things like the consumer protections for senior living facilities for sure, but in general around a lot of these issues.

I think that that's all I have. I do absolutely support the idea of early intervention in terms of tenants facing eviction, it is just unacceptable to me I cannot even say the word right now that anybody should be allowed to go into the tens of thousands of dollars in rent arrears before they get assistance. That just is unacceptable to me. Yeah, I would be really interested to see kind of delve a little bit deeper in a lot of these, and especially what we can do under state code for senior living facilities and the different, as Councilmember Jackson stated, the different types of senior living facilities and how we can do those better. Thank you.

Is there anything that you as a team need clarity on that you feel like you didn't get enough information about these items from us?

I thought you guys were crystal clear. I heard broad support for all of the recommendations, including this list, with the understanding that you guys wanna see the language and you wanna kinda pick that apart. You asked for additional follow-up on certain things, best practice, etcetera. We'll be sure to bring that all forward to you. But I don't I think you guys answered all of our questions. I'm gonna check with the team. So, Luis, thank you.

Thank you. I'll just clarify for me. I wanna learn more about the piece just because I see some jurisdictions going in different directions. So I know it's my colleague, council member Miles' point. I saw a hand by council member Van Grack first and then council member Shah.

Yeah. Just as a general statement, I just wanted to note similar to that, I think, what what you said, mister city manager, of making sure that I believe there was a date for potentially coming back as adoption, whereas I think there's a decent chance because we haven't really seen the full language here. There's probably gonna need to be some at least a work session dealing with the language before we get to adoption. So that would just be my note that I I do I think there's a decent chance you've heard whether it's, there's a number of different proposals that I think we're really gonna need to look at carefully and potentially massage some of the language because we're talking broad brush policies here. And I think we're getting to some consensus on broad brush policies, but implementation of a lot of these policies.

I know I don't wanna be the work that you guys have in front of you because it's gonna be complicated. But that probably means that we might have some tweaks or wanna make sure that it's doing what we need to do.

I have to clarify based on that. The items on this slide, especially the sub bullets under four, are part of different code sections and will be brought on May 18. I wanna be clear about that. But on May 18, what I recommend is that we bring the full code to you knowing that you're probably gonna not adopt it that night. But just to see the whole language, we pick it apart. Probably say, bring it back. So Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Bouchard.

Just just a note, as you explore expanding our our legal assistance, and you you're probably aware, but I just I just wanna say this, that there are some organizations, that only only, assist citizens, and then there's some organizations that, assist everyone. And just just being aware of that. And also being aware of that because when we're listening to all of our stakeholders and and the feedback we're receiving, just recognizing sometimes there's different experiences based on who who their clients are. And so, yeah, just wanted you to be aware of that just to make sure that we're helping everyone in the city.

Thank you. I have a couple quick comments. There's a lot that you can go in here, so I want to keep people in their homes with the rental assistance program. There's a lot of proposals to put pots of money other places when you come back to us. I just want to see what the impact is, because I don't want to shortchange a program that really helps people keep people in their homes versus another. So I just wanted to flag that as well.

Yeah. I mean, just generally speaking, and we've done this a lot over the past year or so, when we have brand new initiatives like this and brand I'm sorry. When we have wholesale changes or new initiatives, I always remind you guys, I'm not sure that we get it exactly right every time. So I think we get something on the books. We try it, and I circle back with you guys in the year and say, yeah, we'd recommend some additional changes here, here, here, or maybe we need to resource it in a different way. So thank you, Mary.

Thank you. I had a couple other items. One is for the the server that you're doing in relation to this code update, I noticed that you allow people to click multiple races. Thank you for that, because not all of our surveys do that. I did not see the opportunity to click on ethnicity for Latino, and that's important.

So I just want to make sure that we if maybe I missed it, but I looked at it two or three times, but just check to see whether we are also allowing people to select ethnicity. I think that's an important constituency in the city of Rockville. A couple other things about that survey. You're asking people to calculate percent change. I think you should also be asking them just to tell you previous rent and current rent because you're asking people to do math, and I don't necessarily think that is we we wanna make sure that we're talking to people of all literacy levels.

So I just wanna make sure that we're getting the information, but not asking people to do that math necessarily. I'm also interested in learning if as you're getting people information from people. Like, do they know how to report a code violation? I've I've had to go and do a lot of follow-up and direct outreach on that, and not a lot of people knew how to do that. So I thought that wasn't might be an interesting question.

And then we don't ask people about what type of rental they're in. I don't know if that they might have different feedback based on whether they're in a single family or a small garden apartment or a large corporate landlord. That just might give you more insight. So I wanted to flag that. Your landlord said that the rental license was process was difficult, and I just I don't need to have the answers now, but I want to learn more about that because I know that you guys moved to be online.

So just wanted to see what if there's any there there that we need to improve our processes while protecting tenants. And then a couple other small things. Algorithmic algorithmic pricing. This is something we started talking about, I think, in 2024. And I don't know if it's gonna pass at the state level, but I just wanted to see how it how are you proceeding on that? Because I know some several of us are interested.

I mean, this time, we're waiting to see what will happen at the state level. The good thing about the timing with the code update is that we don't intend to come back with the full code language until after the state legislative session is over. So we're still intending to move forward with what we proposed to initially, but we'll be able to react to if there are any changes at the state level.

Thank you. Councilwoman Jackson.

Thanks, mayor. I understand that, and I hear hear you. But from my way of looking at things, and I was up there at the state legislature this week last week. Sorry. Last week.

And testified on the algorithmic pricing bill that delegate Prahlakovich Carr has in the house. And I get the feeling that it's going to be slow, and I don't want us to wait necessarily when we have a clear position and a clear take on moving forward. And so my recommendation would just be that we move forward with the bill and the language that hasn't been written yet, obviously. The city attorney would have to write it. I think it's a good start in the legislation that is before the Maryland State Assembly and also the legislation that the county council has proposed.

I think Will Chiwondo Councilman Will Chiwondo has it in the council. So I think that we should just go ahead and develop that language and then bring it back to the council to either approve or, you know, say that we need more work. But that's my recommendation. And I'll make a motion if need be.

So, May, our intent is to bring it forward May 18. We're just trying to wait to see if there's any guidance from state statute. That's all there is

to it. We're

definitely Thank you. I think we're one of the early jurisdictions to raise it. I'd love to be one of the first jurisdictions to pass it.

So Yeah.

Yeah. In Maryland. Yes. I know there was, I think, some place in Pennsylvania and some place in California and others, so now there are more. Did you have your hand up, Councilmember Shah?

Yes. I just wanted to say, yeah, this is something that I think we should have done yesterday. This is long overdue, and I think about 2,000 of our residents are impacted by this, myself included. And so I think that we should do it. I know you said you're going bring it back May 18, and so I'm excited about that, and we should move forward with that. Thank you.

Councilmember Vallieri?

I was trying to look it up too quickly, but, yeah, we should know if it makes crossover or not, Ms. Moran. If it doesn't make crossover, then, yeah, let's hit the ground running. If it does, and it's a statewide, then we just have to make sure that we're in alignment with what is passed and what does make crossover and then what the governor does sign. So it could be a short process. It could be a longer process. But I'm in agreement. And I just can't remember off the top of my head whenever crossover is and then when the session ends. It might actually be in the same time period, and then it would happen. But, yeah, either way, we probably have to figure out how we're going to align with state law.

I just wanted to throw that out there.

Thank you. The other two things were the notification requirements. I don't know, did we net out on where we are? Are you just going to show us a draft? There was something about you have to put all notification requirements on the door, and I just wanted to see. We talked about electronic means as well, so I wasn't sure where that netted out and want to see if that's something.

That's something that we're still discussing internally as we work on the draft code.

Okay, thank you. And then the two year lease, I think we generally were very supportive. I think that we talked about different kinds of landlords, but also that it would allow the landlord to tell the tenant after year one what the rent increase would be. Right? It's not like it's we're not going to see a balloon increase after the two years. So I think that's something you're going to come back to us on as well, correct?

So at this point, the recommendation was that the landlord would be required to offer a two year lease term, but they could also offer other lease terms within that as well, and they could offer different rates for different lease term lengths. And so that would allow them to set, you know, without any sort of they they would be able to set whatever different increases based on those lease terms.

But if they did a two year lease term, could they say, Here's your lease. After year one, here's the increase, a tenant has a chance to lock that in? Yes. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Shaw.

How I was understanding the two year lease term was that you would have the same rent and have that housing stability for twenty four months. Was that what was proposed and not have an increase in between? Yes, I think That was what was originally proposed?

Yes, I think maybe I was misunderstanding the mayor's question there. But yes, the intention is that you would be locked into a one rental rate for the entire period of whatever the lease length is, whether that's two years or eighteen months or one year, it be would one rent the entire time. Because I think that is the point of the two year lease, is that you have

some stability for a longer period of time. And so what I've experienced just renting that right now is that you you oftentimes get an offer for for twenty four months, you get an offer month to month, and you get an offer for a one year or and then you get the offer for, let's say, whatever is desirable for the landlord, like typically a sixteen month lease or a thirteen month lease or a fourteen month lease. And usually that fourteenth month lease or whatever that odd number is, usually the more desirable one. So they'll give, like, a lower rate for that one. But I think it may be also just informative to see and to kind of understand how a lot of offers are are coming towards tenants.

Like, typically, you'll you'll get a you'll you can pick between what type of term you want. But, again, like, the month to month is usually, like, a 75% increase, and then the year is, like, a really high. And then whatever is is whatever they want is more is the more reasonable one to to kinda make you pick that one. But I think it would just be helpful just to provide that type of context of how most lease renewals are offered to tenants. But I do think, and I still strongly believe, that we should have the twenty four month lease agreement, and that should be required like it is in the county, and that is the first offer.

Thank you. Councilmember Van Grack.

So I wanna maybe unpack this a little bit. You're not proposing that with a two year lease, it has to be the exact same price per month as the one year lease. Right? You're just saying that there has to be offered the opportunity, although it could be a different price.

Correct. It's about the term that is offered, not the amount.

I just wanna make sure that we're not requiring that the two year lease be the exact same rate as the one year lease. You're just saying they have to be given the opportunity for a two year lease absent the, as you talked about, the reasonable circumstances.

Correct. That's the current proposal. Thank you.

Thank you. But

That that's what I understood and

Yeah. But in order to not do a two year lease, you have to do a reasonable clause addendum to the lease is what you have in the packet.

The landlord would have to provide reasonable cause as to why they're not providing the two year lease term as an option.

Right. And I know some of us expressed concern that landlords might then either inflate the rent at the beginning or do a balloon at the end if they don't have the opportunity to say, okay. I'm increasing your rent by 1% after year one versus I'm gonna go ahead and increase a larger amount to start. So I just I have some concerns about unintended consequences. I do support the stability of having a two year lease and people having an understanding of what their rent is going to be in year one and year two, but I do have some concerns about that. Councilmember Jackson.

Thank you, Mayor. No, that was a very good discussion between yourself and Councilmember Van Grak and Councilmember Shaw. So thank you for that. I want to turn just real quick to the fee restrictions because seemed that when we were talking even at community forum, there was some kind of confusion or maybe reading something that wasn't in there. So can you just explain what you have for fee restrictions and what you meant to say?

Yes. So I will try to keep that as brief as possible while still answering your question. So in short, we are recommending that the city adopt a practice where we prescribe exactly what types of fees a landlord may charge. And so then in the previous work session, we went over exactly what those types of fees would be. And so this includes fees for rental applications, late payments, pets, lost keys, lockouts, secure storage units, internet or cable television, motor vehicle or motorcycle parking, and bicycle parking.

And so this apply to all rental units. And within those different types of fees, there are different, guardrails or requirements for each of them. So I'm happy to answer any questions about particular particular fees there, but that was the general thrust of the recommendation.

So so how do you envision that working? Like, so the the fees are you proposing cap on fees?

It depends on the fee. So for example, with the application fee, the state has already set a cap at $25 and any amount over $25 needs to be returned to the tenant. For parking, for example, we're not necessarily recommending a fee at this time. A lost key for many of the fees, it's the actual cost to the landlord, so that essentially caps it. So for example, lost key fee would be the actual cost to the landlord plus $25 So it really depends on which fee we're talking about.

But what you're trying to get at is that landlords could not really hide the the true cost of leasing. Okay. So that that is really what you're trying to hone in on is the fact that, you know, leasing should be straightforward. There should be this is what it costs to lease an apartment, and you shouldn't have all this money that is hidden by fees and other things.

Yes. And so what I described there was the fee restrictions, and then there's also the component of fee transparency. That includes transparency in advertising prior to lease signing and at the lease renewal and then in the lease agreement itself. So we also have that to help support. We want to both have the transparency in what fees are being charged and then also to restrict if there are what's frequently referred to as junk fees being charged.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Just to clarify, your key would be also including key fobs because some buildings don't have keys anymore.

That would be the intention, yes.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Alright, colleagues. Any last comments? Councilman Bashaw.

Just a quick question. Did you say trash fee? Was trash fee included? So there's seven allowable fees, I think.

Yes. Trash fees, what we say in relation to that, we are grouping that in at the moment with what we are considering utilities. And so, we want to make sure that we clarify that in addition to those fees that I listed being charged, that the landlord may not charge any administrative or processing fees for utilities and that includes trash.

And then storage? Storage

is included. Secure storage fee, no fee for storage located within, attached to, or associated with a unit. Okay.

I got some queries on the associated with the unit. If someone has and I know I asked this before if someone has a unit on Floor 10, if there's any storage that's connected to the unit, fine, they don't have to pay. But if they want to rent storage instead of going to a storage facility in the basement, you're saying they can't get charged for that? Because you said associated with, so that is creating some lack of clarity.

So if in the lease agreement paying the rent for the apartment unit comes along with a storage unit somewhere else in the building, then there wouldn't be an additional fee for that because it would be considered as part of the monthly rent that is being charged already. But if the apartment property has storage units that aren't necessarily associated with specific units but that tenants can reserve and pay a fee for, they're opt opting into that fee. They And would have to do so with all the full transparency that comes along with that, but they would still be able to rent out that storage unit on-site.

Yeah. So just like a parking, it's optional.

Correct.

But I think the language may need to be a little bit more clear because it says associated with and that could be in the building. I just that that I know I've gotten a couple questions on that.

Thank you. Will do.

Council Member Vallari.

I think this would be my my last thought because I'm sitting sitting here thinking through the two year lease idea, and I do like offering it as an option to folks who do want that kind of stability for sure. What I could envision occurring would be that you lock in for two years, and then if there's not an increase at all in that two years, that it just becomes akin to a balloon payment at the end of the two years that you could have actually spread over two years and made it less of an impact. You know what I'm trying to say? I think I said it previously too, that the devil is in the details as well. And when I was a renter, nominally there was no significant change between a one and a two year lease when I was ever even offered a two year lease.

That's a whole another thing. It would just be great if everyone got that as an option, but you don't always. Month to month was absolutely, as I think Councilmember Shah said, it's just aggressively expensive. What I would not want to see is in terms of people looking at the stability of a two year lease, but then at the end of that two years, essentially getting balloon payment and then not being prepared over time, a gradual increase as opposed to a less than gradual one. So I would be concerned with that being an unintended consequence.

I just want to put a pin in that because I know that we were winding around to that point, but I figured I would just put a finer point on it.

Thank you. Councilmember Shaw.

I will just say in the absence of rent stabilization, even after a year, even after months or month to month lease or even after a two year lease, our rent can always Point

of order, Madam Mayor.

Our rent can always

Can you

please complete the point? Sorry. Fair

enough. You, Madame Mayor.

I withdraw.

Okay. So I would say in the absence of rent stabilization, whether it's a two year lease, whether it's a one year lease, whether it's a sixteen month lease, whether it's a month to month lease, there is always a chance that your lease will balloon. And if we want to stabilize the rent fully, then do that. I just wanted to mention that there is always that concern from tenants that you will be rent gouged.

Thank you. I'll just note that because you're not building the gradual increase and allowing that in the two year lease, that you are more likely to see that happen either at the front or the end. So I just encourage you to relook at that policy and see make sure there's not unintended consequences. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time.

Is this a new

point? So they have been doing this for years in the county with the two year lease, and there could be some data that we can get from that. Rent is a combination of a lot of different things, even when you have your renewal, the summer versus in the middle of the winter. There's a lot of different factors involved. And in fact, that's one of the reasons why they have some of these odd kind of terms, like the sixteen or eighteen month term, to get you kind of closer to when your rent could be higher.

But there's a lot of different factors involved. And so I want us to look at this within context.

Thank you very much. We appreciate all of your work, and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you. Okay. We're moving on to mock agenda. I know that some of us had a chance to be a part of the Leadership Planning Team meeting. Does anyone have any comments? Okay. Thank you very much. And anything under old new business?

Okay. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Councilmember Jackson.

Yes. I make a motion to adjourn.

Thank you. Council Member Fulton seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you.