14:04:23 as possible by using the raise hand feature in order to 14:04:26 not interrupt the flow of the meeting. Staff will 14:04:29 continue to answer questions 14:04:32 posed in the chat to the best of our ability, and please limit any side 14:04:36 conversations in the chat at this 14:04:39 time. And so without further ado, we'll go ahead and get 14:04:44 into roll call and accessibility 14:04:48 check-in. So Laura Golino de 14:04:51 Lovato. >> LAURA: I'm here, thank 14:04:54 you. >> JUSTIN: And pronouns and accessibility check-in as well, 14:04:57 please. >> LAURA: Thank you very much. My pronouns are she and her and all 14:05:01 my accessibility needs are met. Thank you. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, 14:05:05 Laura. Ian Davie. >> IAN: 14:05:08 Hey, Justin. Here, 14:05:13 he/him. Thanks. >> JUSTIN: 14:05:17 Christian Bryant. >> CHRISTIAN: I'm here and needs are met. 14:05:20 >> JUSTIN: Thank you, 14:05:25 Christian. Allen 14:05:29 Hines. >> ALLEN: I am here, I 14:05:33 use he/him pronouns. All my accessibility 14:05:36 needs are met. Thank you. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. 14:05:39 Thank you, 14:05:42 Allen. Matthew Maline. 14:05:48 No Matthew 14:05:51 today. Vivien Lyon. 14:06:02 Regina Amodeo. >> REGINA: Hello, she/her pronouns 14:06:05 and my accessibility needs are met. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. Thank you, 14:06:14 Regina. Kristina 14:06:17 goodman. >> KRISTINA: 14:06:21 Thank you. Kristina 14:06:25 Goodlow, and my expect needs have 14:06:29 been met. >> JUSTIN: Pippa 14:06:32 Arend. >> PIPPA: Present. She/her, 14:06:35 needs met. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. Thank you, 14:06:40 Pippa. 14:06:46 Moriah McSharry McGrath. >> Hi, my pronouns are she/they. 14:06:49 I wanted to let people know I have a schedule conflict so I might be coming 14:06:53 and going and I'll definitely be leaving a little 14:06:56 bit before 4:00, so I apologize for that. 14:06:59 Thanks. >> JUSTIN: Thank you for letting us 14:07:05 know that, 14:07:09 Moriah. Amber Cook. >> AMBER: 14:07:12 My pronouns are she/her. I would 14:07:16 request that the fonts are as readable as possible in terms of what's 14:07:19 presented on the screen. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. Thank you, 14:07:22 Amber. Is the agenda big enough for you right now? 14:07:25 Should we zoom in a little bit? >> AMBER: If you could, that would be 14:07:28 great. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, 14:07:32 Tawnya. Angelito 14:07:36 Morillo. >> ANGELITO: Present. I use she/her pronouns and I 14:07:39 don't have any accessibility needs at this moment. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. 14:07:43 Welcome, Angelito. And 14:07:46 Stephanie Phillips Bridges. >> STEPHANIE: Present. I 14:07:49 use Stephanie Phillips Bridges Steph, she/her 14:07:51 pronouns. All of my accessibility needs are met. 14:07:55 I do have to step away for an hour from 14:07:58 2:30 to 3:30, but then I will be back. >> JUSTIN: Sounds 14:08:01 good. Thank you for letting us know. Welcome. 14:08:03 Awesome. Well, welcome, everybody. 14:08:06 Let's go ahead and jump right in to staff updates, then, shall 14:08:11 we? At this point, I had individual 14:08:14 conversations with many of the commissioners here, so I wanted to spend some time and 14:08:18 say thank you to everyone and take the time to speak with 14:08:21 me. It's great to get it know you all a little better, do 14:08:24 a little temperature check and, you know, learn more about your experience on the body 14:08:27 itself. So that was very helpful. So I wanted to take 14:08:31 and make some space for that. I think it's going to 14:08:34 help inform everything going 14:08:38 forward. And so I appreciate you taking the time to have the conversation 14:08:43 with me. Next on the agenda is some 14:08:46 advisory body updates. I'll go ahead and hand 14:08:49 it over to Brianne who will be 14:08:55 spearheading this 14:09:01 section. >> 14:09:05 BRONNE: As I'm sure you're away, 14:09:08 the office is managed by the 14:09:11 office of sig life. Due to the pending change, 14:09:14 they have required that each bureau we view the number of 14:09:17 committees and advisory bodies we have and review their charters and purposes. 14:09:20 We've discussed this request with 14:09:23 Commissioner Rubio and we've 14:09:27 enlisted Sheri Dunn who is a contractor, I think many of you 14:09:30 had conversations with her, we engaged 14:09:36 her around the PHB 14:09:39 director discussion a couple of months ago. She's going to be undertaking this 14:09:43 review. She will be working over the summer with 14:09:46 PHAC, the Portland housing Advisory Committee, 14:09:50 the fair housing Advisory Committee, anda 14:09:53 the RSC. Mostly, though, we're going to be working with those because those are 14:09:56 the policy and budget committees. Her scope of work 14:09:59 in this review is looking over the 14:10:03 charters, interviewing leadership and other 14:10:05 members of these bodies, researching 14:10:10 other cities and their advisory body structures, focusing really on the 14:10:14 Pacific Northwest and similarly-sized cities. And her 14:10:18 deliverables are going to be potential revised 14:10:23 structures for the bodies, any suggested revisions to the charter I know 14:10:26 we just did bylaws and charter updates. But 14:10:31 we might be 14:10:35 in for some more. And suggested flowchart describing 14:10:39 any new committee structures. I know that's a lot. We're in the 14:10:43 beginning stages of this project. You can ask me questions, I might 14:10:47 not have the answer to them, but I can provide you with 14:10:50 Leslie Goodlow's email and contact information if I'm unable to 14:10:53 answer any questions today and she 14:10:56 can potentially answer questions on 14:10:59 my 14:11:09 behalf. >> JUSTIN: Any questions or comments at 14:11:12 this point? >> CHRISTIAN: The only question I have, it sounds like it would 14:11:15 probably be potentially through the end of this year, something 14:11:19 like that. Do you have an idea 14:11:22 of how long she anticipates before coming out 14:11:26 with whatever recommendation she comes 14:11:29 out with? >> 14:11:33 BREONNE: I don't. I know they said originally 14:11:36 they be the weighed timeline of three to six months. But we've all been 14:11:40 engaged in government processes for a long time, so that's the timeline that 14:11:43 we have been initially given. 14:11:55 >> JUSTIN: Any other comments 14:11:58 or 14:12:03 thoughts? We'll move on. Thank you. 14:12:07 I do need to back up. I forgot do a chat 14:12:11 moderator even after I announced it. Is 14:12:14 anyone on the Executive Committee willing to be the chat 14:12:20 moderator? 14:12:34 >> I was going to say I would do it but I'm doing too 14:12:38 much already. >> IAN: I was going to offer after the 14:12:41 presentation, but if Amber can jump in, that's 14:12:45 lovely. >> JUSTIN: Amber, thank you for 14:12:48 volunteering, that's lovely. We appreciate it and it's all you, 14:12:53 so thanks. >> AMBER: Could you just review real 14:12:56 quickly so I know what I'm supposed to be doing? >> JUSTIN: Of 14:13:00 course. During long discussion periods, PHB 14:13:03 staff will check in with you to get a recap of any comments or discussions 14:13:07 in the chat. So people are adding stuff 14:13:10 in there that's relevant to the discussion, we'll just check in every ten to 14:13:13 15 minutes to make sure we're reporting everything. 14:13:16 >> AMBER: Sounds doable. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. 14:13:20 Thanks, Amber. All righty. Next on the agenda is just some 14:13:24 updates around the 2023 listening session which is right around 14:13:28 the corner. June 7th from 6:00 to 14:13:31 8:00. It is hybrid 14:13:35 with the in-person event being held on the second floor 14:13:38 of the 14:13:42 1900 southwest fourth avenue building. We'll go through brief 14:13:45 updates today. I will be sending an email out tomorrow 14:13:48 with more specific details around the event and for 14:13:51 those who are attending trying to gauge who will 14:13:54 be attending in person and who will be attending 14:13:58 virtually. Something to flag is that we don't have access to the parking 14:14:01 lot, unfortunately, below the building 14:14:04 because it is after hours. So all parking will 14:14:08 have to be done on the street 14:14:11 or the University Place hotel 14:14:14 which is a block away and charges $3 per hour. It's all 14:14:17 being communicated. It's on 14:14:22 the event page, which I'll place in the chat right 14:14:26 now. And we'll be starting outreach this week for the 14:14:30 event. And actually recently just got all of our 14:14:33 translated flyers back from our 14:14:37 translator. 14:14:42 We had them 14:14:49 translated into several 14:14:54 different clang wages uages. Please feel free to share and 14:14:57 repost those. We'll be doing social media posts 14:15:00 flying around town and some eBlasts. But the 14:15:03 more coverage, the better. So I will make sure you all have those in 14:15:07 your inbox tomorrow with a detailed description of the event and what we're 14:15:10 locking at 14:15:14 here. Any questions 14:15:18 on 14:15:22 that? 14:15:26 Amber. >> AMBER: I have a question about the 14:15:29 listening session. >> JUSTIN: Yeah. >> AMBER: So whenever that's 14:15:32 appropriate, you can let me know. This isn't specifically about the hybrid or 14:15:35 the, you know -- this 14:15:38 is an okay time to ask? >> JUSTIN: This is a great time for 14:15:42 it, yeah. >> AMBER: I think I'd like 14:15:45 to ask, how does a listening session translate into 14:15:48 action or changes? You know, generally my understanding has been, 14:15:52 you know, we can't go by lived 14:15:55 experience in terms of making decisions on rental 14:16:00 services commission, and I was 14:16:03 somebody who gave testimony on the last listening session and there was 14:16:06 no -- I'm just saying, you know, in all honesty, there 14:16:10 was no sense of, you know, the testimony that we gave had any impact. 14:16:13 So I'm not saying that it didn't, right, I'm just saying that as, you 14:16:17 know, as somebody who gave testimony, I didn't have any sense 14:16:20 of, you know, what it did or what it 14:16:24 accomplished. So I guess you could almost say those were to 14:16:27 things. >> JUSTIN: Yeah. You know, I wasn't -- of 14:16:30 course I wasn't here for it last year, but I was -- you know, 14:16:33 I'll go ahead and let Laura talk. Go ahead, 14:16:37 Laura. >> LAURA: Well, Justin, I think you'd 14:16:40 like to add too, Amber, those are great questions. I think 14:16:43 that the listening sessions are 14:16:47 specifically, my understanding of the listening sessions, are 14:16:51 specifically designed to provide an opportunity 14:16:54 for the community 14:16:57 to highlight issues that are of 14:17:01 concern. And I think that 14:17:04 because the Rental Services Commission 14:17:08 cannot address or respond in 14:17:11 an action way either to public testimony at these 14:17:15 meetings or in a listening session, we have to be 14:17:18 really clear about setting expectations about what's going to 14:17:21 happen at the listening session. We're listening. I 14:17:24 think that we could do a better job coming back from the 14:17:29 listening session to gather -- to look at the feedback that we got 14:17:32 and say, what are the 14:17:36 priority issues that people are raising that we should 14:17:39 be paying attention to? But I still 14:17:42 think we need to be really clear about 14:17:47 what is our ability to respond 14:17:50 individually to any one person? Which I think we have to think 14:17:54 really carefully about. But I'm 14:17:57 glad you brought that up, because as we -- as we go into 14:18:00 the listening session, I think we could plan for 14:18:03 the meeting after the listening session to review 14:18:08 what happened. >> CHRISTIAN: I would also say, I 14:18:12 mean, it was -- you know, it definitely doesn't fall on 14:18:15 deaf ears. But now that you're part of the committee and have seen, you 14:18:18 know, the number of meetings we have and the number of 14:18:22 topics that are considered in the action plan and stuff, 14:18:25 that is one area where a lot of that stuff, it gets 14:18:29 considered, it gets -- 14:18:32 it definitely gets our -- most importantly gets 14:18:35 all of the RSC members brains kind of going on possible issues to 14:18:38 bring up when we start talking about the next action plan and 14:18:41 everything. So it may not have -- there definitely are 14:18:44 a lot of issues that don't make it to 14:18:48 being on 14:18:51 our agenda. A lot of 14:18:55 the reasons, quite honestly, 14:18:58 will end up not being under our area or, you 14:19:02 know, not jurisdiction is the wrong word, but you kind of get what I'm saying. 14:19:05 But also it's a matter of we have so much time, so that's one thing that 14:19:08 we do have to, you know, understand 14:19:12 and balance. And I don't know if there is a good way to go about 14:19:15 it. I wouldn't be opposed to looking into something like this. 14:19:19 But it's hard to be able to show 14:19:23 the community that shows up and gives their -- their -- what 14:19:26 they shared there, it's hard to show them, oh, hey, this 14:19:29 led to this topic on this meeting because, 14:19:34 unfortunately, they don't, you know, not all of them get that 14:19:37 far. So it is definitely taken into consideration, that's 14:19:41 really where it comes is we try to take that information and hopefully, 14:19:44 you know, help it shape our priorities on the 14:19:47 upcoming action plan, if there is anything we 14:19:51 can weigh in on and give recommendations on. >> AMBER: If I could just 14:19:55 add one more thing and then I'll move on. Then, you 14:19:58 know, I guess a question is, is it fair to 14:20:01 ask people to talk on any subject 14:20:04 when -- when a lot of those subjects don't fall under our 14:20:08 purview? Like would it be more respectful 14:20:11 to, you know, have a listening session on specific 14:20:16 topics? So that mostly I'm just 14:20:19 posing that question. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Amber. Go 14:20:27 ahead, Vivien. >> VIVIEN: I'm still muted, 14:20:30 okay. So I want to -- I want to amplify 14:20:34 what Amber is asking in terms of the 14:20:37 fairness of letting people talk on whatever housing 14:20:40 topic they are most affected by or impacted 14:20:43 by without understanding what topics 14:20:47 we're able to consider. I do think that there could be a lot more 14:20:50 clarity provided to folks in advance so that they can determine whether 14:20:53 they want to spend their time doing that. And I 14:20:58 also 14:21:03 would love for us to know in advance and select a 14:21:06 commissioner advance to provide an address to the 14:21:10 people giving testimony giving them the overview of what 14:21:15 this testimony is useful for and what our response is 14:21:19 likely 14:21:22 to be in terms of we are not going to 14:21:25 solve your problem. We are 14:21:33 attempting to community input so we can see what the problems are 14:21:36 that are being experienced by the community at this point in time. Something like 14:21:39 that. So that 14:21:42 people nope that it's not that their testimony 14:21:45 isn't being heard or valued or acted on, but they 14:21:48 need a better understanding, probably, of the scope of 14:21:54 that action. And now I'm going to go 14:21:57 back on mute. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, 14:22:03 Vivien. Breonne. 14:22:06 >> BREONNE: I just want to say one thing that Justin 14:22:09 and I talked about a couple of weeks ago when he was 14:22:12 still more onboarding was I'm not sure 14:22:15 if the RSC commissioners remember the 14:22:19 document that Kristina Dirks put together last year that 14:22:22 was a compendium of all of the public testimony 14:22:25 that the RSC heard and sort of, like, showing all of 14:22:28 the, sort of, public comment that had gone into the body, 14:22:32 like, in that previous year. And we talked about instituting doing that 14:22:35 on a regular yearly basis and 14:22:39 providing that information to the head of the 14:22:43 bureau and the commissioner in charge just so, you know, there is this, 14:22:46 like, formal transmission of documents saying that this is -- this is what 14:22:49 the community is telling 14:22:53 us. So there's at least an ongoing to 14:23:04 continueed documentation of that. I found that to be 14:23:08 a valuable document when she pulled that together. 14:23:11 >> JUSTIN: Speaking to the point of managing expectations 14:23:14 on what a body can and cannot do, we 14:23:19 will -- me and Laura will be giving an 14:23:23 introductory speech to kick off the event. We'll do the RSC's role, 14:23:26 work products as well, and would be happy 14:23:30 to work in there some message 14:23:33 around what people can expect 14:23:36 from giving testimony, what -- and, you know, 14:23:39 what the steps are and that kind of process. So absolutely hear 14:23:41 that. Thank you for raising those concerns, everybody. 14:23:44 And I'll make note of them. 14:23:53 Any other thoughts, questions, concerns around the 14:23:57 listening 14:24:02 session? Perfect. Oh, 14:24:06 Kristina. >> KRISTINA: I'm so slow with that raising of the hand, 14:24:10 sorry. My only thought would be I think this is such a 14:24:13 great idea of, like, just some 14:24:16 transparency for folks to know what to expect and 14:24:19 what not to expect. But I would also like to see 14:24:23 that in the listening sessions, but also 14:24:26 maybe, like, prior to public testimony in these 14:24:29 spaces, just because it seems like folks sometimes, 14:24:32 like, share what's happening 14:24:37 for them and possibly are looking for some support, which might not 14:24:40 be what we can give. So it would be great to just be able to do 14:24:43 it in both spaces. >> JUSTIN: 14:24:46 Thank you, 14:24:52 Kristina. Any other questions or 14:24:55 concerns on this topic? 14:25:01 Angelito. >> ANGELITO: I just wanted to say, as 14:25:04 someone who's done constituent services, it is quite literally 14:25:08 impossible to get someone to share something even if it's not 14:25:11 relevant to the bureau or responsibilities that you hold, people will do it. 14:25:14 But I like that we're trying to frame this in a way that people 14:25:17 are sharing things that are meaningful and actionable 14:25:22 for us. 14:25:26 Will Commissioner Rubio be attending this listening session as well as the 14:25:29 housing commissioner? >> JUSTIN: I am not certain, actually. 14:25:32 I will find that 14:25:35 out. >> ANGELITO: Thank you. 14:25:39 >> JUSTIN: Absolutely. 14:25:54 Any other thoughts or concerns? The next 14:25:57 session is Executive Committee recruitment. It's a quick one. 14:26:00 We'll be sending 14:26:06 our home mows memos of recommendation within the next week. We 14:26:09 cannot speak to exactly when that will be 14:26:12 reviewed and 14:26:17 approved, but I will keep everyone up to date when I know more. So just 14:26:20 a quick little update, we haven't forgotten, 14:26:25 it's moving. Just kind of a time thing here now. 14:26:36 Any questions on that before I move on to staff 14:26:41 updates? All righty. Well, we have 14:26:44 a couple presentations that are 14:26:48 coming up now. Before going into that, I just want to 14:26:51 do a chat check with our chat 14:27:00 moderator. Amber, anything else we need to 14:27:03 share out loud with the group that I might have missed? >> AMBER: You 14:27:06 didn't say that she loves to be able to 14:27:10 highlight the compilation of testimony for people participating in the listening 14:27:13 session, so that might be something for Vivien to expand on just a 14:27:17 little bit. 14:27:20 If Vivien would like to. >> VIVIEN: Sure, yeah. 14:27:24 I just meant that I heard that 14:27:27 Justin and Breonne are going to be addressing the people 14:27:30 providing the testimony at the listening session, and I think it would 14:27:35 be useful for them to hear about that compilation of testimony and the use that 14:27:38 was made of that and how it really did impact 14:27:41 the way that we prioritized 14:27:46 this 14:27:51 year's yearly agenda, I 14:27:54 guess, that that would provide a concrete example 14:27:57 of what the testimony is useful for. 14:28:00 With respect to this 14:28:06 committee. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Vivien. >> AMBER: Excellent. 14:28:09 I'm going to add briefly, if we have a 14:28:15 commissioner who reflects back in broad strokes what we heard, 14:28:18 that could go a 14:28:22 long way toward making the experience less 14:28:25 frustrating. When they just talk and say thank you and 14:28:28 good-bye, you kind of wonder why you spent your 14:28:31 time. So... >> JUSTIN: Thank 14:28:34 you, Amber. Thank everyone for the feedback and comments and great conversation 14:28:38 around this. I've heard you all and I'll make sure as 14:28:41 we're planning the event to take into account all these great ideas and 14:28:45 considerations where appropriate. 14:28:48 Okey dokey, let's go ahead and jump into the 14:28:51 presentations. I'm going to go first, I'll go ahead and share 14:28:57 my screen. 14:29:01 Okay. Share 14:29:06 this 14:29:13 one. Can you all see that presentation? Give me one 14:29:16 second to get situated. Okay. Perfect. 14:29:19 So our first presentation today is 14:29:22 on legislative updates and landlord 14:29:26 incentives. This is born from our request and from 14:29:30 conversations around specifically looking at 14:29:33 what policy tools or interventions we 14:29:36 can use to incentivize landlord behavior. Specifically, this is, you 14:29:40 know, from the knowledge that, you know, 14:29:43 locally we 14:29:46 can't do anything on a local level to change the 14:29:50 state's law to, you know -- 14:29:53 it's a state law that guides 14:29:56 the rent increase. Excuse me. And so locally we have no 14:29:59 power to change that or influence that policy or 14:30:02 legislation. And so this presentation was 14:30:05 really born from the idea of looking at various local 14:30:09 policy solutions or implementations we can use to help 14:30:12 incentivize landlord behavior, 14:30:15 specifically for low-income tenants. The request was 14:30:18 related to, you know, incentivize landlords to not raise 14:30:25 rent. So in today's agenda, I'll be going over some 14:30:28 updates on key 14:30:31 legislation. Some rent control legislation, which I just briefly 14:30:34 kind of stumbled over. And then some landlord incentives 14:30:39 kind of going over what they are, their 14:30:41 function, their role, and some common examples. 14:30:44 This is not meant to be an exhaustive list 14:30:48 by any means of possible 14:30:52 policy interventions or incentives. 14:30:55 But it's going to start a conversation to help us 14:30:58 brainstorm when going 14:31:02 forward. So we're first going to start with updates on key 14:31:09 legislation. So 14:31:15 HB 2001 which was signed March 29, 2023, is the biggest piece of 14:31:18 legislation that affects the eviction process and 14:31:22 landlord-tenant interactions. Some 14:31:25 key requirements and changes made by 14:31:29 HB 2001 include when serving a notice of termination for 14:31:33 nonpayment, HB 2001 increases the notice period from 14:31:37 72 hours to 10 days or from 144 14:31:42 hours to 13 days. It also requires the landlord to deliver a 14:31:46 copy of a newly created notice when 14:31:49 serving a tenant with any termination notice related to 14:31:52 nonpayment. And that's available on the website of 14:31:55 the Oregon Judicial Department. Big one 14:31:59 here, extends the time a tenant is able to cure the 14:32:02 nonpayment cited in a termination up to the first appearance in court. So 14:32:05 if a tenant shows up to court with the money, they are allowed to 14:32:08 cure the payment at that point. Which you know, 14:32:11 extends that time to basically, you know, the last 14:32:16 possible moment. And requires the landlord to reasonably 14:32:20 participate with rental assistance programs. 14:32:27 HB 2001 also defines nonpayment as nonpayment of a payment that is due 14:32:30 to a landlord, including a payment of rent, 14:32:33 late charges, utility or service charges or any 14:32:36 other charges or fees as described in the rental 14:32:42 agreement. 14:32:46 Under 14:32:50 HB 2001, nonpayment does not include payments due 14:32:54 for damages to the premises. 14:32:56 Pippa. >> PIPPA: I have a general question 14:32:59 not related to this but it relates to politics and I didn't see it on the agenda 14:33:02 so I thought I'd just ask. Does the measure in 14:33:05 Multnomah County that I voted on yesterday 14:33:08 measure 236 or something to that extent, 14:33:12 which read like sort of highlights of our talking points 14:33:15 of this body, did this body have anything to do with that 14:33:19 measure? And I apologize for sort of out of 14:33:22 context, but politically related question 14:33:26 at this point. 14:33:30 >> JUSTIN: Yeah. Breonne, 14:33:33 will you weigh in? I just am 14:33:36 uncertain. >> BREONNE: No, that was an independent campaign as a 14:33:39 public body, we had nothing to do with that and the 14:33:42 Housing Bureau did not engage. >> JUSTIN: 14:33:46 Awesome. 14:33:51 Thanks, Breonne creditor and Breonne, and thank you for the 14:33:55 question, Pippa. >> Were you talking about the question 14:33:58 about all measures, that one? >> PIPPA: 14:34:03 Yeah, I believe so. >> LAURA: Breonne is correct, of 14:34:05 course. >> PIPPA: Thank you. >> JUSTIN: Perfect. 14:34:09 Rent control legislation. So we discussed 14:34:12 this last time, last meeting, actually, but 14:34:17 ORS 91.225 restricts the ability to establish rent control 14:34:21 measures to the role of the state. This is a quick reminder, which is 14:34:24 why we're going through this presentation and having these conversations to look 14:34:28 at kind of local solutions to 14:34:31 this legislation when it comes to supporting 14:34:35 tenants and possibly keeping rents at more 14:34:40 affordable levels. All righty, we'll go 14:34:44 ahead and get into landlord incentives 14:34:48 now. So 14:34:51 landlord incentives were designed with some 14:34:56 regulatory affordability and others ensure that the 14:34:59 housing remains 14:35:04 safe. Specific localities and jurisdictions will have very clear 14:35:08 goals in mind with incentive techniques to achieve these goals. 14:35:11 These be common functions of most public housing 14:35:14 authorities. So function, they have various functions 14:35:18 to maintain unit affordability, of course, partner with the local 14:35:21 housing authority, which I just mentioned, rent to target 14:35:24 populations, and, you know, for maintenance and rehabilitation 14:35:27 purposes. These are all things we'll explore in more depth later 14:35:31 on in the 14:35:34 presentation. Some techniques, there are two main 14:35:37 categories of techniques, monetary and 14:35:40 nonmonetary incentives. Monetary is the most common 14:35:44 and most effective, which involve, among other 14:35:47 things, direct payments to landlords, tax incentives, 14:35:51 access to 14:35:55 damage or mitigation fund. And examples of 14:35:58 nonmonetary incentives include preinspection certification good 14:36:02 for 60 days, free online rental listing and tenant placement 14:36:05 assistance, and mediation 14:36:10 services. So let's take a little closer 14:36:13 look at the maintain affordable housing 14:36:17 incentive. Predominantly takes the form, you know, of 14:36:20 tax incentives, are there tax abatements which 14:36:23 reduce the total amount of tax owed or tax 14:36:27 exemptions which reduce the assessed value 14:36:30 of the 14:36:35 property. They're often geared to new development and 14:36:38 agreed upon number of units affordable for a 14:36:42 specified amount of time or to put the property under rent 14:36:46 regulation that slows escalation of rent levels. It can be coupled with 14:36:49 maintenance and rehabilitation incentives. You know, the tax 14:36:52 relief allows more of the more rental income to 14:36:55 flow to the bottom line, thus 14:36:58 bringing up cash flow which can be used to improved the 14:37:02 operations of the building, increase the money spent on maintenance or fund 14:37:05 actual building rehabilitation or 14:37:10 maintenance. An example of this, I'm sure we're all familiar 14:37:13 with, is Oregon's low income housing tax 14:37:17 program, LIHTC. The LIHTC program provides 14:37:20 tax credits for developers to construct, 14:37:23 rehabilitate, or acquire and rehabilitate 14:37:26 qualified, low-income rental housing. These 14:37:29 development projects include multifamily and single family 14:37:33 rental housing. Eligible applicants 14:37:37 include both for profit, profit, and nonprofit 14:37:40 sponsors. And Oregon housing and community services 14:37:43 issues these credits you there a competitive notice of funding availability 14:37:46 process or NOFA, for 14:37:49 those who are familiar with the acronym. This is not the only 14:37:52 example we have even in the State of Oregon. 14:37:56 We have the Oregon affordable housing tax credit, 14:37:59 a state income tax credit that 14:38:03 produces lower rents for lower income people in affordable housing 14:38:06 projects. And we have the agriculture workforce housing tax credit 14:38:09 which gives a state income tax credit to investors who 14:38:13 developer rehabilitate agriculture workforce 14:38:20 housing. So that is a look at tax credits and how they can be used to 14:38:23 incentivize and maintain affordability. Another 14:38:26 incentive, you know, we see 14:38:30 frequently are to rent to target 14:38:33 populations. You know, oftentimes through a partnership with a 14:38:36 local housing authority. So this is, 14:38:40 you know, when a local housing authority will use monetary 14:38:43 incentives like a rent guarantee fund, a damage mitigation fund 14:38:46 which gives the landlords access to a fund 14:38:50 for any damages to the unit. Security 14:38:53 deposit assistance, and vacancy funds which will pay the 14:38:56 landlord if, you know, while they're waiting for 14:38:59 someone to be placed. Populations that are targeted 14:39:02 can include the homeless or chronically 14:39:07 homeless populations, DV survivors, individuals with evictions on record 14:39:10 or who are experiencing barriers securing 14:39:15 housing, individuals and families with very low income, 14:39:19 and housing choice voucher recipients. Which will 14:39:22 be expanded on more in the next presentation that's given by 14:39:25 Ian and 14:39:29 Laura. Some examples of this 14:39:32 include Los Angeles County landlord 14:39:36 incentive program. The Los Angeles County 14:39:39 development authority's homeless incentive program offers monetary 14:39:43 incentives to encourage landlords to rent their 14:39:46 available units to LACDA's homeless Section 14:39:49 8 voucher holders. So some incentives include a sign-on 14:39:53 bonus, application fee assistance, damage 14:39:57 mitigation fund, vacancy payments, and 14:40:00 on-time payment guarantees. These programs are something 14:40:03 we see very commonly across the U.S. 14:40:06 And another example is San Diego landlord 14:40:11 engagement and assistance fund, which provide incentives to landlords who 14:40:15 choose to rent individuals exiting homelessness. Some incentives for 14:40:18 them include payment of $500 for the 14:40:21 first apartment rented, and 250 for each additional unit. 14:40:25 Access to a contingency fund, 14:40:28 application and credit check assistance, security deposits and 14:40:31 utility assistance, and 14:40:35 preinspection certification good for 60 days, free online rental 14:40:38 listing and tenant placement assistance. We see a lot 14:40:42 of pairing of nonmonetary and monetary 14:40:45 incentives here to really help, you know, 14:40:48 change landlord behavior or incentivize the 14:40:51 behavior for, you know, keeping units affordable. And 14:40:55 these are, by far, not the only examples that we see across 14:40:59 the country. For 14:41:02 instance, New York senior citizen rent 14:41:06 increase exemption helps eligible senior citizens 62 and 14:41:09 older stay in affordable housing by 14:41:12 freezing their rent, and 14:41:16 New York's disability resident rent 14:41:20 exemption does something similar for people who are living with a disability. 14:41:23 And these are found thanks to Ian, so thank you, Ian. 14:41:27 And I'm going to go ahead and put links to these 14:41:31 in the chat. You know, 14:41:35 and there's some -- also have 14:41:38 been some local efforts as I'm sure a lot of us know to do something very similar to this. 14:41:44 Thinking of move-in multiple Noma, the 14:41:53 Clackamas housing that I'll put in the chat here. 14:41:56 And Multnomah one I'll put in the chat. 14:42:00 I'll grab that link. These are not PHB 14:42:04 projects, so -- PHB does not directly one these 14:42:07 programs or have influence or authority over these 14:42:11 programs. But you know, looking at what possible, 14:42:14 you know, policy interventions we can come up with as a body to 14:42:17 help, you know, address this issue. Just 14:42:21 wanted to give as many options as possible for what's being done, you 14:42:24 know, across the U.S., but also what's happening 14:42:27 locally so we can keep that in mind when, you 14:42:30 know, having these 14:42:35 discussions. Any questions or 14:42:38 comments on that presentation? Christian. 14:42:42 >> CHRISTIAN: Yeah. A couple things. 14:42:45 One, I 14:42:48 want to say, being a landlord myself and also running 14:42:51 the Portland area rental association where about 14:42:55 90% of our members are the -- when some 14:42:58 would call the small landlords, four or less units and whatnot, I 14:43:03 can tell you that we definitely 14:43:06 -- we definitely -- they would definitely respond 14:43:09 to things like that, for sure. 14:43:12 I think if we started thinking down this road 14:43:15 as a city, I think it would 14:43:18 halt at least a good portion of them that are, 14:43:21 you know, seriously toying with the idea of, you 14:43:24 know, potentially selling their properties and stuff. And that's 14:43:27 one thing that, you know, yeah, some of those might go 14:43:30 to people that live in them and we might lose some of those 14:43:34 units. But also more importantly, 14:43:37 one of the other unintended consequences of that happening is the people buying the units 14:43:41 are going to be ones that pay for a layer of 14:43:44 management that just, you know, adds to overall costs 14:43:47 versus though smaller ones. I know those landlords would definitely respond to 14:43:50 stuff like this, so I think it's very good 14:43:54 avenue to go down to see if it's something that's affordable for the city and make 14:43:58 work. The other thing that I wanted to point out, which I 14:44:01 think is definitely a reason for us to continue down 14:44:04 this path and make some sort of recommendation, is the other 14:44:07 big piece to HB 2001 is the housing needs 14:44:12 analysis. And the study to go along with that that will within the 14:44:15 next two years they're going to do that entire housing needs 14:44:18 analysis for every area across Oregon. They're going to roll 14:44:21 out basically goals or set limits of certain levels of housing that every 14:44:24 area like Portland or Portland Metro will be required to meet. 14:44:27 And then if they aren't able to meet those, then they're going to 14:44:33 -- the state will mandate, basically, go through some audit process and 14:44:36 stuff, but they'll mandate that those areas start doing things like 14:44:40 incentivizing the development of units to meet a 14:44:43 certain, you know, percentage of medium-family 14:44:46 income affordability level, whether that be through things like 14:44:49 this we're talking about or 14:44:53 potentially, which could bite into some things that a lot of citizens that the 14:44:56 Portland area care about, potentially be forced to expand and open 14:45:00 up urban growth boundary areas or 14:45:03 publicly-owned property that's undeveloped, things like that. 14:45:06 So I think, you know, getting on top of or ahead 14:45:10 of that curve, we kind of stumbled into some good timing on 14:45:14 really I think flushing this out and possibly turning it into a 14:45:17 recommendation at the very least that City Council 14:45:20 can look into expanding some of the opportunities or incentives that 14:45:25 they have. >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Christian. And I do want to, you 14:45:32 know, housing rent analysis is on our radar as well and we're 14:45:35 looking closer to the end of the year, November or December meeting to have 14:45:38 a discussion on that. So thank you for 14:45:43 bringing that up. Any other -- 14:45:46 oh, 14:45:50 Ian. >> IAN: Great presentation. Do you mind just quickly sharing the 14:45:53 screen on page 4 of the presentation? >> JUSTIN: Yeah, 14:45:59 of course. >> IAN: 14:46:02 While you're throwing that up, I will 14:46:05 just highlight at least the third and 14:46:10 fourth bullets on what Justin's about to share were 14:46:13 pieces that this group directly advocated for. So one is extend the 14:46:16 time a tenant is able to cure the nonpayment 14:46:19 cited in termination issued under Chapter 14:46:22 90 up to the first appearance in court. And 14:46:26 the second was bullet 4 on here requiring the landlord to 14:46:29 reasonably participate with rental assistance programs. And we had 14:46:32 -- this group had put out a letter 14:46:36 in June of 14:46:40 '21, just under two years ago, as we saw out of the COVID 14:46:43 era protections sort of sunsetting and 14:46:46 that letter specifically asked for these two things. 14:46:51 It reads, local code should be adopted to allow for easier use for emergency 14:46:55 rental assistance by requiring landlords to accept rent I assistance. 14:46:58 It should be adopted to allow longer period of time 14:47:01 for nonpayment notice for payment 14:47:04 of rent beyond 72 hour period to 14:47:07 allow [away from mic] and avoid eviction. I wanted to highlight those as little 14:47:11 wins that this group should be proud of. Because 14:47:14 while our advocacy went to council and this was at the state 14:47:17 level, I think it all has an impact in 14:47:20 adding to the advocacy. So that's all I 14:47:24 wanted to mention. >> JUSTIN: Thank you so much for pointing that out, 14:47:27 Ian. It's always great to know that the efforts of this body 14:47:31 are having an impact. And this is an 14:47:34 amazing impact that's going to benefit so 14:47:38 many tenants and so thank you so much for pointing that out. 14:47:49 Other 14:47:53 questions? Amber. >> AMBER: So thank you for the work 14:47:57 put into this for, you know, making this presentation 14:48:00 and laying things out nice and clearly 14:48:03 and clearly a fair amount of research was done, you 14:48:06 know, to make sure, you know, to 14:48:09 reflect, like, what's been done in other places and, 14:48:13 you know, kind of what are more standard 14:48:16 procedures. My concern 14:48:21 with -- with this is 14:48:24 that, you know, of course I have 14:48:28 to speak as -- you know, as a renter 14:48:32 myself is that, you know, 14:48:35 this is all -- you know, in essence we 14:48:38 have an issue in which, you know, 14:48:41 some landlords are overcharging rents, they're 14:48:44 charging rents above local wages making them unaffordable to 14:48:48 people who, you know, work jobs. And then we're saying, 14:48:51 now we're also going to give them, you know, a 14:48:54 bunch of kind of socialism -- social money, 14:48:58 right? We're going to give them extra money. 14:49:02 And we discussed that, but I don't see anywhere in 14:49:05 here any 14:49:10 sort of, you know, on the opposite side of things, 14:49:13 how are landlords penalized when they, you know, 14:49:16 don't follow these rules or 14:49:19 are overcharging rents 14:49:22 or -- sorry for the frog in my lit to throat. >> JUSTIN: 14:49:27 You're fine. It up for bringing that up, 14:49:30 Amber. This presentation was -- sorry. >> AMBER: 14:49:33 Sorry, say that again. >> JUSTIN: Oh, I was going 14:49:36 to say this presentation was specifically requested 14:49:40 to look at the landlord side of things. Like how can 14:49:43 we incentivize landlords themselves to keeping this 14:49:48 affordable. But I can absolutely do some research for the -- for what 14:49:51 your request is as well. >> AMBER: Right. I'm just -- you 14:49:54 know, I'm just saying that, you 14:49:57 know, that again 14:50:03 -- okay. So is this not a time for discussion? I'm 14:50:06 sorry. >> JUSTIN: No, it is. >> CHRISTIAN: 14:50:09 And one thing I would also point out, 14:50:13 Amber, is it -- the lack 14:50:17 of talking about the penalties doesn't mean they're not there. And 14:50:20 it is -- it was just more geared toward just 14:50:23 looking at what incentives would be out there. I think Vivien 14:50:27 actually originally brought this up one of let's see what options 14:50:30 there are. >> VIVIEN: I knew you were going to do 14:50:33 that, Christian. >> CHRISTIAN: At a high-level view. I want to point out this 14:50:37 wasn't like a landlord advocate going hey, we 14:50:39 need stuff. That was the other big point I wanted to point out. 14:50:43 One of the big main drivers of this, and Vivien, by all 14:50:46 means, do correct me if I'm wrong, but I also believe 14:50:49 it was more geared towards we would maybe come up with some creative 14:50:53 incentives in the City of Portland to 14:50:57 incentivize landlords that -- or reward landlords with 14:51:00 incentives that might keep their rents low. Or create a 14:51:03 low-income housing that makes -- they hold at a 14:51:06 level that 14:51:10 is affordable for certain tenants and they would 14:51:14 qualify for certain tenants since we're not able at the city level to say we 14:51:17 can set a hard increase limit for things like 14:51:20 that. I think it was to think creatively to go what if we 14:51:23 put something out there, here's a reward if you do keep your rents low 14:51:27 and you're not, you know, raising them -- just as an example. There 14:51:32 can be rewards for other stuff, such as developing more units in the price range or 14:51:35 whatever too. But is that at least fairly summarized kind of your 14:51:38 intention there, Vivien, I think? >> VIVIEN: 14:51:43 It does. It's, as you say, 14:51:47 it's a recognition of how our 14:51:50 hands are tied in various 14:51:53 ways and it is also 14:51:57 a response to concerns 14:52:00 about short-term rent assistance, 14:52:08 invent advising incentivizing landlords 14:52:11 to keep rents high. So finding other ways to incentivize landlords that 14:52:14 may still operate in some ways as a transfer 14:52:18 of wealth to them sort of through a 14:52:21 backdoor. But ultimately are 14:52:24 more of a carrot than a stick. I think 14:52:27 the long -- not to show my hand, but 14:52:31 the goal there overarchingly would 14:52:34 be to help 14:52:37 landlords understand and take a softer position 14:52:40 towards government intervention that, you know, it's not just tenants 14:52:43 getting help with this difficult situation. 14:52:48 Right? It's recognizing 14:52:51 that the fact that they're expected to jump through a 14:52:56 lot of hoops and they may not see the benefits to 14:52:59 them of doing so, this 14:53:04 would help them. Sorry about that. That this 14:53:07 would help them see some benefits. 14:53:11 >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Vivien. We have about two minutes left nor 14:53:13 discussion. I want to give it back over to Amber. 14:53:16 You had your hand up, 14:53:22 Amber. >> AMBER: It's -- sorry, 14:53:25 yeah, it sounds like the points that I'm interested in 14:53:29 making are not right for this point in time. 14:53:34 So... >> JUSTIN: And, you know, to your 14:53:37 point, Amber, I -- you know, this presentation was 14:53:40 geared more towards landlord incentives. But 14:53:44 I can do some 14:53:47 research for landlord penalization and make sure we have 14:53:50 research around that as well for our next meeting. >> AMBER: 14:53:54 Okay, yeah. I had, you know, just some 14:53:57 suggestions from the, you know, Pasadena work on rent 14:54:00 control that, you know, have been 14:54:04 passed and been working successfully. >> JUSTIN: I'll 14:54:07 take whatever leads you can give me, honestly, so thank you. 14:54:12 Ian. >> IAN: I think I'm going to hold if 14:54:15 we're going to follow up on the 14:54:18 discussion a little bit later. Thanks, Justin. >> JUSTIN: Absolutely. 14:54:22 Amber, wanted to check in with you on the chat before I move on to the next 14:54:30 presentation. >> AMBER: Sorry, it 14:54:33 looks like -- yeah, the only comment we had was 14:54:36 Laura agreeing to bring this up during discussion 14:54:39 time later in the meeting. >> JUSTIN: 14:54:43 Awesome. Thank you, Amber. All 14:54:46 righty. Well, I'll go ahead and turn the floor over to Ian 14:54:49 and Laura. I think you should have 14:54:52 access to share your screen. >> IAN: That sounds 14:54:56 great. Thanks, Justin. 14:54:59 Can folks see what Laura and I are 14:55:04 sharing? Awesome. Well, just by way of introduction, 14:55:07 you all know us but we also have other roles beyond individual members of 14:55:11 the rental services commission, so I'm a chief operating 14:55:14 office for Home Forward, the housing authority that 14:55:17 covers Multnomah County, and we 14:55:20 administer a lot of the bulk of the rent assistance for 14:55:23 Multnomah County. That informs my role here. Laura, do 14:55:27 you want to say hi real quick? >> LAURA: Hi, everyone. Yes, you 14:55:30 all know us but good to do an introduction. I'm the executive 14:55:33 director of northwest pilot project. We are 14:55:36 a nonprofit service provider organization. We don't 14:55:39 own or operate housing, we help low 14:55:43 income and very low income older adults to 14:55:46 find rental housing that they can 14:55:49 afford in Multnomah County. And we 14:55:53 utilize rent assistance from Section 14:55:57 8, from the straw program short-term rent 14:56:00 assistance program. We also piloted a locally funded 14:56:03 rent assistance program, you'll hear about that a little bit more. And we're 14:56:06 big advocates for rent assistance 14:56:09 as a vehicle for stabilizing 14:56:12 renters who are low income. 14:56:16 So thank you. 14:56:19 >> IAN: That's so lovely, Laura. What I like about what 14:56:23 Laura high lighted there, 14:56:27 we are a large organization and 14:56:30 Laura has that beautiful linkage around access, 14:56:33 supports, and the advocacy piece that Laura mentioned. 14:56:36 So hopefully it's well rounded in that regard. 14:56:39 Our goals to discuss long-term rent assistance and its role 14:56:42 in increasing housing access, affordability, and stability to members of 14:56:45 our community. A little bit of context. We discuss emergency 14:56:49 rent assistance for a very long time, I think earlier 14:56:52 in -- actually I guess last year. 14:56:55 And so as part of that conversation, a lot came up about 14:56:58 long-term rent assistance and what it looks like in our 14:57:01 community. And this presentation was trying to be responsive to 14:57:05 those desires. So 14:57:08 that's a good segue to what is rent 14:57:11 assistance? There are three-ish types. You're going 14:57:14 to always see this in different colors 14:57:17 and flavors, but the first is emergency rent assistance. That's 14:57:21 usually one time to -- to address some 14:57:25 sort of emergency, including usually a pending 14:57:28 eviction. And sometimes we 14:57:31 see that -- that alignment of financial resources with services 14:57:34 as well. Right? So either help substantialize 14:57:37 that household or make sure that they're still housed in 14:57:41 12 months, 24 months. We learned a lot about that, like I 14:57:44 said, last year. There is short-term 14:57:48 rent assistance in our community, we usually call 14:57:52 short-term rent assistance emergency rent assistance. 14:57:55 They're kind of interchangeable. Again, with different flavors, 14:57:58 right? So short-term in our community, the 14:58:02 straw program tends to have those retention services 14:58:05 aligned. What we also see, though, in terms of 14:58:10 short-term rent assistance is that program that might last six 14:58:13 months, maybe a year, might not be such a deep 14:58:17 subsidy, maybe a shallow subsidy, let's 14:58:20 say a fixed amount, $500, you would often see those 14:58:23 aligned way services or maybe 14:58:26 Catholic charities, et cetera. And that is also existing 14:58:29 within a continuum. And then sort of the other end of that 14:58:33 continuum is long-term rent 14:58:36 assistance. This tends to be permanent for as long as a household 14:58:39 needs, at least in our community. We don't really have time 14:58:43 restrictions. A lot of counties and states do. And the subsidy 14:58:46 goal there is to make the rent, use air quotes here, 14:58:51 affordable, around 30% of the household income. And we 14:58:55 can come back to that affordability piece and what that 14:58:59 actually means to practice. 14:59:02 So what practically then is long term rent 14:59:06 assistance? Two primary options in Multnomah County. 14:59:09 I want to talk about the first and then hand it to Laura to discuss 14:59:12 the second a bit more. The first is one that folks are probably 14:59:15 pretty familiar with, we have the Section 8 14:59:18 housing choice voucher program. Sect 8 14:59:23 of the 1937 housing act, later it was rebranded housing choice voucher, 14:59:27 the choice implying that folks can utilize the 14:59:31 resource to search anywhere in the community to find 14:59:34 housing. We know that that is 14:59:37 actually fairly limited sometimes due to geography, due 14:59:40 to the private market and the discussion that we were just 14:59:44 touching on around owners or landlords 14:59:48 using rent assistance in some of their housing. But that 14:59:51 is the emphasis of the program, at least as 14:59:55 intended by Congress over the past couple 14:59:59 decades. Through Home Forward, we have a few 15:00:02 different types of vouchers. By far, the 15:00:07 biggest pool is the housing choice voucher. Many 15:00:11 thousands of those that folks can use, again, anywhere 15:00:15 in community. Those are very broad, we'll talk a little bit about some 15:00:18 of the access points in a minute. In addition 15:00:22 to that are special purpose 15:00:25 vouchers. Those tend to be targeted toward a 15:00:28 certain population, and in that regard they're a lot more limited. 15:00:31 So you might 15:00:34 see VASH vouchers serving veterans. What we call FUP 15:00:38 vouchers, family unification programs serving foster youth and 15:00:41 foster families. Our mainstream vouchers serve 15:00:44 folks between 18 15:00:48 and 65 with disability or someone with disability in the household. So those are going to be 15:00:51 a lot more targeted and there tend to be fewer 15:00:54 overall. But we can often align those with a certain goal. 15:00:58 And then the third type is project-based vouchers. So 15:01:01 this sort of takes the choice out of the equation, but 15:01:04 replace today's with some degree of certainty, 15:01:07 right? Some elementtation we've seen 15:01:10 with 15:01:14 Housing Choice Vouchers is the implication is that they can be 15:01:18 utilized, but some folks aren't able to lease up. Our rate of 15:01:21 success is about 80% in 15:01:26 Multnomah County. Many communities it's closer to 15:01:30 50. That means after people have been on a waitlist, there's another one 15:01:33 that receives a voucher and can't actually use it. That's one of the 15:01:36 limitations. About when you project base a voucher, that means it 15:01:39 sort of lives in a property, usually 15:01:43 with ten to 20 to sometimes as many as 15:01:46 40 other vouchers, and is more akin to sort of the old model of 15:01:49 public housing in terms of how it operates. Bit 15:01:53 more flexible. And we'll get some numbers on these in a 15:01:56 second. For now, Laura, why don't 15:02:00 you talk about 15:02:07 RLRA. 15:02:11 >> LAURA: Thank you so much. In 15:02:14 2020, the high-income earner tax was passed in the metro 15:02:17 area, the metro geographical area that covers 15:02:22 Clackamas, Multnomah, part of 15:02:26 Washington County 15:02:32 was a high-income earner tax and targeted 15:02:35 specifically for addressing housing of chronically homeless folks. And 15:02:38 one of the goals 15:02:42 was to create a regional long-term rent 15:02:45 assistance program that would take that local funding 15:02:48 and create a 15:02:52 program that could be used locally and controlled 15:02:55 locally. That was done. It's called the regional long-term 15:02:58 rent assistance program. The program itself 15:03:01 is overseen by metro. But the money that's 15:03:06 collected goes to -- is collected in each of the three 15:03:10 counties and stays in the three counties. And then each 15:03:14 county decides how 15:03:17 that RLRA money is going to be used. Right now 15:03:21 the vouchers work within 15:03:25 each county. And each county 15:03:29 determines how many vouchers, how they will 15:03:32 distribute them, and what, 15:03:36 if any, there are priority populations. 15:03:39 The idea with the vouchers was that 15:03:42 local control of the program would give us 15:03:48 the opportunity to recognize that folks 15:03:51 who need to move into housing that's more affordable, people who 15:03:55 are homeless and have an opportunity to move into housing aren't 15:03:58 really paying attention to the geographical 15:04:01 boundaries, so if we had someone in 15:04:05 Multnomah County who was willing to move to 15:04:08 Clackamas County and could get a voucher there to 15:04:11 subsidize their rent, that could 15:04:14 be done through portability. That's actually an interesting 15:04:19 aspect of this program that's not been 15:04:22 fully addressed. But it has 15:04:26 the potential to make the vouchers more 15:04:30 accessible to people by looking at how 15:04:33 voucher allocation can 15:04:36 -- can work among the three 15:04:39 county areas. These regional long-term rent assistance 15:04:43 vouchers are both housing choice, just as Ian 15:04:47 described, with the federal vouchers. And we use the 15:04:51 same language because it's easy. So recipient can choose their 15:04:56 housing. And they're also project based. So some of the regional 15:05:00 long-term rent assistance vouchers have already been used in some 15:05:04 of the projects, the housing construction projects 15:05:07 funded by either the City of Portland 15:05:10 housing construction bond or the metro housing construction 15:05:13 bond, which was also something that was identified as 15:05:17 a goal for these 15:05:20 vouchers. The vouchers are administered either 15:05:23 by the housing authority in each of the three 15:05:26 counties, or in this 15:05:30 case in Multnomah County, the option 15:05:33 was given to service providers to 15:05:37 do their own administration of the vouchers. And so that 15:05:40 was something that was new and some service 15:05:43 providers opted for 15:05:47 that. And that, apparently, is working 15:05:51 pretty well. The housing authorities are 15:05:54 the first natural choice for administration of these vouchers 15:05:57 because that's what housing authorities are 15:06:00 already doing. Currently, the focus of the 15:06:04 vouchers is to pair them with support services for 15:06:09 chronically homeless households through the development of permanent supportive 15:06:12 housing program or program modeled after this. 15:06:16 That's because the supportive housing services measure identifies 15:06:20 that 75% of the tax money raised should be 15:06:23 spent on 15:06:26 chronically homeless folks. This made 15:06:29 a natural connection, chronically 15:06:32 homeless individuals, households, usually are in need of rent 15:06:35 assistance to support their move into housing. So this 15:06:38 voucher pairs really, really 15:06:41 well with those households who also need permanent supportive 15:06:46 housing. Ian, I'll hand it back to you. >> IAN: Thanks, 15:06:49 Laura. I'll just say that last part is unique. 15:06:53 That does not exist in the federal program where there's 15:06:56 a direct alignment of services. Frankly, it doesn't exist 15:06:59 in most of the country, right? When I'm talking to 15:07:02 other housing authority folks about, 15:07:05 you know, the troubles of some of the 15:07:09 voucher types, they do not have the resources that we have in 15:07:12 our community. And yet we see even those might not be enough, 15:07:15 right, for some of the need that we're seeing. Let's 15:07:19 talk a little bit about 15:07:22 numbers. So in Multnomah County, this is 15:07:25 pretty much the universe of 15:07:28 Section 8 or housing choice 15:07:32 or long term rent-assistance vouchers. I mentioned the 15:07:35 primary federal resource, the housing choice voucher program. 15:07:38 Within that -- so we're currently administering a little 15:07:41 over 7,000 of those, and I 15:07:44 highlighted that those can be the 15:07:51 Housing Choice Vouchers or pro 15:08:03 project-based vouchers. You can see it 15:08:06 there. In 2016 we packaged the number of 15:08:12 vouchers into Portland Housing Bureau notice of funding availabilities 15:08:16 with capital dollars, so then, you know, there 15:08:19 was capital construction that happened 15:08:22 along with the deep affordability of a voucher. We did that also with 15:08:25 the Portland housing bond and with the metro bond. We have 15:08:29 probably put upwards of 1500 vouchers into the 15:08:32 system of the almost 2,400 that you 15:08:36 see on this slide in the past five to 15:08:40 ten years. We have all those special purpose vouchers I 15:08:44 mentioned, VASH, FUP, mainstream 15:08:47 vouchers, and emergency housing 15:08:51 vouchers. And we have had a lot of success in our 15:08:55 community because when HUD says -- when the 15:08:58 federal department of housing and urban development says we have this opportunity, show us that you can 15:09:01 do this work and you have supports for it, we're able to 15:09:04 say, wow, look at this great service alignment that exists 15:09:08 locally. Look at this collaboration we've 15:09:12 done with our systems of care within the community, that helps us out. And then 15:09:16 Laura talked about the regional 15:09:19 long term assistance vouchers. We're currently budgeted at 15:09:24 838. It was hard to you will. 15:09:27 Data on how many are being used right now because 15:09:31 Multnomah County does administer all of those. Some of 15:09:34 them service providers administer and some of 15:09:37 those are directly administered on 15:09:40 sites in sort of project-based context. >> LAURA: I'll just add to 15:09:43 that, that because 15:09:47 the SHS funded programs including the vouchers and 15:09:50 the pairing with the permanent 15:09:53 supportive housing programs, because that first year took 15:09:56 a little while to launch, I think we're 15:09:59 behind the target number that we would have liked to 15:10:04 see with the RLRA vouchers, as well as knowing 15:10:08 that there are more voucher opportunities coming soon. So I 15:10:11 think we should see that number 15:10:16 increase. >> IAN: Yeah, I 15:10:19 agree. If folks have any questions or anything, just reminder, please hands 15:10:22 up or just unmute and chime in. Let's talk 15:10:25 about access for a second. So I'll 15:10:28 talk a little bit about some of the Home Forward aligned 15:10:32 access points. Everybody is familiar with the wait list if the is not 15:10:35 a perfect access point. 15:10:38 First of all, there is just way too much 15:10:42 need. So generally we open a waitlist of 2000 15:10:46 to 3,000. In 2016, you can see from 15:10:49 the slide 15:10:53 16,797 households applied. And then a 15:10:57 randomized process occurred to choose 3,000 folks 15:11:02 to be on the waitlist. We will probably exhaust that 15:11:05 waitlist, meaningfully pull all the households from that 15:11:09 waitlist in the fall of this year. So seven years 15:11:12 for 3,000 households is a very long wait, and that didn't even meet 15:11:15 -- there's more than five times that amount of need for that 15:11:20 waitlist. We also have set asides where we sort of align vouchers 15:11:23 with a specific effort. So for 15:11:26 example, number of years ago we aligned 200 vouchers with the 15:11:29 homeless family system of care, seeing there were some gaps 15:11:33 in terms of the ability to house folks. We've also done that with veterans 15:11:36 that are not eligible for the VASH voucher 15:11:40 because of discharge status or another VA-related issue. We 15:11:44 had a great collaboration with northwest pilot 15:11:49 project to house seniors in place that we maintained 15:11:52 over time. We also have a statutory requirement. 15:11:56 Sometimes there's a legal requirement to 15:11:59 use a certain referral mechanism for the 15:12:02 vouchers. And then we also have one that is fairly new 15:12:05 where folks can transfer from what used to be public 15:12:08 housing into a voucher resource. 15:12:11 So that of allows folks to go from 15:12:15 housing that might have a deeper level of care 15:12:18 in terms of service 15:12:25 alignments or on-site presence for something 15:12:28 that might work better for them. That might include a 15:12:32 tenant-based option in private market. 15:12:35 Laura, I'll pass to you for the 15:12:39 next slide. >> LAURA: Great. Justin, I see 15:12:42 that Lisa has 15:12:45 a question. Do you want to -- 15:12:48 how do you want to do 15:12:52 that? >> JUSTIN: Sorry, I was logging back on. 15:12:55 Give me one second here. I believe this 15:13:00 is only time for Commissioners to speak, so unfortunately 15:13:03 we can't take questions or comments from the public until 15:13:06 it's time for public testimony. >> LAURA: Okay, thank you. All 15:13:10 right. So thanks, 15:13:14 Ian. And on the 15:13:17 local -- local landscape access in 15:13:20 Multnomah County, I'm going to talk about 15:13:23 Multnomah County because that's what I know best, but I'll also highlight a 15:13:27 little bit about what Clackamas and 15:13:30 Washington County do. So in Multnomah 15:13:33 County, if you are looking for 15:13:37 rent assistance, 15:13:40 it 15:13:43 starts by 15:13:48 who -- the priority population, population A in the supporting 15:13:50 housing services program, not to get too granular, but 15:13:54 you'll hear that a lot and it's worth knowing. 15:13:57 Population A is the 15:14:00 population of chronically homeless 15:14:04 households or individuals who are in need 15:14:08 of permanent supportive housing. They also have one 15:14:13 or more zalg ally 15:14:18 disabling conditions. And they meet the HUD 15:14:21 qualifications the also within any HUD-funded area or 15:14:25 continuum of care, there is a coordinated access list that is 15:14:32 created to prioritize individuals who are homeless, chronically homeless, 15:14:36 based on a scoring criteria. And we won't get 15:14:39 into that, but that 15:14:42 identifies a priority population. The joint office is 15:14:46 like the 15:14:49 funnel for the -- both the SHS 15:14:53 funding and the creation and management of the 15:14:56 coordinated access list. And they 15:14:59 fund organizations like pilot 15:15:03 project and many others in the county to 15:15:06 provide supportive housing services 15:15:11 programs. So organizations will get 15:15:14 funded to 15:15:17 administer permanent supportive housing program that 15:15:21 offers those support services in partnership with a 15:15:24 voucher. So you can't just call 15:15:28 211 and say, I want a voucher. You can't walk 15:15:31 in to TPI or pilot project and say, I would like 15:15:34 a long-term rent assistance voucher. You actually 15:15:37 need to be participating through a 15:15:41 prioritization process in a permanent supportive housing 15:15:44 program. We think that's going to change 15:15:47 soon because there is additional 15:15:52 money that may be available for vouchers. But right now that is the way 15:15:55 that it works. So if you are an 15:15:58 older adult, age 55 and over, you may 15:16:02 be referred to pilot project to be enrolled in our permanent 15:16:05 supportive housing program for adults. You may be referred to 15:16:08 TPI or Central City concern 15:16:11 or another organization that has a supportive housing 15:16:15 program. And with those services, you 15:16:18 will also get a 15:16:21 voucher. There are -- and again, this 15:16:26 focus is on permanent supportive housing, 15:16:29 chronically homeless individuals and 15:16:33 households. There are also referrals 15:16:36 that the department of Multnomah County department 15:16:39 of county human services does 15:16:43 for vouchers, because they act as Multnomah 15:16:47 County's community action agency. And 15:16:50 the community action agencies are also 15:16:53 funded with SHS funding, supportive 15:16:57 housing services funding, that provides 15:17:00 long-term vouchers for 15:17:05 families. In Clackamas 15:17:09 and Washington Countys, the 15:17:12 rental 15:17:16 vouchers, RLRA program are also administered either through 15:17:19 the county housing authority, or 15:17:22 through service providers directly, also using a 15:17:26 prioritization process. 15:17:31 Ian, back to you. 15:17:37 >> IAN: Thanks, Laura. Laura sort of highlighted -- I guess 15:17:40 we both sort of highlighted that access is limited, right? This is going to be the 15:17:43 case, it's sort of a function of a shortage 15:17:47 in the resource. So what that currently looks like 15:17:50 is a big waitlist for project-based vouchers 15:17:53 maybe a property-based waitlist. 15:17:57 And for coordinated entry, a need to demonstrate a 15:18:01 high level of vulnerability, acuity or 15:18:04 need. And what is our indicator of who is accessing 15:18:07 housing 15:18:11 and these resource there's is what I'm often looking 15:18:14 at are these demographics. So what you see here is 15:18:17 two primary columns. The column on the left is what 15:18:22 most of the resources and 15:18:29 vouch vouchers in Home Forward 15:18:34 look like. On the left it's the household until poverty in 15:18:36 Multnomah County. It's an indicator for us of where the need might be. 15:18:40 I like this a lot more than just the overall population in 15:18:43 Multnomah County, because you know, that only demonstrates 15:18:46 what need might be include 15:18:49 very wealthy people or other folks who don't need access to this. So 15:18:53 when we look at this, the three populations 15:18:57 I tend to cue in on are the populations that are experiencing homelessness at 15:19:02 higher rates. For Black and African-American 15:19:07 households, we serve -- 15:19:11 they comprise 15:19:16 about 37% of the voucher program. For Hispanic and 15:19:19 Latinx households, we have 9% and they appear on 15:19:23 poverty at 20%. You see a negative disparity in 15:19:26 terms of our ability to serve that population. And then if you 15:19:30 look at Native American population for Indigenous folks we serve at 15:19:33 about 6% to the 15:19:37 voucher program and that group appears in the population at about 2%. So we are 15:19:40 overserving that 15:19:45 population. We also take a look at the split between 15:19:49 households with children and folks with 15:19:52 disabilities. These are sort of two 15:19:55 imperfect buckets of populations that we 15:19:58 are often giving thought to. And I will say you can see from 15:20:01 this that we serve folks with disabilities at 15:20:04 about 59%. And then either households with kids or 15:20:09 households that are, quote, work focused are 15:20:12 closer to 40%, right? So that is 15:20:17 about two-thirds -- well, I guess about 15:20:21 60% folks with needs often living in certain type of housing versus 15:20:25 40% of folks that might be more self-sufficient or not 15:20:28 be on a fixed income. And I will say that 15:20:31 is a trend that has shifted in our community, right? It 15:20:34 probably used to be closer to 50/50. As we 15:20:37 have seen the need and more of the resources shift 15:20:40 toward an aging population, 15:20:46 we have seen construction matching that. More 15:20:49 studios, more SROs, more one bedroom. When we 15:20:53 allocate efforts to those, we see 15:20:56 that shift. That is something that I don't have a deep commentary on, but I'm 15:20:59 always mindful of as something to keep our eye on 15:21:03 over long term. And then down below you can 15:21:07 see gender. Not surprising that 15:21:11 we overserve a population where the head of household is headed by women. 15:21:14 That is also a function of how our 15:21:18 poverty and child care systems, unfortunately, work in this 15:21:21 country. You will see we have a nonbinary gender 15:21:25 marker X option. Which is not captured in federal census 15:21:29 data that we implemented I think in 2015 after the state law 15:21:32 passage, and you can see that's at about 1% at least in terms 15:21:35 of who's identifying. >> JUSTIN: 15:21:38 Ian, just real quick, we have about four minutes more the presentation, to keep 15:21:42 us on track. >> IAN: Thanks, Justin. I'll be 15:21:46 quick here. This is just what folks do when they receive a 15:21:50 voucher, pulled from that waitlist. 15:21:53 A household receives an actual physical 15:21:56 voucher, and that indicates based on your household 15:22:00 composition, here's what you are able to 15:22:03 rent. Like here's the payment standard that 15:22:06 indicates what your owner or the landlord should charge in 15:22:09 rent. Family does a housing search, finds a 15:22:12 unit, we do an inspection, and 15:22:15 then the household pays their portion of the rent that 15:22:18 is approximately 30% of their 15:22:22 income. And then the 15:22:25 housing authority pays the rest of the 15:22:28 rent. Now, I will say that this affordability, this is why 15:22:31 I put in air quotes earlier, is not 15:22:35 guaranteed. If a landlord charges 15:22:38 above the payment standard, the household has to pay 15:22:42 this difference in addition to 30% of their income. This is sort 15:22:45 of a problem in some ports of the voucher program. 15:22:48 I will say when we built the regional long term assistance 15:22:51 program that Laura was talking about, we removed that 15:22:54 expectation because we knew that it just rent burdened 15:22:57 families and households. That is still a function of the 15:23:01 federal program for reasons we can get into the weeds about 15:23:04 some other time. Okay. So then what is the cost of a 15:23:07 voucher in our 15:23:10 community? Some pretty high-level numbers 15:23:12 here. This sort of shows a trend over time. 15:23:17 The blue line is households with children. Those tend to be more expensive. 15:23:22 Those are bigger households 15:23:25 that need more bedroom sizes. You see this is 15:23:28 only the cost of the subsidy that we pay, right? Not the full 15:23:31 cost of the rent. So the cost of the subsidy that the housing 15:23:34 authority pays is about $1,300 for families with 15:23:37 kids. For work focused households that don't have 15:23:41 kids in the household that are earning substantial 15:23:44 income, you'll see a lower amount because their 15:23:47 income is contributing to the rent a lot more. So the 15:23:50 subsidy is lower for housing authority. And then certainly 15:23:54 for the orange line for seniors, folks with disabilities, 15:23:57 we also see that being lower generally because 15:24:00 there's both fixed income, so a source of income that the 15:24:03 household is contributing, but 15:24:07 also those tend to be smaller units. The studios and the one 15:24:11 bedrooms. And you see those trend lines are all up over time, 15:24:14 which shouldn't be surprising. I wasn't able to 15:24:17 pull in '14, '15, and 15:24:20 '16. I think if you see that you'll see we've 15:24:24 stabilized a bit. It was more of a 15:24:27 steep climb and climbed up less dramatically in the past few years. 15:24:30 This is the part 15:24:33 where I start 15:24:36 sprinting through. Policy considerations. Rent burden. 15:24:41 Laura talked about the supports renters may or may not 15:24:45 have. We talked about landlord supports. We have an owner 15:24:48 services team that's trying to respond to owner need, and often that is what 15:24:51 can restabilize a household within a 15:24:56 tenancy. We've talked about service where they 15:25:00 do or don't exist a bit. That choice 15:25:03 versus certainty dichotomy that I highlighted up front between the 15:25:08 tenant-base program and 15:25:12 project-based program. And then are households able to use the voucher. 15:25:15 Over the past five years or so, we've implemented a lot of 15:25:18 reforms given those policy areas. So 15:25:22 we are reducing the 15:25:25 reasons that a voucher can be 15:25:29 terminated so that there are fewer terminations and less racial 15:25:32 disparities in terms of those terminations. There is an 15:25:37 icky federal requirement that for ineligible noncitizens they pay 15:25:40 an additional fee. 15:25:44 We reduced that down to $1. And then removed it from the rent 15:25:48 assistance program when we built that one out. Also saw that there 15:25:51 were minimum rent floors that existed in our 15:25:54 program that were problematic. We removed 15:25:58 those. And during 2021, due to the pandemic, we actually paused 15:26:01 rent increases in the voucher program because we saw that the disparities in 15:26:04 terms of who had rent increases and the amount of 15:26:07 rent increases broke down along race, gender, 15:26:10 and existence of kids in the household, and that was 15:26:14 problematic. And then we're also always trying to do work 15:26:18 around keeping the rent affordable, so we have a built-in program that looks 15:26:23 at the rent stabilization increase amounts and makes sure that those 15:26:27 are being complied with. And then we're always trying to reduce barriers to 15:26:30 access. We want tend to on an advocacy piece. 15:26:33 I'm going to hand to to Laura how long 15:26:36 term rent assistance came to be and why it's such 15:26:39 a potent tool in our local 15:26:42 arsenal. >> LAURA: Thanks, Ian. I think I 15:26:46 mentioned that we had utilized 15:26:49 rent vouchers, and they're very important. 15:26:53 My light colleague 15:26:56 Bobi Winestock who was a long time advocate for 15:26:59 homeless folks, I worked for pilot project for almost 35 15:27:04 years, he worked for Burnside project way, way, back in the 15:27:07 day, and he was a genuinely 15:27:10 compassionate person who really felt that rent 15:27:14 vouchers locally controlled, 15:27:17 locally funded were incredibly 15:27:20 important. In 2017 and '18, he and I 15:27:24 advocated with the office of homeless services to fund a teeny 15:27:27 tiny pilot with 45 vouchers. We launched 15:27:30 that pilot 15:27:33 in 15:27:37 2019. In 2019/2020, we 15:27:41 advocated for expansion, and increasing the 15:27:44 pilot. It did so, it increased 15:27:47 up to about 72 vouchers. Then when the 15:27:50 supportive housing 15:27:53 services measure passed, we knew that that was 15:27:57 the opportunity to take our long-term rent assistance model 15:28:00 that we had piloted 15:28:03 and turn that into a long-term 15:28:07 funded program that would reach a broader 15:28:11 audience. And as I said earlier, the long-term rent 15:28:15 assistance program served for -- as a model 15:28:18 for the regional long-term rent assistance 15:28:21 program. As Ian referenced, part of why it was 15:28:24 so powerful is it really demonstrated that it 15:28:28 could be done, it could be done well, it could be scaled 15:28:31 up, it could eliminate a lot of 15:28:34 the red tape and discriminatory rules 15:28:37 that exist in the federal voucher 15:28:40 program, and we are learning 15:28:44 more every day about how to 15:28:48 improve our RLRA program, including with the portability. 15:28:51 And we need to 15:28:54 continue to push the envelope 15:28:57 around that advocacy and we have 15:29:01 the opportunity to work with our new 15:29:04 Governor to look at a 15:29:08 potential statewide rent assistance program 15:29:13 modeled on our RLRA and 15:29:16 LRA program and a state assistance project that's providing 15:29:20 long-term rent vouchers for youth. Ian, you want to wrap 15:29:23 us up? >> IAN: That sounds great. I think that's such a lovely 15:29:26 demonstration of even in the past five years how we've 15:29:29 looked at the need and responded and 15:29:32 expanded. And yet, we know there's so much more, right, for every 15:29:36 household that gets a voucher, there are at least four that do 15:29:39 not. But that have that need. And that's why, you know, 15:29:42 wee need to make sure we're doing all the sort process and 15:29:45 program improvement we've talked about here, but frankly just increase the 15:29:48 access overall. That's our 15:29:51 presentation. Laura, I think you're going to help us out 15:29:55 with some facilitation. Justin, let us know if there's 15:29:58 anything else we should insert at this 15:30:00 point. >> JUSTIN: Thank you both. That was amazing. 15:30:07 Very informative. And, you know, it is time for some conversation 15:30:10 and discussion. So Laura, 15:30:15 it looks like you're doing that, 15:30:18 so I can turn it over to you. >> LAURA: I want to say thanks for 15:30:21 Ian for doing the big lift on putting that 15:30:25 presentation together. And it really just scratches the surface 15:30:28 of long term rent assistance. So thanks, 15:30:32 Ian. And I also want to encourage all of you, 15:30:35 because it's 3:30 and we're going till 15:30:38 5:00 p.m., please take care of yourselves, take 15:30:41 a break, bio 15:30:44 break, coffee break, beverage break, walk around, 15:30:47 stretch, all of that. I think we can multitask and do 15:30:51 that, but please don't forget to take care of 15:30:54 yourselves. So I just wanted to bring us 15:30:57 back, our agenda item is 15:31:01 really about 15:31:04 coming back to our 15:31:07 paired work plan topic of the 15:31:13 14.6% rent increase and long-term rent -- long-term 15:31:16 rent assistance continued. And -- 15:31:19 and where we go with that specifically as 15:31:23 a work plan item on 15:31:26 what recommendation and Christian referenced this a 15:31:30 little bit earlier, but what recommendations do we 15:31:33 want to bring 15:31:37 to City Council and/or 15:31:41 additional information to present 15:31:44 to them about actions that can be 15:31:48 taken within the parameters of what Justin shared with 15:31:54 us around the rent 15:31:57 limit -- rent increase limitations that we have and also 15:32:00 what we heard long-term rent assistance. And 15:32:03 Matthew, I see that your hand is up, so I'll just 15:32:07 start with 15:32:13 you. >> MATTHEW: Is 15:32:17 it appropriate to ask a question now? I don't know if this was a time or 15:32:19 I should ask you offline. >> LAURA: Go for it, because I think that 15:32:23 will inform our 15:32:27 conversation. Thank you. >> MATTHEW: It struck me, and I'm sure 15:32:30 everyone else there is well known how the need far outstrips the 15:32:33 ability to provide vouchers by a factor of more than 10 15:32:37 to 1, at least, you know. And so I was wondering if 15:32:40 in your experience administering this you've 15:32:43 seen people move off of the vouchers and kind of give them up for other 15:32:47 people to use. That's one of the -- when 15:32:50 I was working for the housing authority, once people were in the 15:32:53 housing authority system, they didn't leave. 15:32:56 Like, they were there for life, 15:33:00 which meant that in most cases, so that meant 15:33:03 that you were 15:33:07 never freeing 15:33:10 up that space 15:33:15 for someone else to use at that 15:33:17 point. You would be there until you were old and your kids would get it, they would 15:33:20 inherit it. I was wondering if you see people move off or if they stay there for life 15:33:23 in the time that you've been administering this. >> IAN: Really 15:33:25 good question. I'm going to think about how best to answer that. 15:33:29 The first thing I'll say is we see correlations between length of tenancy 15:33:32 with the voucher and overall housing 15:33:36 stability. So in that regard, right, the length of 15:33:40 time that someone, a household's on a voucher we view as a 15:33:43 good thing the longer that is, because it generally means longer 15:33:47 affordability and stability for that 15:33:50 household. We 15:33:53 also see that some of the 15:33:56 communities where there have been term limits or time 15:33:59 limits put in place 15:34:02 that folks are not just sort of 15:34:05 naturally able to -- to jump to 15:34:08 sustainability and afford the rent, right? And so folks often 15:34:12 fall back into homelessness or 15:34:15 housing instability. And we actually see linkages 15:34:18 with other systems of care, right, the 15:34:21 rehousing system of care, the homelessness system 15:34:24 of care. So the short answer is, no, not in 15:34:28 terms of our programs in Multnomah County. We 15:34:31 do take a close look at the data. We know 15:34:34 that about two-thirds of departures from the program are positive 15:34:37 exits, which includes death. So 15:34:40 in this regard, someone dying with 15:34:43 stable housing is a positive outcome rather than that person 15:34:47 dying on the street or otherwise losing that 15:34:50 affordability while they're still alive. 15:34:54 I always just try to reframe it as sort of a 15:34:57 quality over quantity. We are always going to be limited in terms of the 15:35:00 resource, so what can we do to build the resource and 15:35:03 give folks the resource to the best of their ability or 15:35:06 need to use it? And then over here 15:35:10 do the push for more of that resource. The 15:35:14 money -- I mean, this may not be political for me to say, but the money is out 15:35:17 there, it's just a question of whether we have the political will to use 15:35:22 it for the right outcomes. >> LAURA: And I'll just 15:35:25 add, thank you, Ian, that last point was really good. I'll just 15:35:28 add, Matthew, that in our initial 15:35:31 long-term rent assistance pilot that we launched, 15:35:35 was very small. And because of the population 15:35:38 of older adults that we -- that we deal 15:35:41 with, we specifically when we reached out to Home Forward 15:35:44 and the joint 15:35:49 office to dejoin join 15:35:54 that program, it was not specifically for 15:35:57 seniors, it was anyone. But when a voucher 15:36:00 was no longer being utilized, when a client passed away, they had 15:36:05 gotten a job or moved out of the area, that the voucher remained available for 15:36:10 reallocation. And that's been how that -- so the LRA 15:36:15 program, this little tiny program just in Multnomah County, it still exists sort of over 15:36:18 here. And now we've got the RLRA program and then the HUD 15:36:23 program. But the RLRA program 15:36:27 is modeled in that same way so that, yes, 15:36:30 we want to use that resource to keep people in housing for as 15:36:33 long as they need it. And some people will need it 15:36:37 forever. But with the paired case 15:36:40 management, whether or not the person is 15:36:43 a permanent supportive 15:36:46 housing recipient or just getting case management in 15:36:49 a voucher, if there's the opportunity for 15:36:53 them to move away from utilization of that 15:36:56 voucher, that's certainly 15:37:00 something that is 15:37:03 addressed. But the idea was to both 15:37:06 grow the pool and grow 15:37:09 access as people, you know, passed away or didn't need the voucher 15:37:15 anymore. >> MATTHEW: Thank you. >> LAURA: Yeah. 15:37:44 Allen. >> ALLEN: Ian was talking about the 15:37:47 longer someone was in the rent assistance program the more successful 15:37:52 they 15:37:57 are. Made me think 15:38:00 about the short-term rental assistance 15:38:25 program. That there wasn't any data -- oh, sorry. 15:38:28 I'm wondering if there's any data 15:38:31 about the outcomes -- sorry. 15:38:37 For those people after they've -- 15:38:41 after a few 15:38:46 years. And what that means for your 15:38:52 program. >> IAN: Wow, what a beautiful 15:38:56 question. The short answer is yes and no. Let's go 15:38:59 along the continuum. The rent assistance 15:39:02 program we saw in the last three years, most of it, 15:39:06 no. That was give people money during a pandemic in 15:39:09 a triage situation. 15:39:13 Short-term assistance we administered with now 15:39:16 upwards of 40 community-based providers, yes. For half of 15:39:19 those we do have an expectation of tracking 15:39:23 retention over a year and longer. And we know that that retention 15:39:26 rate is about 90%. So in that regard, 15:39:30 we know, gosh, that emergency assistance is 15:39:33 working to keep households stabilized. In terms of 15:39:36 that resource I talked about that's sort of in the middle, right, 15:39:39 for six months for some sort of rapid rehousing 15:39:42 or for 12 months, we don't have great data 15:39:45 there. But I will say the housing authority had some pretty 15:39:49 anecdotal data in that, you know, we have 15:39:54 many buildings that are aligned with 15:39:58 some of the access systems that 15:40:02 Laura and I talked about. So we see folks coming into the housing with 15:40:05 that limited-term rent assistance that then ends after a year 15:40:08 or so. This is not subsidized housing, so 15:40:11 folks then suddenly have to pay the full amount of rent. And 15:40:16 combine that, Allen, with the ways that we have 15:40:20 prioritized access throughout our entire system for 15:40:23 particularly vulnerable folks, 15:40:26 means you have incredibly vulnerable households 15:40:30 that suddenly have no more assistance to pay the rent. And 15:40:33 what we're seeing is that there are tough 15:40:36 outcomes based on that, right? 15:40:40 At communities that we own and operate and 15:40:44 other providers and others that you can imagine. So 15:40:47 that limited duration rent assistance is solving a short to 15:40:50 mid-term problem, and then potentially resulting in some 15:40:54 other down-the-road problems that we're struggling to 15:40:57 consider right now. Really good question and 15:41:01 overall the data is super 15:41:05 mixed on our ability to assess it. >> ALLEN: 15:41:08 Great. Thank you. >> LAURA: 15:41:14 Thanks, Allen. Kristina. You're 15:41:17 muted. >> KRISTINA: I always do that. Thank you so much. 15:41:20 I just had some, I guess some information to share with Matthew 15:41:24 around his question. I 15:41:27 also wanted to just add a little bit of information, and then 15:41:30 I had some ideas to your question, Laura, about 15:41:34 how to tie that back to the work plan. So bear 15:41:39 with me. 15:41:42 I work for the 15:41:46 Joint Office of Homeless Services and we're seeing the need that you're describing, Matthew, like folks being 15:41:49 ready to move on from those permanent placements. There is some work 15:41:52 happening right now to create programs to support folks 15:41:55 in doing that successfully. So there will be some 15:41:58 programs rolling out here in the next month or so that will be 15:42:02 targeted to exactly what you're talking about. And 15:42:06 then that will, in theory, free up those vouchers for other 15:42:09 folks to use 15:42:14 them. I also just wanted to share it that each county in the try 15:42:23 tri-county created a plan so if anyone wanted to dive 15:42:26 in and get more information, that's easily accessible 15:42:30 for how each county plans to roll out those 15:42:33 vouchers. I really appreciated the 15:42:37 disaggregated data, because one of the goals of the SHS 15:42:41 measure was to reduce the racial disparities 15:42:45 that exist in folks that are experiencing 15:42:49 homelessness. So a lot of the programs or the vouchers that we roll out will 15:42:52 often be for priority 15:42:58 populations. And then the other thing, I was thinking 15:43:02 about the landlord incentive piece of the presentation, something 15:43:06 that comes with the RLRA vouchers is a program called risk 15:43:09 mitigation. So if, for example, like damage happens 15:43:12 to a unit, there is, like, a pot of 15:43:16 funding that landlords can access to, like, take care 15:43:20 of that need. So kind of taking this back 15:43:23 to the work plan, I guess, that feels like the best path. 15:43:26 I know like regional long-term rent assistance doesn't always 15:43:29 come with -- like doesn't come with security deposit 15:43:32 funding. So maybe there are ways to make some recommendations on some of 15:43:36 those landlord incentives for the community 15:43:39 to just sort of help, you know, bring more 15:43:42 opportunities into the 15:43:45 mix. So that was a lot. Thank you for the space. 15:43:49 Just wanted to share those thoughts. >> LAURA: Awesome, Kristina. 15:43:53 And I think really, really good points to add into our 15:43:57 discussion. I will say too that in 15:44:00 addition to 15:44:06 the -- the risk mitigation pool, the joint 15:44:09 office also provides client assistance funds, which are very flexible 15:44:13 which can also be paired with the rent assistance 15:44:16 dollars to cover application fees, 15:44:20 moving costs, and security 15:44:23 deposit. So I think stream -- I think that's a really good 15:44:27 point that you made, though, because as we look at 15:44:30 how can we use all of those 15:44:34 funds better to really sort of leverage 15:44:37 the rent 15:44:41 assistance. So 15:44:44 really great questions, everyone, 15:44:47 and we'll dive back in to the specific ways 15:44:51 that we want, you know, 15:44:54 focusing and my -- I'm looking at my role here 15:44:57 to help us stay focused on 15:45:00 our work plan deliverable is some sort of work 15:45:07 product with a report or 15:45:10 a letter or something to 15:45:15 City Council to say these shall the things that the city needs 15:45:18 to take action on to address 15:45:21 increasing rents or putting' rent cap or some 15:45:24 sort of incentive for landlords to not 15:45:27 raise the rent and leveraging rent assistance 15:45:30 to stabilize folks. So 15:45:35 what other thoughts do people have about 15:45:38 the actions that we could take based on 15:45:41 the presentations that Ian 15:45:46 Andy and -- and I did and also the one that 15:45:49 Justin did in any other 15:45:55 15:46:01 thoughts specific "SNL" thankthoughts specific "SNL" thank specifically. Anybody have any suggestions about 15:46:05 how we might 15:46:08 recommend to the City Council things that they could do? Like 15:46:13 perhaps the city could create a local landlord 15:46:16 incentive 15:46:21 program. How do we leverage the housing needs 15:46:24 analysis that's going to come out of 15:46:27 HB 2,100? How do we 15:46:32 advocate with the city to advocate with the county to 15:46:36 get the joint 15:46:44 office to release more RLRA 15:46:49 funding or with metro to release more RLRA 15:46:52 funding. Regina. >> REGINA: Sorry, my Internet keeps 15:46:55 going in and out, I got disconnected once -- hopefully -- 15:46:59 if I 15:47:02 disappear, I apologize. It's -- 15:47:05 I don't really have, like this -- I 15:47:09 didn't just -- I think 15:47:13 just more -- more -- I hold the city with any 15:47:17 kind of mitigation measures 15:47:22 like risk mitigation I think is excellent. I think it still gets 15:47:25 underutilized all the time. But 15:47:30 rent well and making sure that people are aware 15:47:33 of that program, that it's 15:47:37 utilized, that more nonprofits are taking advantage of it as they're 15:47:40 working with people getting into housing. It really does 15:47:43 work. It is kind of like 15:47:47 -- it is [broken audio] but also gives folks some tools to 15:47:50 help them stay stable in housing. Especially 15:47:53 given that, you know, one of the other 15:47:57 things we see 15:48:00 that always needs more funding and is perpetually 15:48:03 underfunded is case management. Just getting people in housing, I mean, I 15:48:07 see this every day at reach and when I worked at 15:48:10 Central City concern, I mean, any 15:48:14 nonprofit housing provider will tell you that people 15:48:18 in the housing we get them through all the hurdles and all the 15:48:21 paperwork, all the verifications, all the bureaucratic steps, and we 15:48:24 get them into housing, but if then don't 15:48:27 have that ongoing support from 15:48:30 someone once they get into 15:48:34 housing, that the property manager can't provide, that case 15:48:38 management support, we just see so many people 15:48:41 struggle. Even if they have rent assistance, struggle to stay 15:48:45 housed. And so I always 15:48:49 want to see or recommend any kind of 15:48:52 funding that we can -- anything we can 15:48:55 recommend to open up and make more 15:48:59 rent assistance available I am behind 15:49:06 100%. But I'm equally behind funding for case management. 15:49:09 There's just, you know, we 15:49:12 know that there's high turnover, that folks aren't paid as much, 15:49:15 that we lose people all the time in that 15:49:19 field and it's just rent assistance 15:49:23 to keep. [[Broken 15:49:27 audio] 15:49:31 recommend. >> LAURA: Thank you, Regina. We see that when Ian 15:49:34 referenced in the presentation that the utilization 15:49:38 rate for the Section 8 15:49:42 vouchers, I think we know that utilization rate for those 15:49:45 vouchers and even for the RLRA 15:49:48 vouchers is increased when the person -- 15:49:52 the voucher recipient is 15:49:55 supported by a case manager or a 15:49:59 direct service 15:50:03 worker in navigating the housing search, 15:50:06 and just in 15:50:10 the check-in during the housing search. 15:50:13 Those case management staff are critical. 15:50:16 Matthew and then Vivien I see that you have something in the chat. But Amber, 15:50:19 I'm not going to take your job 15:50:23 away from you, so we'll get 15:50:27 though that after Matthew goes again. >> MATTHEW: There 15:50:30 are agencies that do things like that in addition to 15:50:33 actual social worker, type groups? Do we know of any volunteer 15:50:36 agencies that help people through those things? Some of those things obviously need to 15:50:40 be a trained social worker. But some of them you'd think that they wouldn't 15:50:43 be, just need someone to check in on them, maybe visit with 15:50:46 people. >> LAURA: There are organizations that I know of, and some of 15:50:50 you might know of this 15:50:54 too, that do both outreach. So outreach 15:51:00 to people who may be 15:51:03 homeless or outreach to people who are 15:51:06 waiting -- they're living in short-term housing or they 15:51:09 have short-term rent assistance and they're 15:51:13 waiting for the voucher to 15:51:17 come in. And there 15:51:20 are also organizations that work with volunteers to 15:51:24 visit, people who are in housing. I 15:51:27 think the challenge with volunteers 15:51:30 is that the access to the 15:51:35 system is often complex and agencies have 15:51:39 sort of the in to the 15:51:42 system. And a lot of agencies have their own 15:51:45 volunteers who help by 15:51:49 contacting organization -- clients. Regina, I saw your 15:51:52 had your hand up. Did you want to speak 15:51:57 to that? Maybe 15:52:00 not. Matthew, I think that, yes, there are 15:52:03 some volunteer services. I think it really depends 15:52:06 on the level of 15:52:09 service that the client needs. If it's 15:52:13 somebody for whom the -- 15:52:16 or somebody who needs both the 15:52:20 rent assistance and very specific type of 15:52:27 services, it may not be enough to have a 15:52:30 volunteer. Did anybody else want to speak 15:52:34 to that? 15:52:38 So other -- other thoughts about specific 15:52:41 actions, I think what I 15:52:44 heard Regina say, and I think what I've heard 15:52:47 that we probably all agree on 15:52:51 is that more risk mitigation 15:52:54 funds are important, but also something that Regina said that was 15:52:58 really important too is that those funds 15:53:01 are often not spent down 15:53:05 100%. So where's, 15:53:08 you know, how do people access 15:53:11 those -- those additional 15:53:14 incentive funds either the landlord incentive funds or 15:53:18 the additional rent assistance funds 15:53:21 or support funds? Anybody have any ideas 15:53:26 about 15:53:30 that? I think the other thing -- I'm just going to keep throwing some 15:53:33 ideas out here. The other 15:53:37 thing is that we want to 15:53:44 focus on an actionable item that the City Council can do 15:53:47 and whether that's allocating city funds or 15:53:52 allocating other funds or working with metro 15:53:55 or the counties 15:53:58 to advocate for 15:54:01 changes either in 15:54:04 access or in amount of funds available, that might be one way. 15:54:07 I'm sort of stuck on that. Vivien, I'm just going 15:54:11 to read out your 15:54:14 question. Or your comment in the chat that 15:54:17 you've had experience with eviction defense program 15:54:20 as well with property managers cannot act as case 15:54:23 managers. And that's very true. And people 15:54:26 in need of case management cannot access them. And I 15:54:30 think that is sort of back to your question -- or your 15:54:34 point, Matthew, about volunteers. I will 15:54:38 say, having -- in my experience, if you have 15:54:41 volunteers, you also need to have a staff person who's going to manage 15:54:44 the volunteers. Whether it's a staff person at the 15:54:47 city managing volunteers or staff person 15:54:50 at different agency. So at some point there is, you know, 15:54:54 there is some management that's needed so that everybody's on the 15:54:59 same 15:55:05 page. I think the other idea that occurs 15:55:08 to me, please raise your hand or interrupt me, something that's called new 15:55:12 narrative is doing is standing up a client 15:55:15 centric, trauma-informed type of property management 15:55:18 that is -- is really 15:55:22 grounded in the work that case 15:55:26 managers do and lends 15:55:29 that 15:55:34 very specific client-centric, 15:55:37 trauma-informed lens to the property management 15:55:40 piece trying to 15:55:43 achieve both the need for housing 15:55:46 provider to be able to 15:55:49 maintain the housing, but also work 15:55:53 to address any challenges that a housing -- 15:55:56 that a tenant may have. And Lisa, if you sign 15:55:59 up for public testimony, you can speak when we do 15:56:02 the public testimony at 4:15. You can ask 15:56:07 your 15:56:11 question. Other thoughts? How do we want to turn this 15:56:15 conversation about the rent increase and landlord incentives 15:56:18 to limit rent increases and figuring out 15:56:21 ways to get more long-term rent assistance? How 15:56:24 do we turn that into an action for the 15:56:28 City Council? City Council is our audience. We get to make 15:56:31 recommendations to them. We get their ear whether they 15:56:34 like it or not. 15:56:37 So what do we want to tell them? 15:56:41 Yeah, what do we want to tell them -- tell them 15:56:42 to do? What do you all think? 15:56:59 More rent assistance funding? We 15:57:02 missed the budget cycle, although there is 15:57:07 a budget hearing tomorrow afternoon from 2:00 to 15:57:10 5:00 for the 15:57:13 city budget. And it's 15:57:17 new narrative is the name of the organization. It 15:57:21 used to be loop Dorf, Matthew. 15:57:24 Thank you, new narratives. Thank you. 15:57:27 Amber. >> AMBER: This may not be the 15:57:30 really exactly the kind of maybe, you know, comment 15:57:33 you're looking for, but I do 15:57:37 want to add, you know, something that's important to my experience is 15:57:41 that I have 15:57:44 watched my landlord receive a lot of 15:57:48 assistance, you know, financial assistance to provide low-income 15:57:52 housing. And the result has been, you 15:57:55 know, literally hundreds 15:57:58 of landlord-tenant law and 15:58:02 ORS and code violations every single day. And so 15:58:05 I have, you know, from my experience, I have a lot 15:58:09 of concerns about -- about, you know, 15:58:13 asking for rent assistance, you know, I mean, I understand in 15:58:16 a way, like that 15:58:19 goes toward tenants and one way to think about 15:58:23 it is, it goes to help keep tenants. 15:58:26 But it does give a lot of money to landlords. 15:58:29 And it's just hard -- it's hard for me to want to 15:58:33 back anything that is, you know, giving a lot 15:58:36 of money without some further 15:58:41 restrictions on 15:58:44 actually living up to landlord 15:58:47 [away from mic]. >> LAURA: Sorry. >> AMBER: I know this isn't exactly on 15:58:50 track with the rent assistance, but it's still something 15:58:54 that's really, you know, that's -- I don't know. I just 15:58:57 feel like I need to keep out there. That's all. >> LAURA: 15:59:00 I actually think -- I appreciate you bringing that up. I actually 15:59:03 think that's a really, really good 15:59:07 point that 15:59:12 we can't ignore the existing fair 15:59:17 housing laws, landlord-tenant laws and what they were intended to 15:59:22 do. I think that's a really great point and there's no reason that 15:59:24 that push can't stay side by side with 15:59:28 a push for more rent assistance. I will say that 15:59:32 I think that from the perspective 15:59:35 of an organization that works with 15:59:40 people who are 15:59:43 incredibly stressed out about losing their housing because they can no longer 15:59:47 afford the rent or moving from homelessness into 15:59:50 housing without any funds to pay the rent, the 15:59:53 rent assistance really is the difference between 15:59:58 homelessness and housing. And 16:00:01 I think that the 16:00:05 observation about how additional rent assistance 16:00:08 impacts a housing provider's rent 16:00:12 increase is worthy of additional research. I 16:00:17 think that there's, you know, 16:00:20 I see the benefits of rent 16:00:23 assistance on the -- the 16:00:27 hundreds, 600, 700 lower income, older 16:00:30 adults that will we 16:00:42 serve. And so how do we align that with 16:00:47 not just feeding rent increases. I think that's something 16:00:51 we might want the staff to take a look at to try to get 16:00:54 data around how do -- how does 16:00:59 rent assistance help long-term tenants, but how does it impact 16:01:02 rent increases overall? So that might 16:01:05 be something. 16:01:19 Vivien. >> VIVIEN: I raised my hand a little 16:01:24 prematurely. I'm brainstorming an idea right now and it's pointing out 16:01:28 with Amber's problem at 16:01:31 mile marker 5 which I'm familiar with and it incorporates 16:01:34 something that I've advocated for a while 16:01:37 related to doing a better job of 16:01:40 ensuring that landlords 16:01:44 are providing dwelling units that are up 16:01:47 to code and having that be 16:01:50 even -- having the 16:01:54 RSO have a hand in that. But leaving 16:01:57 that particular side, the enforcement mechanism of the RSO, 16:02:02 which is probably a 16:02:05 pipe dream, what if we 16:02:09 recommended something -- something 16:02:12 where landlords who need assistance bringing their properties 16:02:16 up to code, they don't have the -- they don't 16:02:19 have access to the funding that they would need. I think 16:02:23 that's true of a number 16:02:25 of these buildings that have had a 16:02:29 lot of problems. They could apply for funding to make the necessary 16:02:32 repairs and upgrades, and then once they're up to code, 16:02:35 they would agree to 16:02:39 some kind of -- they would agree to use 16:02:42 low-barrier application process. They would agree 16:02:45 to basically be a project-based 16:02:49 subsidized housing. I'm probably 16:02:55 revealing my fairly extensive 16:02:58 ignorance on how these projects get funded and how they 16:03:01 come into being. 16:03:05 But I'm trying to 16:03:08 address what I know is the case, maybe not 16:03:11 specifically in mile post 16:03:15 5 situation, but where housing 16:03:18 that is accessible to low-income people is 16:03:23 accessible because it's deficient and it's deficient because 16:03:26 the landlords don't -- either don't have or choose not to 16:03:29 spend the money bringing their properties 16:03:34 up to code in an 16:03:40 effort to -- yeah. 16:03:43 I'm just -- I'm literally just spitballing here. 16:03:46 Sorry. >> LAURA: Vivien, all good. I hear what you're saying. 16:03:50 Amber, before you speak again I just wanted to read your comments 16:03:53 in the chat. One of which was you saw a lot of 16:03:56 emergency rent assistance 16:03:59 abuse by some landlords in the past two years and it 16:04:03 needs to be money not thrown out the window while 16:04:07 renters still struggle with being evicted. And then you also added 16:04:10 that the property 16:04:14 management company at your -- at 16:04:18 mile post 5 used rent assistance 16:04:21 given to residents to cover court costs, which money was 16:04:24 not allocated for leaving 16:04:27 renter without enough money to cover rent and then evicted. I think that 16:04:33 goes back to the idea of let's follow the laws that are in place, let's follow 16:04:37 the rules. So something I think is important to 16:04:40 keep in mind. Vivien, if you for your idea. 16:04:44 That's a really intriguing one. Amber, you 16:04:47 have your hand up so I'll call on 16:04:51 your next. 16:04:56 >> AMBER: -- Internet. I just want to make sure nobody was 16:05:00 talking or -- >> LAURA: You're good to 16:05:03 go. >> AMBER: I apologize if my brain went a little wild. 16:05:06 That's more the concern here with the, you know, again 16:05:10 with the, you know, again, more rent assistance, 16:05:14 fantastic. It's just it's nice to say, I don't think 16:05:17 that's what you meant, but like, you know, yes, 16:05:20 follow the laws. But if, yes, follow the laws was so 16:05:25 obvious, then, you know, wouldn't be having these issues. So I think 16:05:28 it's something like the TPO that we need along 16:05:31 with rent assistance is we need some additional 16:05:34 measures, you know, to make sure that the rent assistance is being used 16:05:38 appropriately. As we know with the landlord compensation 16:05:42 fund, and you know, again, this wasn't all landlords, but some 16:05:45 percentage of landlords took that money, didn't 16:05:48 inform their clients, their renters that they'd been paid, told the 16:05:52 renters that they still needed to pay, and then the renters were, you 16:05:55 know, evicted or paid double rent. So these are the 16:05:59 kinds of situations where rent assistance is being used 16:06:03 incorrectly by property management that there's actually some kind 16:06:06 of follow-through or system or it's not just 16:06:09 trusting that it's being done right. >> LAURA: 16:06:12 Yeah. And that's, I think, going to 16:06:16 Vivien's point about an enforcement body that can follow 16:06:22 up, whether it's an enforcement of fair housing, 16:06:25 an enforcement of anything. So anything. 16:06:27 Christian. >> CHRISTIAN: Yeah. 16:06:30 Just a couple things. I mean, on 16:06:35 that, like with what Amber mentioned about, you know, rent 16:06:38 assistance going to court costs instead of covering rent and then 16:06:47 there not being funds to cover the rent. I would be surprised if 16:06:50 a judge allowed that, because there are mechanisms in place that 16:06:53 actually dictate what 16:06:56 we apply funds to, to where if I was in that position and 16:07:00 I actually put those rent assistance 16:07:03 funds to my court costs to do an eviction from a 16:07:06 tenant than owes that rent, and that 16:07:10 was brought up by the tenant in front of a judge, I would be 16:07:13 really surprised if a judge allowed that to 16:07:16 move forward. Obviously situational stuff, I 16:07:19 mean, that's the most I can comment is just high 16:07:23 level like that. I would be -- obviously I would never do that, 16:07:26 but I would be very surprised given the laws I know are in 16:07:29 place that a judge would allow that. As far as 16:07:32 what Vivien said, I think that's definitely 16:07:35 worth looking into, a fund like that. 16:07:38 Like I absolutely have represented 16:07:42 property owners, you know, 16:07:45 especially when -- what was it? Like a couple years 16:07:48 ago Portland tenants united presented a report to us showing it 16:07:51 was something like 46% or 48% of all the 16:07:54 rental units in the Portland area are owned and operated 16:07:58 by what we consider the small landlords, people have four or less 16:08:00 units. They're going to have mortgages on those things. 16:08:04 I definitely have clients like that that have been forced to 16:08:07 say, hey, because the main 16:08:11 line of the sewage 16:08:15 drainage collapsed underneath the driveway, I actually 16:08:18 had this one last year, collapsed under the driveway, it was going to be 16:08:21 upwards of 20 plus thousand dollars to actually dig all that 16:08:25 up, fix the actual problem, then fill everything back 16:08:28 in, pour a new driveway, et cetera, et cetera. So they were 16:08:31 forced into a position, because they don't have that money, 16:08:34 to actually have that 16:08:38 tenant say hey, obviously you can break your lease, put them up in a hotel for a 16:08:41 little bit. That's what they put their money towards, 16:08:44 putting them in an hotel and helping them 16:08:48 relocate, instead of necessarily putting a little bit of money into the 16:08:51 plumbing stuff with what they head and then they were forced to 16:08:54 sell that house, basically someone bought it that I'm 16:08:57 assuming did those repairsed on lived in it or sold 16:09:00 it or what knows what. So I think 16:09:03 Vivien's idea of looking into something like that definitely work 16:09:07 looking into if it's something that can be made affordable. Obviously being some 16:09:11 kind of qualifiers, you know, a landlord that has, you know, a million dollars 16:09:15 cash in the bank that needs to do a $5,000 16:09:18 repair, probably shouldn't qualify. But you know, 16:09:21 those 16:09:24 landlords that have those lower numbers of units, got 16:09:28 mortgages and a day job, there absolutely 16:09:32 are times where a habitability repair is going to be upwards in the 16:09:35 tens of thousands of dollars and they literally can't afford it and so, you 16:09:39 know, assuming they do things right, they're 16:09:42 letting that tenant out, helping them relocate, and then who knows what happens to that unit 16:09:45 as far as the market goes afterwards. 16:09:48 And then on the rent assistance stuff, the one thing I wanted to 16:09:51 throw out there, of course, you know, there's 16:09:54 obviously a need with the how long the 16:09:57 waitlists are for additional rent 16:10:01 assistance. With that said, I think, you 16:10:04 know, and I definitely have no solutions. I'm not -- I'm 16:10:07 in a position to, you know, at a high level maybe 16:10:10 recognize something and have no way of knowing how realistic it is 16:10:13 to even find a possible solution. But 16:10:17 where I see that could help is if there was a 16:10:22 way to, whether it be adding some money to certain programs or something, to help 16:10:26 those tenants transition out of needing 16:10:29 the incentive. Obviously that would be, you know, providing for themselves 16:10:33 in some way, whether that's, you know, work training or something, like I 16:10:36 said, I don't know what the solution really is or how do it because that 16:10:39 also, you know, if you get tenants that are able to 16:10:42 better themselves transition out of needing it, that 16:10:46 frees up those vouchers for additional ones that are on the 16:10:49 waitlist that are waiting for it that 16:10:52 desperately need it as well. Just as a general onlooker 16:10:55 and landlord, I see, you know, just general in society 16:10:58 all kinds of benefits it we can help, you know, the 16:11:01 homeless transition to being housed, and then somehow 16:11:05 along the way also help them over time 16:11:08 transition into actually providing for themselves paying their own 16:11:11 rent and, you know, making kind of some way of like 16:11:14 a through track through all the systems we have from 16:11:18 homeless to, you know, providing for yourself. I know 16:11:21 obviously that's a pie in the sky unachievable dream 16:11:25 for 100% of cases, but anyway that we could help incentivize 16:11:28 or train or educate or, you know, 16:11:32 whatever might work in helping them actually move through 16:11:35 the program, you know, I think would benefit 16:11:40 everyone involved. >> LAURA: Thanks, Christian. I just want 16:11:43 to flag that we've got like three-and-a-half minutes 16:11:46 left so that we -- for this part of the discussion. So that we can be 16:11:50 on time for public testimony. And 16:11:54 also remind 16:11:57 our participants, attendees, if you 16:12:00 want to do public testimony, please sign up for 16:12:03 that. Vivien and then Amber, I'm going to call 16:12:06 time at 4:15. So keep your eyes 16:12:10 on the clock. Vivien, go ahead. And you're on 16:12:13 mute. There you are. >> VIVIEN: I'll try to make this real 16:12:16 brief. I'm going to just, 16:12:19 Christian, I got say, 16:12:23 Amber's absolutely tracking reality. 16:12:27 I'm in court all the time, 16:12:31 I see this frequently. And I don't want 16:12:34 to spend time explaining to you how this is 16:12:38 possible, but this is very possible. And in 16:12:41 fact, it's a business practice employed by 16:12:44 a lot of 16:12:47 landlords both -- either it's the property 16:12:50 managers who are -- the property management companies who are instructing 16:12:54 their employees do this, or it's the owner 16:12:57 dictating from on high. But this happens a lot. And 16:13:00 Amber's absolutely correct, there are almost no tenant 16:13:05 litigators in town. We have a list of tenant litigators that 16:13:08 we provide to our clients when we finish 16:13:11 preventing their eviction, but they still have claims that they 16:13:14 could and should assert against their landlords, we can't do that 16:13:18 for them. There are -- there's 16:13:22 -- I struggle 16:13:25 to tell 16:13:28 you how much they cannot enforce those claims through our current system. So I'll just be 16:13:34 quiet now. >> LAURA: Thanks, 16:13:38 Vivien. And yeah, I think maybe that is another 16:13:42 conversation that we might want to 16:13:45 look into. So Amber, you have the 16:13:49 last word before public 16:13:52 testimony. You have like a minute and a half. >> AMBER: I'm going to keep this 16:13:55 very brief, but I think one thing that is 16:13:59 often missing in the equation is 16:14:03 that these decisions made with really good intentions and a strong desire to help 16:14:07 and to think. But actual renters are not included 16:14:10 in these decisions. And no communication is 16:14:13 actually had with the renter. So for example, there's 16:14:17 so much of these problems that could be solved if, 16:14:20 say, whoever was dispensing rent assistance, you 16:14:23 know, actually checked in with, you know, with the renters. Like 16:14:26 how did that go? How is it spent? 16:14:30 Had a system or a mechanism for, you know, 16:14:33 renter response to actually track what happens rather than 16:14:36 simply kind of dispensing, you know, dispensing money and then 16:14:39 really having no idea what happens. So that 16:14:43 would be another, like, something I would [video froze] 16:14:51 . >> LAURA: You cut out at the very end, but I think we heard 16:14:54 what you had 16:14:57 to say and yeah, checking in with the renters. I 16:15:01 know that many organizations who 16:15:05 provide rent assistance do that. 16:15:10 But maybe having something 16:15:13 more structured, more structured way to do it. All right, 16:15:17 it's 4:15, I'm going to hand it back to Justin for public 16:15:20 testimony, but don't fear, my friends, after public 16:15:24 testimony we get to continue to discuss 16:15:26 this. So Vivien, keep that hand raised, I'll come back 16:15:30 to you when we're done with public 16:15:33 testimony. Thank you. >> VIVIEN: Sorry, I lowered it. 16:15:36 >> LAURA: Oh, Roger that. 16:15:39 >> JUSTIN: All right. Thank you, Laura and everyone for the 16:15:43 great discussion. And yes, Laura, well 16:15:47 managed and great facilitating as always, I really appreciate 16:15:50 it. We're going to pause here for public testimony. 16:15:53 We have about five people signed up already and I do 16:15:57 have one written testimony to read at the 16:16:00 end. If there are any other members of the public that would like to 16:16:03 provide testimony, please put your name in the chat at this time and we'll circle 16:16:06 back to you. We have about 16:16:09 30 minutes for this section. Each person has three 16:16:13 minutes to speak, and I'll be keeping 16:16:16 time on my end. So once you've reached that limit, I'll go 16:16:19 ahead and just kind of interject just to help 16:16:22 you finish up a little bit, because it does go by pretty 16:16:26 fast. But without any more waiting here, and the 16:16:29 first person we have signed up 16:16:34 for testimony is 16:16:38 Tess Herman. >> Great. I was just getting ready to ask if I 16:16:41 was on there. So that was a lot to sit through, 16:16:46 you guys. I learned a 16:16:49 lot. I feel the first thing I want to say is I feel 16:16:52 like your group is 16:16:55 definitely lopsided in terms of 16:16:59 representation for renters and not small landlords. 16:17:02 I am a small landlord. It is the only job I 16:17:05 have. I don't -- it's not a side hustle. 16:17:09 It is something that 16:17:12 I couldn't do without my husband's help in terms of fixing and 16:17:16 maintaining and being the property manager. Nor could 16:17:19 we do this if we had to hire property 16:17:23 managers. Because you just -- it's just 16:17:27 not equitable. You can't. 16:17:32 Amber, there are so many penalties for 16:17:35 landlords for the simplest technicalities, 16:17:38 you can't even imagine. When I have more time, I'm going to come back 16:17:41 and give public testimony to a situation that 16:17:44 we were involved 16:17:48 in that was very 16:17:51 expensive and very stressful and to be honest with 16:17:55 you, doesn't really want to make me be a landlord in Portland 16:17:58 anymore. I think you guys, if 16:18:01 you care about small landlords 16:18:04 and maybe you don't, but I really don't want it 16:18:08 to be like Amazon for 16:18:11 tenants. It's small people like my husband and I and 16:18:14 many of the people that I've melt in 16:18:17 small landlord groups that are the people that aren't 16:18:20 raising rents. They are the people that 16:18:23 are not charging for things that they should be charging 16:18:27 for. And yet they're the people that are the ones that 16:18:30 are getting hit the hardest. We all 16:18:35 do 16:18:40 not have lawyers on retainer. You talk about 16:18:43 tenants not having accessibility to that. We don't. 16:18:46 You can't even get them even if you wanted to get them. 16:18:49 They're not available. And it's a little sad for me 16:18:52 that you guys are -- it's very, very one 16:18:55 sided. The only other meeting that I've been to was when 16:19:00 Margot Black was on the committee 16:19:03 and Allen, I recognize his face was on the committee. 16:19:06 And at the end of the meeting, I was asked 16:19:10 because I spoke a lot, if I had any interest in being 16:19:13 part of the group. And I said I don't because it's 16:19:16 not balanced here at all. 16:19:19 And it feels too one-sided 16:19:25 for me. So as far as funds being 16:19:28 set aside for risk mitigation, which is really 16:19:31 what it comes down to for 16:19:35 small landlords, when I first was a landlord 16:19:38 I inherited a single mom with two children who 16:19:41 was on Section 8. And 16:19:45 I won't go into the details of how that ended, but it wasn't good. It 16:19:48 was about $10,000, lots of drugs 16:19:51 involved, child abuse. 16:19:54 When you are on Section 8, you can get a 16:19:57 free attorney and you can say anything you want about somebody and 16:20:00 you can make up lies and 16:20:04 untruths. And the amount of damages that 16:20:09 were left behind were immense for 16:20:13 us. 16:20:17 And I think unless the program's changed, you had to 16:20:20 have about $5,000 worth before even going to court. We didn't really 16:20:23 want to have to go to court and see this person again to even try to 16:20:27 get our money. >> JUSTIN: You're at time. I'm sorry. 16:20:29 >> All right. All right. I've been touching on a few of the 16:20:33 things that you guys have all talked about. So little food for thought 16:20:36 there. >> JUSTIN: And feel free to follow up with 16:20:39 finishing with written testimony. Of course you can signed up for the next RSC 16:20:42 meeting or come to the listening session. >> Yeah, good idea. 16:20:48 I will do that. 16:20:51 >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Tess. Muted myself. Pardon me there. 16:20:54 Next we have Lisa Pfeiffer, excuse me 16:20:57 if I'm 16:21:01 mispronouncing that. >> Hi, 16:21:04 it's Lisa Pfeiffer. >> JUSTIN: Sorry about 16:21:07 that, Lisa. >> You guys touched on a lot of things today. 16:21:10 My main issue is property 16:21:14 management. We have the worst property management 16:21:18 in Portland, I believe. I've been in my housing for 16 16:21:21 years. I work. I've worked since I've had my 16:21:25 housing. And the property management that I 16:21:29 have right now, I have nothing nice to say about them. 16:21:32 But since the last meeting I was at, 16:21:36 I've been brainstorming and 16:21:39 what kills me is that I'm sure there's a whole lot 16:21:42 more tenants like me that are being 16:21:48 bullied, intimidated, and literally trying to be 16:21:51 ran out of their apartment by these property managers that don't say anything because they 16:21:55 don't want to lose their 16:21:58 housing. We have rights too. One of the things I was brainstorming 16:22:01 about was maybe that 16:22:04 Home Forward owns the property that I live at. And I'm so grateful for 16:22:07 Home Forward or I wouldn't have my housing 16:22:11 for 16 years. But I think that the Home 16:22:14 Forward, I mean, human 16:22:18 solutions should maybe screen their property managers a little 16:22:22 better before they just plop them in somebody's apartment 16:22:25 complex and give them the reins to everything. Because 16:22:28 I've called human solutions two months ago and left my name and 16:22:31 number for somebody to call me about this situation, and I have got 16:22:34 nowhere with anybody. I mean, I've been 16:22:38 bullied and harassed by these property managers for two years 16:22:40 now. I have documentation like you wouldn't believe. 16:22:44 I want to file a civil suit on the company. But nobody will take 16:22:47 my case. I can't get anybody to help me. 16:22:50 It's very frustrating. So I've gotten to the 16:22:53 point where maybe I'll just 16:23:00 be an advocate for people like me in the same situation that I can speak for them. 16:23:03 Because I don't think it's fair. I mean, I work. 16:23:06 I've worked the whole time I've had my housing, and I pay my 16:23:09 bills. My daughter's had 16:23:13 stability, thank God for human solutions, but this is getting out of 16:23:16 line. It's really bad. And I'm 16:23:19 so frustrated, I started seeing a therapist because I'm so 16:23:24 depressed. What's going to happen next month, you 16:23:27 know? I mean, they've done so much stuff to me you wouldn't believe it. 16:23:30 But anyway, yeah. I feel that 16:23:34 people that own, like human solutions, should 16:23:37 at least screen them before just plopping them into 16:23:41 people's lives and tormenting them like this. Like they have 16:23:46 been. So yeah. That's all I 16:23:51 got 16:23:59 say. >> JUSTIN: Thank you so much for sharing. 16:24:03 Thank you for being here. >> Thanks. >> JUSTIN: Katy McKenzie 16:24:06 is next on my 16:24:12 list. 16:24:16 Katy, are you there? All righty, moving on 16:24:20 to Sheri 16:24:31 Kopp. Okay, Jessica 16:24:38 Greenly. >> Hi, are you able to hear me? 16:24:42 >> JUSTIN: Perfect. >> Sorry, I'm a little under the 16:24:45 weather. I unfortunately missed 16:24:48 the first half of the meeting and 16:24:52 didn't get to hear the entire context in talking about how to ensure 16:24:55 that the rental assistance programs are serving those residents as well as possible. 16:24:59 I really think that you're looking at evaluating other 16:25:02 items and making suggestions for that, but the case management 16:25:06 services should be a top priority on the list. In order 16:25:09 to make sure that rent assistance is effective for those 16:25:12 individuals and that they're able to 16:25:15 retain rent, it's imperative 16:25:19 for individuals who have transitioned from other 16:25:23 situations or in order to have that stability in their 16:25:26 housing. And so I just would like to 16:25:30 encourage that Clackamas 16:25:34 County has definitely implemented that 16:25:41 strongly in the programs they've rolled out over the past few months have are 16:25:44 working effectively. We have residents moving from transitional housing and 16:25:47 so if you want to look at a program 16:25:51 that has utilized those 16:25:54 resources and been able to effectively deploy 16:25:57 them, I think that would be a resource to model 16:26:00 after. So thank you. 16:26:03 >> JUSTIN: Thank you, 16:26:10 Jessica. Then we have 16:26:13 Sylvia Ho is the last individual I have signed up. 16:26:24 All righty, as I mentioned 16:26:27 before, I do have written testimony to read, so if anyone else would like to put 16:26:30 their name in the chat 16:26:34 for public testimony while I read this, 16:26:38 please feel free to do so. But I'll go ahead and 16:26:41 get started. This public testimony 16:26:44 is from 16:26:48 Veronica regarding the allowable 14.6 rent increase. My unit is 16:26:53 managed by Edge Management and they're 16:26:56 notorious in using loopholes to gaslight and apply 16:26:59 plausibility deniability on their tenants and using loopholes in rental 16:27:02 laws to take advantage of renters. If you go to their Google reviews, they 16:27:06 have a rating of 2.8 stars and 16:27:09 they are the largest property management company in 16:27:13 Portland. Portland ordinance does have that if the landlord 16:27:17 increases above 10% they are required to pay 16:27:20 the no cause eviction payout rate. Our 16:27:23 unit qualifies for 16:27:26 $4,200. But I think it needs to be higher due to inflation and 16:27:29 increases in rental rates around PDX city 16:27:32 limits. This can't be the only recourse that's available for 16:27:36 renters that make above the poverty level, since an increase 16:27:39 in rent can easily put someone like me at the 16:27:43 poverty level. Some ideas I 16:27:48 think would Ben -- benefit rinters who don't 16:27:51 qualify for low income and make above the poverty level -- excuse 16:27:54 me. Yet won't be able to survive these legal rent 16:27:57 increases would be the follow: One, 16:28:02 discount on rent for long-term renters after 16:28:05 renting continuously for at least two years and never 16:28:08 being late on a rent payment. 16:28:13 20% discount locked in and legally they can't remove the discount. 16:28:16 Renters need to be awarded for paying on time, receive no 16:28:19 complaints, and are good tenants and keeping the unit 16:28:23 clean. Two, rent increases every five years 16:28:26 instead of every year. Three, rent increases 16:28:29 are capped at 3%. 16:28:32 Four, property management companies to provide financial 16:28:36 transparency to the renters on where their rent money is 16:28:39 going. If it's my rent money that's going to these management companies, 16:28:42 I want to know how they are using that money. Right now, 16:28:46 they are not legally required to 16:28:49 give renters financial transparency so they can take advantage of renters 16:28:52 and continue with plausibility deniability. 16:28:55 Five, landlords cannot increase rent on renters who are over 16:28:59 65. Six, 16:29:02 50% increase to the no cause eviction payout 16:29:06 rates. Seven, reevaluate on how properties 16:29:09 are valued. It doesn't make sense to increase rents when 16:29:12 the quality of the units weren't built with quality 16:29:15 materials to begin with. Or increase rents when the neighborhood 16:29:21 around you has crime increases, homelessness coming on to the 16:29:24 property to get to the recycling, et 16:29:27 cetera. These 16:29:31 private conglomerate property rentals have an 16:29:34 entire team to take advantage of loops on the rental laws. The renters 16:29:37 don't have the means to withstand the resources and 16:29:40 scope that these property managers have over 16:29:43 us. We need better protections that protect the rental percentage 16:29:47 increases. We went through hell in our last lease 16:29:50 negotiations with our landlord. Initially increasing 16:29:54 to 14%, then we told them 16:29:57 about the no cause eviction that they would need to pay us 16:30:00 $4,200. And then they 16:30:04 countered offer with just below 10% increase. We would not 16:30:07 be able to afford another legal 10% increase and 16:30:10 our 2024 lease renewal, so we will be taking 16:30:14 advantage of a no-cause eviction payout. That 16:30:17 no-cause eviction payout is the only financial recourse we have, and 16:30:20 there needs to be more financial safety nets like the suggestions 16:30:24 mentioned above to keep living here in 16:30:28 Portland. Thank 16:30:31 you. Excuse 16:30:34 me. Anyone else 16:30:38 signing up for public 16:30:43 testimony before 16:30:46 we? Lisa, unfortunately we can only do one testimony per 16:30:49 person. But always feel free to send in 16:30:53 some rin testimony and we'll be hosting a 16:30:56 listening session at the beginning of June for more 16:31:01 opportunities of engagement as well. But thank you for 16:31:04 being here. All 16:31:08 righty. We can go 16:31:13 ahead, if there's no one else signing up, close 16:31:16 public testimony at this time. Before we jump back into the 16:31:19 discussion, I think Breonne 16:31:22 had some information she wanted to share, if she's 16:31:26 ready for that. If not, we can pivot back to 16:31:29 Laura. >> BREONNE: Just two quick things. I want to 16:31:32 remind commissioners when we're doing public testimony, please respect members of the public 16:31:35 and do not go into fact checking 16:31:39 or sharing information 16:31:43 that -- please just don't do that as there's a bit of an 16:31:46 inappropriate comment made in the chat regarding one of the members of the 16:31:49 public providing testimony. I just want to acknowledge that. I 16:31:52 also want to circle back to some of the 16:31:56 conversation earlier regarding a potential 16:31:59 program whereby landlords would be able to tap into funding 16:32:02 to make repairs in exchange for some level 16:32:05 of affordability 16:32:09 or other programmatic, you know, designs to 16:32:13 keep tenants stably housed. I want to say that the bureauio 16:32:16 did launch a program like that in 16:32:20 East Portland in 2016. I was not a member of the Housing Bureau at the time, 16:32:23 neither was Justin. My understanding is that the 16:32:28 program was not particularly 16:32:32 successful. We do have some existing documents explaining how the 16:32:35 program was designed. I'm happy to share that with 16:32:38 the Executive Committee if this is an area that you all are interested 16:32:42 in exploring further. But my understanding 16:32:45 was there was a pool of money whereby small landlords would be able to access repairs, 16:32:48 habitability repairs, in exchange for 16:32:52 affordability. And extremely few landlords 16:32:56 applied to the program to the point where the program was 16:33:01 canceled. I just wanted to flag that and we can 16:33:05 share the program information, what we have, with the Executive Committee for further discussion 16:33:08 if you would like at the next Executive Committee 16:33:13 meeting. >> LAURA: Thank you, Breonne. Yes, I think that would be great to 16:33:16 see that. Do you know whether or not 16:33:20 there was any -- aside from whatever information there 16:33:23 was throughout the program, was there any analysis done 16:33:26 about why specifically it 16:33:29 wasn't successful? >> BREONNE: I don't 16:33:32 know. I can try to figure that 16:33:36 out. >> LAURA: Okay, yeah. If -- 16:33:39 if you, you and Justin have 16:33:42 capacity to dig in a little bit more, I think that would 16:33:46 be very helpful. >> BREONNE: Yeah. There are certainly some 16:33:49 folks at the bureau who were around when that program was 16:33:52 launched, but I mean, I just looked at the only document that I have found 16:33:56 from it and the person 16:34:01 who's listed on it is no longer at the 16:34:04 bureau. We can do some fact finding and figure out what's going 16:34:07 on. But I wanted to flag that that was a route we explored previously 16:34:11 and it would be good to learn the lessons of why it 16:34:14 was an unsuccessful program. >> LAURA: Yes, 16:34:18 excellent. I think that, thank you for 16:34:21 sharing that with all of us. That was before my time 16:34:24 as well. And -- but I 16:34:28 think that there definitely would be something to learn 16:34:34 from that. >> CHRISTIAN: I would definitely like get to 16:34:37 information at our next meeting. I put in the chat, I'd be 16:34:40 curious if there's any information on, you 16:34:45 know, pause -- because sometimes it's simply 16:34:48 outreach, the law's passed, the money's there, but there's no 16:34:52 extra step to make sure people know it exists or how to 16:34:55 apply. You see that with tenants too. There's rent relief 16:34:58 funds and help that's out there that some tenants don't get 16:35:01 simply because they don't have the information. And, you know, they 16:35:04 would need help getting it. And so I don't know if that 16:35:07 is any part of this, but I'd be curious if there is any 16:35:10 information on that to also look at, because that would help us know if, 16:35:13 maybe it's worth trying again or, no, no, they did 16:35:17 a lot of outreach and there's just not a need. 16:35:20 >> JUSTIN: I'll see what I can find. >> LAURA: 16:35:23 Yeah. And I'm assuming that you would have time to get that 16:35:26 to all of us prior to the next meeting. >> JUSTIN: 16:35:29 Of course. >> LAURA: All right. Awesome. 16:35:32 So we're going to go back to our conversation, but 16:35:35 I see Vivien and Amber in that order have their hands 16:35:39 raised. No, Vivien. Yes, you're ready to 16:35:42 go. 16:35:43 No? Yes? 16:35:46 Vivien? >> VIVIEN: I shared a comment in the chat. 16:35:50 I want to apologize, I meant to send it only to one 16:35:53 person. So my apologies about 16:35:56 that. I also wanted to -- I did say in the chat that I'd 16:35:59 be interested in any reports or documentation about the 16:36:02 program that Breonne just 16:36:06 mentioned. I do have some ideas about -- I mean, 16:36:09 I think it's obviously premature, since I don't know 16:36:14 what we could glean about why landlords didn't 16:36:17 end up accessing that program. But I do suspect as 16:36:20 Christian says that it may have been a lack of awareness about it. And 16:36:23 I do have 16:36:26 some ideas about ways to 16:36:30 inform tenants about it so that 16:36:33 if they are aware that there are potential code 16:36:37 violations and they're also aware that there may be an avenue for their 16:36:40 landlord to have those addressed without having to foot the entire bill, that 16:36:44 that might be a way to 16:36:47 encourage utilization of such a program like 16:36:50 that. >> LAURA: Excellent. And Breonne and 16:36:54 Justin, I think you're safe to send whatever documentation and 16:36:57 information that you find to all the 16:37:00 Commissioners. I think we would -- that would be 16:37:04 fine with me to -- I don't think 16:37:08 Executive Committee exclusively needs to see it. I think that by 16:37:11 sending it to everyone, it will get us on a 16:37:16 faster pace to keep this conversation going. So 16:37:19 thank you. Thank you for that. 16:37:23 Amber. >> AMBER: 16:37:28 Yeah, I wanted to make -- you know, make a request 16:37:31 or kind of potentially bring 16:37:34 this up for discussion, that -- like for example, I would 16:37:39 love to see -- let me start. So thank 16:37:43 you, Laura and Christian, for presentation. It was 16:37:46 really well done, it was very informative. My 16:37:49 gosh, you guys did a great job. 16:37:52 In addition to that, I would 16:37:56 like to suggest the idea 16:38:00 of meeting agendas going out further in advance 16:38:03 rather than a day or two before the meeting. 16:38:06 And the reason -- the reason is, for 16:38:09 example, I'll just say I -- I feel 16:38:12 that spending an entire hour of our three hours on 16:38:17 presentation and information is not necessarily the best use of our 16:38:20 meeting time. Especially when 16:38:23 our meetings have been cut down even further. For example, I would 16:38:27 love to see presentations like this 16:38:30 sent out in advance so that we go over them before the meeting and then we use that 16:38:34 time for discussion or, you know, like if there are things that people want to add 16:38:37 or that kind of thing rather than simply a third of the 16:38:41 meeting going to 16:38:45 information. >> BREONNE: I would say, Amber, I love that 16:38:48 idea but also this is a public body and so the presentation is also for the public, it is 16:38:52 not just for the commissioners. >> LAURA: Yeah. 16:38:55 And I believe that there's time 16:38:58 at which -- or the time ahead of the meeting that you have 16:39:02 to send out the 16:39:05 agenda, yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing 16:39:09 is this -- we have to find a 16:39:12 balance between, you know, we can't request 16:39:17 information and ask 16:39:20 PHB staff or any of us to then go back 16:39:23 and prepare a 16:39:27 presentation and then -- without thinking about 16:39:30 how that is going to dig into our time. 16:39:33 So maybe as we think 16:39:36 about the information that we request, we 16:39:39 balance that with how that information is presented. I 16:39:42 mean, certainly it 16:39:46 could be just a more detailed 16:39:50 presentation that's not walk-through during the meeting. And 16:39:53 then look at what we -- what we lose or 16:39:57 gain with 16:40:00 that. So point taken on that. Which 16:40:03 I think, Amber, what I'm hearing you really say is, how 16:40:06 do we use our limited time more effectively. So 16:40:09 we can think about 16:40:10 that. Yeah. Yes. 16:40:13 And thank you, Kristina, be mindful of different learning 16:40:17 styles. So I think 16:40:21 we can all think about that and contribute to 16:40:25 what works 16:40:28 best. So we've got 20 minutes that 16:40:31 we can use to continue 16:40:37 talking, or -- and Justin, I'm just going to 16:40:40 call on you because I don't have my calendar open right 16:40:44 in front me of, when is our next meeting? 16:40:47 I believe it's 16:40:50 July? >> JUSTIN: Give me one second here. 16:40:53 >> LAURA: Sorry, thank you for letting me put you on the 16:40:56 spot. >> JUSTIN: You're fine. July 18th from 2:00 to 16:40:59 5:00. >> LAURA: Okay. So we've got the listening session 16:41:02 June 7th, correct? The next 16:41:05 meeting is July 18 16:41:09 th. So 16:41:14 we can spent the next 20 minutes doing some more 16:41:24 brainstorming, or. >> CHRISTIAN: I feel like wasn't maybe our 16:41:29 first topic, Ian you can probably correct me, but wasn't our first to take this 16:41:32 we kind got cut short, all the committee members had more to say 16:41:37 and we said we were going to start there during 16:41:40 this time? I know for sure Ian had something he was going to add then because of 16:41:43 time. He said I'll just save it since we're going to bring it back up. 16:41:47 I believe it was our first report. 16:41:50 But... >> LAURA: So our first report 16:41:53 today about the landlord incentives? >> CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Do you remember, 16:41:57 Ian? >> IAN: Yeah, I was just going to respond to one of 16:42:00 Amber's concerns, which was that, you know, we 16:42:05 sort of now come full circle-ish on it, but 16:42:08 that, you know, we have 16:42:11 an incredibly vulnerable group of tenants and folks 16:42:14 experiencing housing instability and housing -- 16:42:18 houselessness in our community, and we started the 16:42:21 presentation on ways that we incentivize the owner, 16:42:25 the landlord community, right, 16:42:31 land-owning community/class to assist folks. I want 16:42:34 to acknowledge that that feels weird sometimes and awkward, 16:42:37 Amber, maybe always that feels like that. I 16:42:41 will just say one of the ways we felt 16:42:44 comfortable with that at the housing authority, very close to 16:42:48 embedded in the housing system, acknowledge that too, is the 16:42:51 $500 incentive to have a 16:42:54 landlord participate in the program should 16:42:58 not be necessary, right? It is -- it is a 16:43:01 state law that -- that a doctor has 16:43:04 to be accepted, right? And yet we see that the benefit 16:43:09 of $500 has 16:43:12 outsized a long-term impacts, right? Even just housing that 16:43:15 one family 16:43:19 certainly often the amount of time that they're housed and 16:43:23 the lack of turn they have in finding new housing. That is just 16:43:26 one example. But I just wanted to 16:43:29 sort of lift up that concern you were raising and we are very mindful 16:43:33 of it. And those incentives come with other 16:43:36 approaches that may sort of be more of that 16:43:40 stick approach than the carrot approach. Freezing rents in 2021, some 16:43:43 of the ways we tried to limit costs in our program, 16:43:47 et cetera, which Laura didn't have as 16:43:51 much time to go into in a lot of detail, 16:43:54 but hopefully it's a little balanced there. And 16:43:57 I'm happy to talk about that if there's questions, a bit 16:44:00 more. >> LAURA: Thank you, Ian. Christian, you have your hand 16:44:03 up. >> CHRISTIAN: On the incentive side, I wanted to 16:44:29 point out I definitely, in general, I'm not never a fan 16:44:29 of, you know, just handing out money to any group just, 16:44:29 you know, without qualification. And my 16:44:29 thought process is if it turned into 16:44:29 a recommendation of City Council, the types of things we would 16:44:29 recommend would be hey landlord, if you willingly do 16:44:29 this, you'll get this. So an example, and don't -- 16:44:29 don't quote me on the exact 16:44:32 numbers, I'm just using them to drive home my point or 16:44:35 example. Is let's say we created 16:44:39 something where we can't in 16:44:42 Portland say landlords, you cannot raise your rent above this amount. But what if we went 16:44:46 the other route and said hey, landlord, if you keep your yearly rent 16:44:50 increase below, you know, 3% or, you know, 16:44:53 below 5% or whatever 16:44:57 , make up a number, whatever the City Council's happy 16:45:01 with. If you keep your rent increases below that percentage every year, then if 16:45:04 you have a vacancy, since you're making your unit, keeping it 16:45:08 affordable, maybe it has to stay 16:45:11 affordable to a certain percentage of 16:45:15 medium households, when you have a vacancy, 16:45:18 we'll cover up to two months worth of rent so you don't have lost rent during 16:45:21 a vacancy period because you are voluntarily 16:45:25 keeping your stuff -- your rents low. And so that was 16:45:28 kind of my thought process in really 16:45:31 likening this idea is, hey, you know, maybe our hands are 16:45:34 tied and we can't just say hey, you can't 16:45:38 do this. And maybe we go the other route and say, you know 16:45:42 what? If you're part of the solution and you're not perceived as part 16:45:45 of the problem and you're helping us meet these goals we really want to 16:45:48 meet to help the needs of this segment of the 16:45:51 population, then awesome, you'll get this 16:45:55 benefit, whatever it is. So just want to make that 16:45:58 clear, you know, in general I definitely don't agree with just handing money 16:46:01 out. But if it had qualifications for it that really 16:46:04 helped us achieve these goals, I feel like this would 16:46:08 be a good way to go about it without continuing to run up against 16:46:11 the wall of, you know, state laws tying 16:46:16 our 16:46:19 hands. >> LAURA: Thanks, Christian. 16:46:24 Kristina. You're muted. 16:46:26 Muted. >> KRISTINA: I did it again. 16:46:30 I'm so sorry. >> LAURA: We're here 16:46:34 to help. >> KRISTINA: Thank you for circling back to 16:46:37 that, Christian. I agree. I definitely am crossing that fingers 16:46:41 on that eviction defense program and hoping that gets funded 16:46:44 because I hear that there are some terrible, like, landlord experiences out 16:46:48 there. And folks should be held accountable and, like, folks 16:46:51 should get representation and also I think there's some 16:46:54 really good property managers and landlords out 16:46:57 there and some folks are definitely 16:47:01 expressing or I'm hearing like some 16:47:06 struggles around, you know, just being 16:47:09 able to cover damages and, like, some of the stuff that's happening 16:47:12 in affordable properties where 16:47:15 I think that the result has been, like, having higher 16:47:19 screening barriers for folks getting housed because it's 16:47:24 causing some risk aversion 16:47:27 on the landlord or the property manager. It would be great if we did somehow 16:47:31 tie the incentive to, for example, something Vivien 16:47:34 raised earlier, some low-barrier screening 16:47:38 criteria and ask landlords to use that. I 16:47:41 mean, there are landlords out there that are doing a five and 16:47:44 ten-year lookback period and declining folks because they have a 16:47:47 DUI on their record, which really doesn't 16:47:51 necessarily mean they can't be a good renter or pay their rent just 16:47:54 because they had something that happened so long ago. So it would be 16:47:57 great if we could tie them together, because we need 16:48:00 -- we need good, affordable housing 16:48:04 in our community. And something 16:48:07 that I'm also hopeful if we can tie something 16:48:10 together, like Christian's suggesting, that maybe we can 16:48:14 also try to create a less divisive 16:48:17 relationship that feels like between like landlords and renters 16:48:20 and something that works for hand in hand. 16:48:25 >> LAURA: Thank you, 16:48:29 Kristina. Vivien, you added a comment 16:48:33 in the chat, but I think it's worthy of 16:48:37 a little more flushing out rather than just 16:48:40 me reading it. 16:48:43 Do you mind -- >> VIVIEN: I don't mind. 16:48:47 I was just trying to make sure I understood what Kristina was 16:48:50 proposing, which I think is 16:48:53 a good idea in 16:48:57 the bare outlines, providing funds to repair tenant-caused damage to 16:49:00 landlords who agree to use low-barrier 16:49:03 screening, is that kind of what you're -- you were 16:49:08 talking about, Kristina, or 16:49:11 do I misunderstand. >> KRISTINA: Maybe 16:49:16 it's not the repairs, but if you want to sign up 16:49:20 for these incentives, then this is the ask. 16:49:23 And that was just one example, but somehow tying them together. 16:49:29 The benefit for the landlord tied to the 16:49:32 benefit for the renter. >> VIVIEN: Yeah, I get that. Thank you. 16:49:34 >> LAURA: Great. Thank you. Thank you, both. 16:49:40 Any other thoughts? We're close to time and 16:49:43 I want to be clear about what our next steps are going to be. 16:49:46 So I'm going to make a suggestion, just 16:49:49 a suggestion, that 16:49:54 we -- we had a lot of really good ideas and 16:49:57 input, which sorry Breonne 16:50:10 and. Justin, which is going to create 16:50:13 homework for you guys, but it might translate into 16:50:17 a menu of recommendations or a menu that we could pull from to 16:50:20 formulate recommendations. And if we plan 16:50:23 to do that at our July 18th 16:50:26 meeting, we would be 16:50:29 closer to getting a work 16:50:33 product to City Council. And I'm sorry about 16:50:38 this, Breonne and Justin, remind 16:50:42 me again about intrameeting 16:50:46 communication with the commission. So if Executive Committee follows 16:50:49 up with you and asks for you to 16:50:52 provide some information mid-June, can you go ahead 16:50:55 and do that so that all commissioners have access to 16:50:58 that information to read 16:51:03 and absorb, is that doable? Okay. All 16:51:06 right. So -- >> CHRISTIAN: The main thing real 16:51:10 quick, Laura, I know Matt chimes in on this all the time, is that there just 16:51:13 can't be a communication sent from one committee member 16:51:16 to all the committee members because that essentially 16:51:19 counts as a public meeting. It has to go through staff 16:51:23 and then staff sends it out. >> LAURA: Thank you very 16:51:26 much, you read my mind. Yeah. So 16:51:29 if Breonne and Justin could 16:51:33 send us information, then what we're 16:51:36 asking you all to do is just absorb and 16:51:40 read that information in 16:51:43 preparation for discussion following the public meeting laws on 16:51:46 our July 18th meeting. Does that 16:51:52 work for everyone? Breonne, did 16:51:55 you have a thought better -- >> BREONNE: Well, I was just going to clarify when I 16:51:58 said earlier we'd dig up program materials to share 16:52:02 with the Executive Committee, one reason when we share 16:52:05 out materials that will be discussed in meetings, those also get posted publicly 16:52:09 so they become -- like everyone can see that this is what the conversation is 16:52:12 happening, not just other commissioners, but members 16:52:16 of the public. 16:52:18 >> LAURA: Great. Thank you. 16:52:21 So does that sound like a plan or does anybody else have 16:52:25 any other 16:52:28 suggestions? And I think this is our first three-hour 16:52:31 meeting, correct? >> JUSTIN: Sure is. >> LAURA: 16:52:35 And how are -- I just want to do a little check, how are 16:52:38 people feeling about that? I'm exhausted. But 16:52:41 it could be the 16:52:45 heat. People feeling good about a three-hour 16:52:51 meeting? >> CHRISTIAN: I agree it's exhausting 16:52:54 and long, but since it's every other month, I can live with it. 16:52:57 I think we don't have any trouble filling up the time, so. 16:53:00 >> LAURA: Yeah. We're all tough. All right. 16:53:03 Awesome. Awesome. 16:53:06 Okay. Any last-minute thing? And then we'll end like eight 16:53:10 minutes early. 16:53:14 All right. I think we are 16:53:19 adjourned. >> JUSTIN: Awesome. Bye, everybody. 16:53:22 >> BREONNE: If you have one last thing. >> LAURA: We're not 16:53:25 adjourned, I want to rewind. >> BREONNE: One 16:53:28 thing because it came up earlier, this is just some 16:53:32 Zoom hygiene. Direct messages are not 16:53:35 private. So somebody requests 16:53:39 the meeting chat, it comes -- like there's no private DMs 16:53:42 . So if you are using the chat in any way that you don't want 16:53:45 the public to see what you're saying, don't do that. Because 16:53:48 it is public record, it's not a private message. So I 16:53:51 just want to -- that's just Zoom hygiene in general, 16:53:55 not just for the RSC, for everyone in their lives. 16:53:59 >> JUSTIN: Thank you, Breonne.