Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   7/18/2024

Good evening everyone and welcome to the Human Rights Commission meeting, our regular meeting on July the

18th of this year, 2024 here at City Space.

We're excited to have our panelists and legislative committee people members here.

And we hope you have one more come through as they're hopefully all the way from Richmond.

I believe, did you do that?

Ernest?

Here.

Wolfgang?

Here.

Charley is not here.

Cindy is not here.

Kathryn just told us she would not be able to attend.

There.

Great.

The technology has worked.

Thank you for joining us.

So let us

We're saying our mission together.

All right.

Members of the public that are participating virtually, if you experience any technical difficulties, you may call 434.

970-3115.

Any staff member will assist you.

Again, that number is 970-3115.

Any staff member will assist you.

All right?

We are now to public comment.

Are there any members of the public that would like to speak?

The committee welcomes comments and questions and commits to listening carefully and thoughtfully to what is presented.

A maximum of 16 public comment time slots are allotted per meeting.

The commission requests that members of the public refrain from engaging in personal attacks against commissioners and staff members and ask their comments and questions focused on matters related to human rights within the city.

And if you are listening by phone, so you'll push, there was a star nine to let us know, okay?

All right, does anybody from the public have any

All right.

We would like to approve some minutes from March 16th, June 6th, June 20th, and June 27th.

I hope all commissioners have had the opportunity to look over those minutes.

Does anyone have any corrections, amendments, or anything for those minutes?

Todd?

Ready for it?

Yeah.

I'll make a motion since nobody had any objections or amendments to anything.

I'll make a motion that we approve

Okay, second.

Sounds good, I'll do your vote.

Ernest?

Yes.

Yes.

Mary?

Fair.

I approve.

I was not at the 620 meeting, but read everything else.

Great.

Yes, I approve.

Thank you, everyone.

All right.

Business Matter Chair update.

Really have any updates other than it was nice to hang out with Todd and Lily at the

What is that neighborhood?

Healthy streets, healthy people.

That was outside.

It was hot, but it was good turnout and good to talk to people in the community and let people know what we do as a committee and to the public.

We are one commissioner short.

So if there's anyone in the public,

that would like to join the Human Rights Commission.

You may go online to the city website and fill out a form there.

We have to do it by July 31st at 5 p.m.

So if you'd like to join us, we'd be glad to have you with us.

I don't have anything else.

Thank you to Ernest and Wolfgang for coming to Healthy Streets Healthy People.

That was lovely.

We are hosting Disability Pride Month trivia on

the 25th, which is Thursday of next week at Firefly, if anybody would like to attend.

And we do, I have the dates in there for the larger annual festivals that are coming up.

Those are usually, there's a lot of traffic and it's a long day.

And I believe that's it for me.

And I'm sorry, Willy, but that's in our packet because the dates, okay, great.

Thank you, Willy.

I was just looking at the list to try to answer that question ahead of time.

The answer is,

West Haven Day, Soul of Seaville with Brian and Sobroso.

I can probably be at West Haven.

I'll probably be like healthy people, healthy streets, healthy people.

We double dipping between bread and roses, but I could probably be there with plants.

Yeah, I'll try to fix it.

I probably do want to save the day.

But I'll let you know when we have some time.

We don't want that.

All of us descending.

Six of us behind one table.

You did not let people know.

Well, not too much.

Just a heads up that we did go to council on the 15th and presented the ordinance.

I think it went okay.

They really didn't have too many questions.

They did ask, I think they raised a question about the research bit that we said the sort of mandatory study every two years where we said, well,

We can just do the work but to say that it's a mandatory study starting on this date going forward every two years seems a little bit arbitrary so that was my explanation is that we can do the work and be nimble and like not have to be bound to this kind of strict rule and I didn't get any

No, we want to keep it or anything like that.

So I'm anticipating the second reading on August 5th.

So I'll be there again to answer any additional questions.

They haven't sent me any email questions either.

So it may just go through, in which case that would be great.

And then we'll be on track to get the approved ordinance submitted to HUD and go forth with the Fair Housing Assistance Program application, I guess it would be called so.

So that's good, yeah.

Thank you all for reviewing it and sort of going through it twice ahead of time.

That's really helpful.

The other thing is we, as noted in here, we are hiring for intake specialist position.

It closed on the 15th.

I got 58 applications.

I've read all of them at least once.

Now I'm going through them again.

And so our goal is to

Do you have a plan when you would like to hire those things and have them at last?

Well, August would be great, but I don't know like the exact date because it's completely dependent on when we can schedule interviews and then when people can start.

All right.

We usually ask, but are you noticing any trends in the

Oh, gosh.

Right now it seems a little, yeah, it's a little bit less in June.

I don't know what that is, but I don't know that I have any trends that I can point to.

We could dig into that a little bit more about like which protected activity typically is housing.

And I think we do.

Do we have any housing ones right now?

We have a public accommodations case open.

They're all down here, the ones that are open.

It's kind of a mix, really.

I did want to say one more thing.

This is Jenny's last meeting.

So Jenny's going off to grad school.

So that's exciting.

After a three-year internship,

Many, many meeting minutes typed and filed and posted.

Thank you, Jenny.

We're excited for next week.

I'm doing Forensic Linguistics at Hofstra up on Long Island.

It's been great being able to do so many minutes for you all.

It's a shame I haven't been able to be in person as much.

We've learned what the possibilities are for remote work, the amazing things we can do even from very far away sometimes.

So much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jenny.

Great.

I think that's anything else?

Am I forgetting anything?

OK.

Thanks.

So we're going to go ahead and switch over to our work session on legislative priorities panel.

Tonight we have with us Laura Dobbs from Housing Opportunities Made Equal in Virginia.

We also have Virginia State Senator of District 11, Mr. Craig Deeds.

We hope that House Delegate Christina Colson will make it.

She's trying to make it this way from Richmond.

And I don't see any of the

commissioners from the other human rights commissions around the state.

I think we do have them virtually.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, well, thank you.

Absolutely.

My name is Mike Sims.

I am the Director of the Office of Human Rights and Equity Programs in Fairfax, Virginia, and I am glad to be here today.

And Virginia?

She might be away.

Well, I apologize.

I did not know that you guys were online, so I'm glad you guys are here with us on this evening.

I would like to... All right, so back in January of this year, we had a meeting where we had Christina Colson, but I think she had only been on the job

three days she had been on the job very long and we also had Mr. Strohman that's where our city attorney and we had Mr. Lloyd Snook was with us as well and at that time we talked about some of the things

that City Council brought up as a statement of legislative positions for the 24-25 regular General Assembly session.

So, Mr. Dease, I'm going to call out some things that were brought up by City Council and you can kind of, I think some things went through and then I think some things did not.

So, and you can give me a nod on yes and no.

That passed the House and the Senate.

We sent it to the governor.

But the problem is this governor, he's against tax.

He's one of those folks whose first priority is no new taxes.

And he saw this as a way of

You know, raising taxes and he wasn't going to be he wasn't going to be for it.

And it's silly.

Honestly, my view, the sales taxes are aggressive form of tax.

It's not an ideal way to do it, but it's worked in a lot of communities to raise money to build schools.

And if it's worked in those, everybody else ought to have the advantage of it, too.

So we had a statewide bill passed to allow localities and passed the House in the Senate.

The governor vetoed it, and we don't have two thirds vote.

to overturn gubernatorial vetoes.

He vetoed by 201 bills this year.

No governor had ever vetoed more than like 150, 160 after a four-year period of time.

He did 201 this year.

All the records are broken.

Another one was continued funding of Virginia home visiting programs.

program, Tana program.

You know, I think that got funded.

I don't know whether it got funded to the extent that it was the it was want desired.

You know, there's never enough money to fund everything as much people want.

But you have your budget is kind of your moral statement of what's important.

And it has to it has to be adequate.

You have basically 140 chefs in the kitchen, 100 delegates and 40 senators.

Now I'm kind of fortunate because

I've been there a while.

I'm on the conference committee.

I'm one of the people in the room with the final cutting table in terms of what gets funded.

That was like $46 million.

Salaries for members of local governing bodies.

I think that passed.

I think that passed.

I think the governor signed it, yeah.

That's one of those things that you're never going to have enough money for.

So a little bit probably was funded, but not enough.

Amend land use ordinance advertisement laws which unduly restrict council's ability to deliberate.

I don't know about that one.

I don't know what that is.

That's tough.

I don't.

I should have known you were going to ask me that.

I'll do my homework better next time.

There is significant amount of opposition to that.

I mean, we have tried a couple of different ways to give local governments the ability to have more.

You know, for example, Albemarle County, two years ago, they wanted a bill to basically

allow them to appoint people who could attend 100% of their meetings for these advisory commissions virtually.

Their point was people have to work for a living.

This will allow them to participate and still work.

And I even think that's a bill I introduced for them.

But I met, you know, even a Democratic legislature, they're Democrats and Republicans that don't like that.

You know, and when you are a Democratic legislature, we have 21 out of 40 members of the Senate, 51 out of 100 members of the House.

So we don't have big majorities.

So you have to you have to find a way to keep all your people together and probably get some Republican votes to have a chance to get the governor decided that that's a bill that didn't go anywhere.

I think

Well, I don't know.

I think that some people will say that tenants rights have advanced, but other people will say they haven't advanced enough.

Well, we had a bill this year.

You know, I'm not on the Housing Commission.

I'm not on the committee that deals with

Disputes of the Local Government, but I am on the Committee on Commerce and Labor.

I chair that committee, and we had a bill this year to require utilities to notify, to give notice before they, give extra notice before they cut off utilities, and to prevent cutoffs sometimes, even when people haven't paid

were the service.

And so that made a lot of people mad.

But it was one of those issues that we'd been germinating for a number of years.

And a work group had gotten together.

That work group included consumers and folks from the utility world.

And they'd worked out kind of a compromise.

And we got that passed.

Well, thank you very much.

I will give you a chance to breathe.

And I'll ask Ms. Laura Dodds if you could come up and talk to us.

Yes, please.

And talk to us about your organization.

Sure.

My name is Laura Dodds.

I'm the Director of Policy at Alisoning Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.

We're a 501C

We're a non-government entity that helps enforce the Fair Housing Act, both the federal and the state fair housing laws.

So we help do investigation enforcement, help people file fair housing complaints, file litigation on behalf of people who have been faced with discrimination.

In addition to that side, we also have a housing counseling program, so we offer

down payment assistance and housing counseling for the Richmond region, as well as foreclosure prevention.

And we also have the only program in the state that assists folks who have a housing choice voucher through the Richmond and Redevelopment Housing Authority to help them be successful in placing their voucher and go through that housing surge.

So having the combine two gives us a really unique perspective on the type of issues that people are facing.

And that informs the bedrock of our policy work.

So this past year, I joined home in August last year.

I came from Virginia Public Law Center where I did a lot of similar work, but now an organization where, you know, trying to deal with discrimination is the primary focus.

And this past session, we saw a record number of pro-housing bills.

It was incredibly encouraging.

Much of that passed the legislature, a lot of it on a bipartisan basis.

But unfortunately, the governor didn't share the same priorities and vetoed a lot of those efforts, even ones that had pretty broad bipartisan support.

So it's hard to know what's going to happen next year.

Unfortunately, we have the thinking that even people who supported the legislation last year may change their vote on the same legislation next year just because of how the governor acted on the bills or thinking a bit more strategically about that.

But two of the big buckets that we have a lot of concern around are the barriers to having access, particularly the instances we see with our clients who have housing choice vouchers.

Even though Virginia added source of funds as a protected class in 2020, we see a lot of landlords find other ways to subvert those protections, in addition to outright denials.

This past year, we collected our data to see what the most common types of discrimination complaints we're hearing.

Number one is disability, which is pretty persistent, which we've seen in the past.

The second is source of funds violations, so fairly rampant.

And the third is race discrimination.

And when someone is denying someone with a housing choice voucher or any other type of legitimate source of funds, whether it's disability benefits, benefits, social security, that's often proxy for other protected classes, such as race, disability, and elderliness.

So it's kind of a triple whammy when you have someone's denying.

In the most common way, we're seeing people getting denied now when they're applying for housing.

Most large landlords these days are

Lemurs in general use tenant screening processes when they're reviewing applications.

So they're relying on a third party to do a consumer, to pull their consumer report and make a recommendation whether or not they should rent to that person.

And we're seeing a pretty heavy reliance on people's credit score, even though that is really intended to determine someone's risk of borrowing money, not whether or not they pay the rent.

and there's a lot of racial bias baked in the credit scores and it also doesn't account for people's history of paying rent on time or people have had to rely on the second year credit markets with things like payday lending, those type of things and so a lot of people are credit invisible and are harmed by this.

In particular to voucher holders, a lot of landlords are calculating their income incorrectly.

We see a lot who are requiring people to make three times their rent in order to qualify for a unit.

And they're basing it on the total amount of the rent, not the tenants portion.

We think that already that already violates Virginia's Fair Housing Law and there's good Attorney General kindness on that.

But a lot of landlords just don't know.

And so there needs to be more outreach and educational landlords that they know about these protections and how they apply.

But there's other barriers such as

Application fees, most landlords require each occupant, each person is going to be occupant in the unit to apply separately and pay an application fee.

They're allowed to charge $50 non-refundable as well as any out-of-pocket expenses.

So passing on the cost of running that consumer report a lot, we're seeing a lot more people have a hold fee.

So, you know, to hold open a unit while you apply and see if you qualify.

That's a huge barrier.

So when you have someone who may already be struggling, you know, they haven't had a good, they don't have good income, hence they qualify for a voucher, or they have some other type of public assistance to help pay for the housing, they're having to apply eight, 10 times and paying these non-refundable fees every time, which is a huge financial burden and barrier.

We've had a number of clients who have gone through this, keep getting denied without being told,

and end up losing their voucher because they weren't able to lose it in time.

One of the pieces of legislation that Delegate Kallsen, co-page in this year, would have created more transparency in that tenant screening process.

So one, the people know when they're applying somewhere what those minimum criteria are.

That way they can make more informed decisions about the type, where they're applying.

But also if a landlord denies a person, to provide the reasons for the denial.

Right now under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, if someone is making a decision based on someone's consumer report, they have to disclose that.

But unlike something like if you're applying for a loan or a credit card, in which case they have to tell you the reason for the denial, that is not required in housing.

So people are getting told that they're denied and that it was based on a consumer report, but not the reason for the denial.

And if you don't know the reason, it's hard to find.

Is this based on discrimination?

Is there an error in my report?

Those type of things.

And fortunately, we have housing counselors to help people try to navigate to figure out the reason.

But a lot of these consumer reporting companies make it really hard to get a copy of that report.

They require you to list your past seven addresses and send a copy or a deed, which is, I think, more difficult than information to have to send it for the bar exam.

Really difficult and huge barrier for someone who has already had a hard time accessing housing.

That bill did pass, but the governor vetoed it.

So we're still waiting whether or not that's something we want to bring back next year or wait another year, but it was just a peer transparency bill.

In previous years, there was efforts to limit those application fees.

I believe it was two years ago, Delegate Price had a bill that created what's called a affordable tenant screening report, such that if a tenant worked with a housing counseling agency to pull together their credit information, their past, you know, their past addresses to prove that they would be a good tenant,

If they provided that to the landlord, then the landlord could not charge an application fee.

But I don't believe that one even made it out of committee at the time.

Hey, how are you doing?

I was trying to whisper.

I was just talking about the transparency and screening bill that you co-patron this past year.

Awesome.

Yeah.

But what that bill did not address was the application of PPs.

And another huge barrier we see is the security deposits.

Under current law, landlords can charge up the two months rent, which is most people don't have that amount of cash just sitting around.

A lot of landlords will adjust that based on someone's credit score.

So someone who might already have a good paying job and have a great credit score isn't paying maybe $200 for a security deposit, but someone who doesn't is having to pay a full two months rent in addition to those other application fees.

So thinking about, you know, could we create a program that is like a security deposit fund for rush reporters that, you know,

Rather than that person having to pay up front, the landlord could go back in after the person had said if they did in fact damage the property, they could pull from that fund.

Other places that have implemented this have actually seen a pretty low utilization rate indicating that landlords oftentimes don't actually need to access that fund because there wasn't any damage to the property.

Meanwhile, you've eliminated that barrier for the tech who's trying to get into housing.

Other issues that are particular to voucher holders and the source of funds protections.

We're continuing to see a lot of people who are getting denied or the leases non-renewed because they got rent relief at some point during the pandemic, which we think is a clear violation of source of funds, but could use some clarification state law as well.

And we are also seeing issues with the current payment standards with voucher holders not being able to find something

That is, that they can actually place their voucher because it costs more to rent there than what their voucher will cover.

Additionally, with the past few years, it used to be that, you know, the whole purpose of the voucher program is to allow someone to move to an area of opportunity.

So people wouldn't be confined to that jurisdiction where they got the voucher.

They could go somewhere that might be closer to the job or to the school that meets their child's needs.

But a few years ago, there was a decision made that you could only place a voucher in the jurisdiction where the voucher comes from.

So someone who's in Charlottesville who gets a voucher from the Charlottesville Housing Authority can only place their voucher within the limits of Charlottesville.

They could not go into Albemarle County.

which really limits people's choices and opportunities, particularly in cities like Charlottesville that have a very tight housing market.

Is that a function of federal law or is that a state provision?

It's a state issue.

I think so and it was

Places, I think it was more specifically like Chesterfield because they have vouchers, but it's administered through Virginia Housing.

And they are arguing that the voucher holders from Richmond were competing with voucher holders in Chesterfield, which I think is just a little bit of a ridiculous argument, a bit disingenuous.

And it just confines people who have a voucher for from RHA to Justice City of Richmond, which has some certain racial disparities there.

And the other big issue that we're really concerned about is how do we prevent displacement, which has a lot of an area that we see right for discrimination as well.

One of the things that, you know, we had during the pandemic was the 14 day payer.

But so, you know, as soon as someone is late on rent, sometimes landlords will have a grace period.

But if they are late, the landlord will send a notice saying you have five days

Pay all of what you owe, which at that point is going to include the late fee, or I'm going to move forward with the eviction.

And for most people, five days is not enough time to get their rent together.

During the pandemic, it was 14 days, so that gave people extra time to access rental assistance or get another paycheck to try to catch up.

And there's been repeated efforts to extend that permanently.

Again, it passed the General Assembly, but the governor each had the bill.

I think Delegate Price is committed to continue to bring that back until we get it through.

The other piece, there's simply not enough subsidies for people to help pay the rent.

And there's a proposal this year to create what's called the 5,000 Families Program, which is basically a state voucher program specific for families with children.

We know the biggest predictor of whether or not someone is going to face an eviction are

Number one is do they have a child in the home, a school-aged child?

And the second is race.

So this would really address families who are at highest risk simply because they have a family in the home.

That was a pretty significant budget ask.

So as the senator mentioned, it was a pretty tight budget this year.

It didn't make it in, but I think there's going to be efforts to bring it back next year as well.

And the other effort that we had this year that remains a big concern is about retaliation.

Virginia's protections against tenant retaliation are fairly weak in order to succeed.

It only protects against if your landlord threatens to evict you or if they actually evict you.

It does not protect against harassment, which seems it should be a given.

And in order to succeed in a retaliation claim, the tenant has to prove that the landlord intended to retaliate against them.

That's a higher standard than we see in a lot of criminal cases.

and it's really hard to prove.

A lot of other states have a burden shifting method of dealing with this similar to the employment context.

You know, if an employer fires someone within like say the employee was trying to unionize his fellow coworkers and then the employer fires them.

That employee could file a like claim retaliation

saying that they fired me because I was trying to unionize everyone.

And then it goes to the landlord to have some other justification for firing the person, such as underperforming.

If we had the same standard for that as we do in rental cases, that employee would have to prove that their employer intended to fire them solely because of the unionizing efforts.

So it's really difficult.

We hardly see any retaliation claims, probably because we know they don't succeed, which makes it hard for tenants to assert their rights.

I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to who are afraid to complain to the landlord about the bad conditions in their home because they're worried that the landlord is going to turn around and defect them or not renew their lease or do some other type of reprisal, let alone file a lawsuit against their landlord for not keeping the place up.

And when someone's living in conditions that are really terrible, it's usually because they have few other housing choices and they don't want to do anything to put that into jeopardy.

So there is a bill this year that, you know, works pretty closely with the realtors and apartment managers on to come to some language that makes sense, that helps lower that burden of proof while also ensuring that the landlords have some protection.

Again, passed with pretty bipartisan supports

for the Governor of each of the bill.

So my understanding is there might be some effort to bring that back as well.

Sure.

What would be an example of an intent, finding and proving an intent to retaliate?

Would you need like an actual screenshot or an email so that I am like not renewing your lease because of this?

Yes.

Yes.

So just like the smoking then basically is what you would need to prove intent.

A landlord in Virginia, we don't have just cause eviction, so a landlord can choose not to renew your lease and do not have to provide any reason.

Now, they can't non-renew for a retaliatory reason, but that just means they don't have to say anything.

They just say, I'm not renewing your lease, no further comment.

Even if it is a response to retaliation.

I've seen these specific examples where tenants had made several code complaints and were trying to organize

had gotten the landlord to agree to slow down the increase on rent.

And then three months later, there was, you know, random six people who just haven't had the new ones met with the landlord.

All of their leases were not renewed.

But it's hard to prove because the landlord didn't say exclusively why.

He just said, oh, I just decided not to renew.

So there's not really a good way to free.

And the last piece I'll talk about is actually more affecting homeowners and helping prevent against displacement.

It's called the Low Income Owner Occupant Tax Relief.

Unfortunately, given the way that Virginia's tax code is set up, it does require a constitutional amendment.

but it would allow, if passed, it would allow localities to provide tax relief for low-income owner-occupant homeowners which really helps in areas like Charlottesville that has increasing tax assessments, increase a lot of displacement pressure.

People just cannot keep up with the increasing tax burden.

Right now, there's already the authority to provide tax relief for elderly and permanently disabled and surviving spouses

of people who have fallen in action in the military.

Yes, property tax relief, yes.

But because it's a constitutional amendment, they would have to pass the legislature next year, have an election in between, pass again the following year, and then go to a ballot initiative.

But my understanding is that

Elise Delle Carr in Richmond is interested in bringing it.

So I think there is some momentum to make it happen.

We'll see how the General Assembly handles constitutional movements more generally.

But it's, I think, something she's committed to and something that Richmond is supporting.

but I could keep going on about housing stuff all day.

So I'll stop there, but I'm happy to answer any questions that they come up and for anything that was introduced in the past four years or so, if you want a little bit more of the legislative history there for further context, I'm happy to write that as well.

Thank you.

I have a quick question.

How do we get landlords to be more compassionate?

Is there anything that can be done unsavedly?

because they have so much power.

And people and housing is such a need.

And I understand it's a way for some people to raise to build their wealth and that type of thing.

I mean, that's a million dollar question, right?

I will say, for our clients who have vouchers, they have most success with smaller landlords renting in single family homes.

It's these larger multifamily properties that we've seen the issue.

Even when we were administering Richmond's eviction diversion program, over that course of that period of time, we saw a change in the flexibility of individual property managers to assist.

less and less autonomy and more and more told by whatever out-of-state business headquarters of how to run things.

I think the only way to really deal with that is just having strong enough protections and you know having a right of protection is meaningless unless you can actually enforce it.

So you know anything that you put in there has to have some teeth that the tenant could actually succeed and work with that.

I mean, I think, you know, a softer way to approach it is also just committing more resources to fair housing education and outreach.

You know, one of the ways that we educate landlords is by suing them.

And we've had success with changing practice that way, but also, you know, educating the industry.

And we've developed pretty good relationship with some landlords who have an interest through doing trainings for them.

but that's not going to reach everyone.

Yeah.

I was just, you know, that was one of the things I thought about too was education.

But again, that person has to want to get educated or be educated in this situation.

And, you know, and you really, it's hard to ask someone not to put their house up, you know, for lease or rent or what have you.

Yeah, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether having lawyers represent tenants in eviction cases would address these issues or are the laws so substantively weak that

I think it's yes and.

You know, there's a benefit just purely from having an attorney.

You know, our court system is designed as an adversarial system.

So when you have one side who hasn't trained one who doesn't, the person who doesn't have an attorney is just going to naturally be disadvantaged.

And it varies across the state of, you know, how often a landlord has attorney versus a tenant.

But I think the highest percent I've seen of Tims having attorneys is 2% of people facing evictions.

Some areas, like if you're in more rural parts, maybe only 60% of landlords have an attorney.

But in the urban present, about 86% of landlords were in the flow of an attorney.

So that's just a disadvantage outright.

And these eviction, I don't know if anyone's been to Charlottesville to see this.

It may be a little bit different Charlottesville, but these cases happen very quickly.

And if you don't have to understand the language or how things work, it is hard to speak up and voice your rights, even when you have a valid defense.

In places that have implemented some type of right to counsel, not only have they seen a reduction in the number of evictions, but also a huge reduction in the number of eviction filings, which means that landlords are making a different calculation about whether to sue their tenant, knowing that they might have the right to an attorney and have in the program.

You know, some of the bigger drivers of eviction in Virginia are your larger landlords that are using evictions as a rent collection method.

A lot of times they aren't even removing the person from the property.

They're just using as a coercive method to get that person to pay rent, which just puts more costs on that tenant because now they're paying the late fees, the court costs and attorney's fees, which landlords always pass on to the tenant, which makes it hard to catch up the next month.

So it is a pretty partisan system that way.

The other benefit of having a right to counsel and more tenants in court, like I mentioned, you know, the highest percent we've seen in any court jurisdiction is two percent of tenants having an attorney.

That just shows you how little there's like someone presenting that side of the case law to the judge and how often they're getting these arguments from the court, which really impacts case law and interpretations of existing codes.

So if you have more attorneys, we're often making arguments and pointing to existing case law and strengthening that.

I think that'll also help improve upon substantive rights.

Things are already in the code, but judges interpreting it badly because they're only hearing from a landlord attorney and no one else.

So twofold benefits of just having an attorney in general for something such as losing a roof over your head fundamentally is important, but also

Developing the case law.

Now, attorneys also need good laws to work with.

So improving the statute is important.

Thank you.

I mean, the counseling is certainly like, I would say, top tier there because they're able to walk through that tenant

and identify when that discrimination occurs because a lot of people don't know when they've been discriminated, like that there's some civil rights violation, they just know they've been treated badly and don't know that they already have some right that they could exercise there.

And also just having that support as you're trying to exercise that right.

An important role that our councils play is educating the landlord about those protections of saying, hey, you denied my client based on this, but here's the attorney general's guidance to show that you

did the calculation incorrectly and be able to correct their behavior without having to sue them.

But also investigations and enforcement, you know, a big thing that we do at home is fair housing testing, where we send in matched pairs, one who has one set of characteristics, one who has a different set of characteristics.

We have to go out there and see if they receive the same treatment.

So they will apply to the same apartment.

One will say, I have a voucher.

The other one won't.

And who gets the call back?

Who is told that there's an available unit?

And so being able to track that and see if you can repeat it is helpful.

When we do that, we then go to that landlord or the realtor, whoever, and describe what happened.

Sometimes we can get them to the table and change their policies.

Other times it requires sending them, but it just depends on how receptive they are.

But that's like a helpful tool for uncovering discrimination.

The next person on the list is Dr. Jen Kopp from Virginia Beach, but she's having technical problems.

So if you'd like to just

If you move to the next available person and want to fix that, then you can do this.

Good evening, and thank you very much for allowing me to attend.

Regarding the Alexandria Human Rights Commission,

We submitted 34 legislative priorities.

In the interest of time, rather than to review all 34 legislative priorities with you, I will give you the broad categories.

We submitted six legislative priorities to recognize and subsequently strengthen state partnerships

with localities.

We submitted 11 legislative priorities to preserve and expand local authority and funding for localities.

We submitted five legislative priorities to protect and support underserved populations

Additionally, we submitted six legislative priorities to enhance public engagement, health and safety.

And finally, we submitted six legislative priorities to improve, promote and encourage clean energy investment.

I don't know if there's a broad umbrella, but in terms of what you did around protecting and supporting the underserved,

All right.

Regarding underserved population, we supported legislation that prevented evictions and protected individuals and families

who are housed and facing housing challenges, to include legislation to reinstate the 14-day pay or quit notice, legislation to require full fee disclosure and transparency, and to require any fee increases to coincide with the terms of the lease.

as well as legislations that will require critical lease information be made available in languages other than English and to establish a minimum amount owed for evictions filings.

Now I must say in Alexandria in our high school we have at least

15 different languages that are the primary languages of the students.

I think Todd for you and maybe

Obviously we have groups of other Human Rights Commissions here this evening.

Some of what Dr. Johnson just presented are things that we have talked about presented as well.

So one of the things that we used to talk about when the Virginia Association for Human Rights existed was similar to what we're trying to do this evening is share what each commission is currently working on because no commission can directly

bring those things forth to the General Assembly.

They all have to go through their city councils or board of supervisors in a county.

And so what we wanted to do is just know what each other is working on.

And if any of those things overlap, let's advocate for the same bills to our appropriate city councils or county board of supervisors so that they go up to the General Assembly that way.

So that's kind of the intent here is that

It's kind of an indirect coalition in that sense.

Does that answer your question?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yep.

Thank you.

And then, of course, what HOME is doing, you can't advocate directly to the General Assembly.

There are groups that advocate for different aspects, different human rights, whether it's housing, or criminal justice reform,

racial discrimination or gender discrimination or women's rights and reproductive, I mean, I think you can class follow up with women's rights.

But I mean, do they advocate for something different than that?

They pretty much stick to their specific area.

I will be happy to send the commission a copy of all 34 of our legislative priorities.

Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson.

Okay.

All right.

So before you arrived, Heather Coulson, we went over, I let Senator Dees know that you were here back in January with Lois Lugg and

I think Mr. Strohman as well to talk about some legislative priorities that city council brought it to you guys.

Now you had just been in, been like three or four days in Richmond and stuff.

So you were just getting your feet wet and everything.

So you have one session.

And so we would like to ask you what's next.

um should know about and try to get behind yeah do you want me to come stand at the podium well one thing from session is i'm feeling older i used to be better now when i get up i'm like let me just work my way up i'm gonna happen but it was sometime during session i guess we're gonna say um you've made it yeah

Yeah, so I had my first session, it went really well.

I've got freshman legislator of the year passed more bills than any other freshman, 34 of us.

Got eight bills signed, 11 bills all the way to the governor, three of those were vetoed.

Did get some of our priorities through, got the city council salary bill through.

That was actually really surprisingly hard.

Had to do a lot of meetings to get to where we raised it, at least for inflation, and we allowed city councilors to adjust as they go on.

And that's important because it allows people to serve and represent from a variety of backgrounds, which ultimately hopefully would lead to more representative government.

Let's hope for that.

So you asked about the future though, so I'm not going to spend too much time going over, especially because you had people weigh in.

Laura gave a great update on tenants.

That was a big, and so I'm not going to revisit that this year.

I am just now starting my kind of legislative packet.

I will say that

I carried a lot of foster care legislation this last year.

That was my area of expertise.

And a lot of people have given me the advice that you kind of become known for one thing.

And would you say that's fair, Cree?

Like you kind of get areas of expertise.

And so I wanted social services to be mine.

I'm not sure that it will always be mine because what instead became mine was criminal justice reform.

I think it's just the makeup of the body right now.

There's not a lot of lawyers serving.

There's no lawyer sitting right now on the House side, Democratic House side, who has been a prosecutor or done criminal code.

So that's a real kind of lack there.

And I'm the closest that they have.

So I at least have been in a semi prosecutorial role because I did abuse and neglect cases and I've been in trial.

So that got me put on the court's committee.

I'm, in a few days, or like today I guess, I'm going to chair the Black Legislative Caucus Criminal Justice Policy Committee.

And I'm getting approached by a lot of organizations about carrying criminal justice reform.

And so the biggest one that I just had a meeting on today is about a comprehensive kind of omnibus probation reform bill.

And that would be making it so that those people who are leaving our jail system, as the vast majority of them do, come back into society, have support

So that's a bill I'm working on.

That I think is going to be a big one next year.

And it's important to me.

I actually prepared notes for this, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I'm sure y'all got that big on the 1% sales tax, got vetoed.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I did want to make notes y'all because I've had a few meetings and I actually went to the White, let me just name draw, I went to this place, the White House.

Turns out they're inviting everyone.

They're doing, Biden's doing a really big push to like to bring people in.

But I went to their gun safety one and I did have a really good conversation about how Medicaid has been expanding the uses that you've been playing.

And so I just wanted to make sure to mention to you all that that's kind of a promising emerging area is that I think there's going to become a way to drill down Medicaid funds for homelessness, which is technically, you know, a health related issue and gun violence prevention programs because gun violence is a health related issue that can affect the community.

So I want to make sure I mention that to you.

I also wanted to mention electronic meetings because that was a priority I think that y'all had in previous years of making expanding the use of electronic meetings that did get passed with Bennett Parker, so there.

So yeah, my big thing I would say in broad strokes is going to be criminal justice reform probably will be where I can be the most used to you guys because I sit on that committee because I have those connections and so certainly if you have anything in that field, reach out to me.

I'm trying to think.

I got a constituent feedback from someone who wanted to, if we're talking about really hyper local issues that were brought to me, make sure that our police vehicles have a defibrillator.

All of them have external defibrillators.

So that's one that I'm researching.

Medicare to Medicaid funds for homelessness and affordable housing is another one that I'm looking into.

Update on John.

I put in a piece of bill to try to allow them to do collective bargaining.

I think there's a reading of the existing statute that they should already be allowed to do it.

It doesn't make sense that Charlottesville CAT drivers can unionize or likely bargain but John cannot and they serve the same service areas.

I try to get a legislative fix to clarify that yes they could.

It got rolled into Kathy Tran's bill which was much more comprehensive.

Expansion of that and hers died.

I'm a freshman legislator so I'm not

I guess I'm about to be a sophomore.

I'm not sure the best way to handle it.

I was actually talking to my LA on the way here and my legislative director and I'm saying I think no matter what it would have rolled into hers but it's interesting because mine's a very specific little fix and when it's part of the bigger bill it it it dies.

Maybe sometimes it's better to do the little pieces.

So I'm going to relook at that one potentially and then lastly the one one I wanted to point out with y'all and this is just the beginning.

I actually got a list of 22 different bills.

It's a short session.

We're only allowed to carry 15

So I'm not sure which will be my final ones, but one other one I'm looking into is a youth court docket, which would be a diversion program for juveniles that are going through the criminal court system.

Researching right now, working with UVOL, working with a local person who is interested in it, and I'm going to see where that can go.

So that's what I'm working on in this moment.

And other than that, I'm happy to answer questions.

I do want to say I

Kree and I opened up an office.

I actually walked to it from here.

So we have that.

You're always welcome to come by, schedule a meeting.

We're not there all the time, but if you reach out to us, we'll be there.

Yes, I know.

And we'll happy to have a meeting and talk about any priorities that you have and happy.

Thank you for inviting me and letting me just give you that thing.

So, Google report.

There's some stuff going around about criminalizing housing or being homeless.

Those are your thoughts on that.

Obviously I don't think we should criminalize on this.

Other than that, that's really interesting.

I had not, I don't think I'm ready to give, I don't have a different response because that's good.

That's something I should look into because you're right, that case just came down.

And so I think where are we?

I was just somewhere like yesterday, my time is blending together.

where someone mentioned that as an emerging issue, potentially being proactive about making sure that it's not, it was someone talking in relation to how the Supreme Court is putting so much on the states, but then it's opening up.

It was at the NOW event, it was Professor Anne Coughlin was talking about that particular one and how that's kind of the scary next zone.

Yes.

Huge issue here in Charlottesville and there are, just don't have a fix for now.

Everything's down the road, houses being built, but the issue of homelessness is not going anywhere.

And if this goes through faster than housing being built, then it's gonna make it a really tough situation.

for people and you know easy fix especially with some of the language that was heard in our last city council meeting about homelessness on the downtown mall and things like that you know that's not a fix to criminalize people that are homeless.

The fix is taking that money you would that

taking that money on things and putting it back as far as resources to help the city build housing or help an organization that has the desire or has space to put housing in place to help them go faster so they're not going all over the place to find grants and money to do that.

But I'm just really concerned about

that coming down and us not thinking about how we're going to help support people in that way.

That's important to hear.

And the good thing is we have the majority.

You can think about it.

What the Supreme Court said is it was an ordinance from a town in Oregon.

and they said that the towns have the right to do that.

The local governments can criminalize some aspect housing.

That doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

That means that you have to keep the pressure on your local governments to make sure it doesn't happen.

But that was still a bad decision.

It's like the Dobbs decision.

The Dobbs decision sent a question of abortions back to the states when you've seen what a mess has been created around the country because of that.

I mean, that's the saying, it's a bad decision.

I think it's important to bring up the point.

And I think holding, I'm going to be really, I think keeping the majority stays important.

But I think beyond that, what I'm hearing from you is right.

It's still important to be proactive on that run.

And I think that's a good position for us to take.

Let me ask, as you were talking about the probation reform, the re-entry.

So my probation reform bill, which the advocacy organization I worked with was Reform Alliance.

They're a fabulous organization.

They passed legislation in a bunch of states.

They have a great lobbying arm to help me.

And it's about incentivizing good behavior and rewarding it.

So instead of the punishment portion,

I want to give speaker Don Scott some credit.

He passed a really important piece of probation reform three years ago, which the second biggest cause of kind of mass incarceration was probation violations.

It's people who have actually served their time for their underlying crime, and then they could have a technical violation.

You know, like I didn't show up on time to my meeting, send you back to jail as punishment.

So he rewrote that portion.

That was a really important piece.

This bill that I'm thinking about is going to tweak elements of that.

And then the biggest chunk of it is now let's talk about the people who are on probation.

We've gotten a little bit of the stick away.

Now let's get the carrot there.

And the carrot is if you do the things that as a society we want.

So if you go back and get education, if you keep employment for six months, let's shave some time off your probation.

So that you're not under supervision for 10 years when for six you've been working full time, regal a degree and so that's it.

The specific things that it was like earning a college degree, getting high school equivalency, getting an apprenticeship, completing a substance abuse program, being a substance abuse counselor, maintaining employment.

Those are like the main ones.

I do think that was the old bill.

It's all very new, but my understanding is that there's going to be some changes to how we think about probation success in the coming months.

And I'm just part of those conversations as we move forward.

So that's kind of what I envision in that front.

I mean, I know of that specific bill,

Less so but it's hard because I literally just had this conversation this morning with someone that I know very well and I don't know how much is like public or not so I think there's some understanding that there needs to be a more holistic approach to how we look at success and being successful when you're outside of jail and that includes looking at those barriers.

I don't know if it's going to be comprehensive to the extent we would want or at least that I would want where you really say

If we can't find housing, how do you expect someone to do X, Y, and Z beyond that?

But at least I think we're getting to a point where we say like, if you have at least found housing, that's a sign of success right there.

That's something that we should take into account.

Because that is success, that is hard, that is something that, and you know, how do we incentivize people to do that?

If that makes sense, if that's the case.

Any other questions from commissioners?

Have they not been able to see me?

I have no questions.

Thank you, Dr. Johnson.

Please reach out if you need me.

I'm always available, happy to talk.

Thank you.

All right.

Senator Deeds, same thing for you.

What Katrina said is right.

In the legislature, if you're there while your legislative package flows by running your committees, the committees, you know, the legislative services is a full time responsibility.

We don't want a part time job.

During the session, regular session,

It's kind of a seven in the morning to seven at night sort of job.

You stay focused and the committees to really work over the bills to try to

to read them and understand them and then understand all the different sides, all the aspects.

It requires an awful lot of work.

And so your legislation kind of follows your committees.

Like Katrina, I'm on the Courts of Justice Committee of the Senate, but in the past, I was the chair of the Transportation Committee.

So you're going to see that I've carried a lot of transportation bills in the past.

I was chair of Courts of Justice Committee.

You're going to see a whole lot of criminal justice reform, just criminal justice bills that I've carried.

One thing I was chair most recently, the Privileges and Elections Committee, and so there are a whole lot of election related bills in my bailiwick.

Right now I'm the chair of Commerce and Labor, so I've got a lot of energy bills in particular that I've been working on to try to figure out, here's the thing, we're the only state in the South that's set, and this is a human rights issue, not as direct maybe as some of these other issues,

We set, we're the only state in the south in 2020, we passed the Clean Economy Act to require decarbonization of our energy production by 2050.

It's human rights because it's human survival.

This climate change issue is existential.

And we passed the bill to get to 2050.

But the reality is we're adding to our needs by the rate of over 5% a year,

primarily because of the data centers, we're going to have to radically explode the renewable energy in Virginia if we've got any hope at all to get to our production.

That's to remove carbon from energy production by 2050.

I don't expect to be alive then, but it's still a goal that we have to meet then.

And while some people might say it's too modest, nobody else in this area, nobody else in this part of the country has gone there.

So we have to get it done.

And this past year, I had bills related to both wind energy and solar.

that didn't survive because of lots of different aspects.

I appreciate the idea that even though bills get vetoed or unsuccessful, that you keep pushing them.

And sometimes you do, but sometimes you've got to figure out where your time and effort was better spent.

In the world we live in right now, as I said before, we have 21 out of 40 members of the state Senate are Democrats.

51 out of 100 members of the House are Democrats.

So we have very narrow, the narrowest majorities.

We have a Republican governor.

So as I told you, he vetoed 201 bills this year.

Four were mine, three were Katrina's.

I think Amy had one or two, didn't she, vetoes, maybe.

So a bunch of them came from this community, a bunch of the vetoes.

We aren't afraid to,

take on controversial issues, but I think we have to be smart about what we pursue because the reality is we've got to deal with this guy in one more session.

There's good news and bad news in a one-term governor.

The bad news is when you get a good governor, you only have four years.

That governor, if that governor is smart, they focus, they develop a plan of action, and they make all four years productive.

The last governor to do that, maybe the only one in our lifetimes, Jerry Belous, who was governor, elected 85, and served 86 to 90.

He was the best.

Very methodical in the way he did it.

The good news is that the governor, the good news from one term is the governor's a lame duck from the moment he's elected.

Because he can't run for reelection.

And his power, his or her power diminishes from

the moment they take office.

He's in his fourth year.

Why should I fear Glenn Youngkin?

Why should I fear the governor?

Why should anyone fear the governor?

There are Republicans in the legislature that want to do the right thing, that are not terrible people.

And I think that there's always a possibility to get bills done.

We just have to be smart about what we work on.

I've taken the last number of years

I chair what's called the Behavioral Health Commission deals with another aspect of human rights, the rights of and service for people who struggle with mental illness and substance abuse.

And my legislative agenda has been jammed with that the last 10 years.

And I am jammed with that as well this time around.

working to try to figure a way to develop more services.

The goal was to make sure that Virginians, no matter where they live, have access to the services they need to be able to live the best life they can.

My view is, I don't really like the word disability.

I just think it's differing abilities.

Everybody, every person has a right to live the best life they can.

We've got an obligation to try to make that happen.

The other thing I do, I'm on the,

Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

I think I told you in the beginning I was on conference committee and so I'm in the room with the final process of putting budgets together.

I chair the subcommittee on health and human resources.

The largest part of the, from a dollar standpoint, is health care and human resources.

And so I'm

You don't see as many bills from me sometimes that relate to that because I'm carrying budget events.

And a lot of that internal process is making sure we have the right, we've got the right amount of money to pay for things.

You know, for example,

You know, we've just gone through this unwinding of Medicaid.

During the medical emergency that was COVID-19, people didn't have to requalify for Medicaid.

We saw, we projected, our Medicaid rolls swelled over 2 million people with Medicaid.

We saw hundreds of thousands of people coming off the roll and we projected

A certain amount of money because budget's built on projections.

Well, back in the winter, what we knew, and the governor wouldn't go along, and neither would our friends in the House of Delegates, but what we in the Senate knew is that our projections were off.

Part of the reason was people that were coming off Medicaid were going back on.

So we set aside $150 million in our Senate budget to try to cover the shortfall that we knew we were going to have.

And I think we finally got the governor and the House to recapture people to agree to a $95 million reduction.

But we found out that our shortfall at the end of the year was $140 million.

So we were pretty daggone close to what we needed.

And to try to figure out how to factor the right forecast for Medicaid in the future is going to be an issue.

I'll give you another example.

We worked for a number of years to provide a dental benefit for adults on Medicaid.

The reality is the mouth is the gateway to the health way.

We have a benefit for children.

Other states have benefit for adults.

We didn't.

We were going on the cheap.

So we finally got that benefit.

We were having a meeting with the committee down in Abington.

A dentist was talking about the virtues of this program.

And I asked the question, how's it affecting your practice?

He said, oh, no, I can't afford to take that cake.

We had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what kind of increase in the reimbursement to this benefit we just created that we sent providers back into the market.

So the whole healthcare field is very complicated in terms of funding.

But I'll be focused in that area and focused in mental health.

I'll probably also be working on some campaign finance reform and some election of all, which I hope didn't come in the past.

It'll be a bit busy session, that's for sure.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Johnson.

No, just thank you very much.

Awesome.

Senator Deeds and Delegate Colson, thank you so much for your time on this evening.

You gave us a lot of information.

and Lawrence, Ms. Dodds, thank you so much.

I might need to talk to you.

We might know some people.

But this was a, this is kind of what we wanted to hear and to know how we want to begin to craft what we want to send to city council.

Community, please be able to look, if you're listening, please be able to look out for something coming, hopefully, that you can help us as far as weigh in on what you heard on this evening.

It's gonna happen.

Yeah, we're gonna try to put some out to the community so that if they re-listen to the cast tonight,

They can send us information for questions that we develop so that we can get a better idea.

What the community is saying, and not just us, because it's not just us.

We're only eight, seven members of the community, of a larger community that has more issues and things that we don't know about.

There's a lot of times people that are going through, don't come to these meetings.

Those that have more control are the ones that are here.

But the people that have the issues of going through those things do not attend.

And so I understand that, and I want to be very constant in that, that it's not just what we hear or what we think, but it can be helpful from a community standard as well.

I really appreciated the presentations and hearing from other folks and I think you know for me it really reinforced that we need to continue to focus on housing and homelessness as issues that are really crises for this community.

You know the combination of

How expensive housing is and the weak laws protecting tenants is a pretty powerful combination for evil.

So thank you.

And also trying to figure out a way to educate.

You know, not just those housing, but also landlords and so on.

I mean, you know, not to say that they would do it, but just to

Find a way to hopefully then do it better.

And that's ethical as some things we hear that go on.

So if everybody's good, you guys are good.

Yeah, always welcome.

Yeah, all right, yes.

And we thank you guys.

We do have to do public comment, don't we?

Yes.

Oh, OK, stop.

So we have more business to do as a commission.

We need to check out our work plan to make sure we are on board.

Is that a work plan?

Thank you.

Thank you, Lily.

So we are right now in July the 18th.

We've had our legislative focus meeting.

Let's see.

Public hearings.

Good question.

So what we've done right now, we're kind of in the middle of the ordinance changes.

We want to see where we get with that, if we can get through those ordinance changes.

Which is kind of radically changing how public hearings will work for you all.

I think at that point is the time to like start to look again at what

What training opportunities you might need, because it may not be as complex as before when you had to think about introduction of new evidence, cross-examination, all that stuff.

So yeah, that's something still pending.

We had talked to somebody previously who might have been able to train through that whole process, but now we could retool a little bit if the ordinance goes through.

So we have a work session on August the 1st.

I will say right now, let's go ahead and do that.

So we'll see you guys on August the 1st and Thursday.

And right now we are set for being here that day.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then on the 15th, we'll talk about the 15th on the 1st.

Okay.

Anything else coming up that I can see?

No.

Okay.

I think we can tell by anything else if it's on the first.

All right.

Confirmation of next.

Yep, we want to do that on August.

Is there any new business?

You mentioned the polls turned out to the public.

Still crafting it.

All right.

All right.

Should be out next week.

Oh, for sure.

OK. Never deny extra hands.

OK.

Extra eyes.

OK.

Awesome.

Matters of the public.

No, I would just like to thank you very much for inviting our commission.

I appreciate the invitation.

Thank you.

Nothing?

Alright.

Commission updates?

Nope.

Alright.

Next steps, we'll see you guys on August 1st and be on the lookout.

If you would like to have any input on the poll, we'll send it out to everyone so you can have input from one packet as quickly as possible.

Okay.

Alright.

Thank you, Ernest.