Human Rights Commission Work Session Meeting   8/1/2024

Good evening Charlottesville and good evening commissioners.

I'm glad all of you are here on tonight.

Tonight we have on our agenda is a work session.

We were talking about, but we'll talk about it.

So let's go ahead and do our roll call.

Ernest.

I'm here.

Okay.

Here.

Mary.

Here.

Charley is not here.

AD is not here.

Suzanne?

Here.

Heather?

Here.

That's it.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Let us recite our mission.

That sounds so good.

Thank you very much.

Well, members of the public participated virtually.

If you experienced technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-3115.

and a staff member will assist you.

The number is 434-970-3135.

All right.

Sorry.

It's like a running joke.

Yes, it is.

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

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

Each speaker will have three minutes to speak to 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.

in person polling, okay?

So we don't have anyone, it does say members of the public in person attendees polling.

We don't have anyone here in public.

So we're gonna move on to our work session.

All right, so we are here tonight to draft up our legislative agenda recommendations.

For the last couple of meetings, we've had people come in.

I think we'll see we had someone come in on

Just two weeks ago.

It doesn't say the date, I missed the date.

So July 18th.

July 18th?

So April, was that June 3rd or was that June 26th?

Oh, that's right.

So we had,

We had some local individuals come in on June the 6th.

That was Brett.

Shouts for DSA.

Home.

And the year drill, Crecy.

Yep.

And you're gonna remember.

Yups, and then

Do we meet on July 3rd?

I think we had legislative members come in.

That was, is that Laura Dobbs from Richmond?

She was here.

Dr. Elizabeth Johnson from Alexander Human Rights Commission spoke.

And then we had Christina Paulson spoke and Senator Clay Creedy spoke as well.

Okay.

We had a chance to look at the information that was brought up that was stated.

Then you can see one commonality that I did see was the 14-day, reinstate the 14-day payer.

Pay or quit.

Pay or quit.

Was one that I did see that came back over and over again, both locally and

from the state organization that came.

Laura Dobbs from home.

Yeah, spending $14 then pay or quit to a permanent status.

Another that intrigued me was the Fund 5000 Families, which is a state voucher program specific to families with children.

I thought that was important as well.

Ernest, could you just repeat the last thing you said?

The other one that I liked was the Fund 5000 Families, which was a state voucher program specific to families with children.

that was brought up by Laura Dobbs.

Laura Dobbs brought up from home brought up at limited, tapping or limiting application fees.

And we saw that as well in the public comments that came in.

And I think in that same, it's not said in the same grouping, this is on my phone, I did read it yesterday, but I'm looking at my phone right now.

But there's something about like in terms of an umbrella, like limiting security deposits, slash like

like not connecting credit scores to the amount of deposit, right?

Yeah, that was brought up about the fact of tying credit score to ability to these rent

It goes along with the limitation of application fees, but having more transparency in the tenant screening process.

Yes.

Which would allow a tenant to understand if they may not apply if they don't meet the criteria for the application.

Yes, I like that one as well.

I have a little more transparency in the process.

I think also the...

I mean, we all know this, but how do we...

Right, I haven't gotten to that.

Oh, sorry, sorry.

Elizabeth Stark.

from Childsville DSA and Lara Dobbs talked about various reasons why someone's lease could be ended and may not need to, like the bar for approving retaliation is so high.

And most tenants advocate for themselves may just, their lease may be ended and it'd be almost impossible to prove that that's retaliation.

I think instead, Lara Dobbs suggested

The tenant rights piece was very, felt like it continued to come up in terms of, yeah, without the fear of retaliation, understanding, right?

Like the transparency, right?

Like there's that whole,

Virginia has a particularly weak landlord tenant law and a number of cities that are top in the country for eviction rates.

That continues to be, I mean, Charlottesville is a small city and it doesn't rise to that level, but Richmond and several of the Tidewater cities are among the top, have a tax eviction rates because our

tenant protections are very weak.

It would be interesting to find out how do cities handle the issue of retaliation?

How do they do it differently?

Because in this case, we're in Virginia.

Sorry, not cities.

But in Virginia, the tenant actually has to prove that the landlord intended to harass them and retaliate.

I mean, that's incredibly difficult as a part of me.

All right, so can we do some headings with, like, starting with tenant protections?

What are the things under tenant protections?

And we could,

I think it makes it difficult and a person will get discouraged to even try if there is no real opportunity, meaning

If they have all the roadblocks, why am I going to continue to try to go after a household placement if I have all these things up against me anyway?

I guess the question for this part of the process, are we at this point looking for things, we're looking for things that we want to present to council that to advocate for in legislative groups.

Not shake that to the city that the city should do.

Yeah, I don't know what, that's sort of what I would really, really have evidence to city council that they will, that they were,

Either add to what they're gonna do or take what we have and take that and send it.

Yeah, I mean, you can provide state level legislative recommendations.

If you have city policy specific recommendations, that would be a kind of a separate pitch from you all, and you can do that as well.

So under the umbrella of tenant rights and protection,

The things that we've talked about, right?

Like being able as a tenant to address issues without fear of retaliation, creating limits for security deposits.

That's something that Roy Fitch said.

I don't know if the 14-day payer quit comes under tenant rights.

The transparency does.

It definitely does.

Right now, it's a five-day payer quit.

If you don't pay within the five days, then you can proceed with an addiction.

I think particularly the having the lease non-renewal as of as a basis for

Retaliation is really important.

There was a whole packet of tenants' rights bills that passed and were vetoed by the governor.

Do we have those bills written down?

And second, maybe this is the same thing, but I thought I remembered Elizabeth Starr talking about the rate of renewal, not just as a retaliation thing, but that there should just be a blanket right to renew

If you have not done something that you should have the right to renew without tying it to retaliation.

I thought he said 203, but for some reason.

You have 203 in my head.

I know.

Aren't you just drawing a line down the page?

A record number.

Heather, I don't know what you and I were listening to.

I was on Zoom.

Did we mention making Section 8 vouchers usable in jurisdictions other than the issuing jurisdiction?

And just to clarify that because we asked for some clarification because that was a major issue down in the Richmond area because there was a county that

wanted to restrict because people in Richmond were going into that county whereas yeah and so yeah I can see the the value of just rescinding that.

Fortunately here you can take your Charlottesville administered voucher into the county and use it so it's sort of I guess the enabling legislation allowed it to be the locality's prerogative whether or not to allow it but so far you know currently

Albemarle said no, but yeah, I guess it reserved the right to do so as long as this legislation exists.

That was our understanding, right?

I found the list of vetoed bills.

Okay.

One House Bill, page 17, was continued residential landlord and tenant at the home block at the retaliatory.

And it passed the House and everybody, I think, it was one of the ones that was vetoed by the government.

And it says, adds newest actions to the list of prohibited and torrential actions by a landlord and incident under the Virginia residential minimum and tenant tax.

And that will be mapped.

Yeah.

Bill less vetoed by government.

That was one.

There's also something else that Delegate Kallsen talked about, which I don't know if this went forward or not, but she was talking about allowing the use of Medicaid funds to fund homelessness.

House Bill 9580.

598 was the one from the five days to 14 days.

Most of that was put forth.

OK. And it was passed in both chambers?

So it sounded like several of them were actually passed in both chambers.

Is this list of the bills, is this something everyone has?

Virginia's legislative, if you go to, all I did was punch in Virginia Housing, Virginia Housing Deals, I think it's the one I typed in.

And then it gives you Virginia Legislative Information System.

Okay.

If you go to L-I-S dot.

Okay.

And then you can go to 2024 session and build Let's Veto.

Okay.

And there's another one that was retailed, House Bill 993.

It was one of the famous landlords subject to the Virginia Legible Landlord and Tenant Act from a private tenant to pay any fees for the maintenance or repair of any unit subject to such an agreement unless necessitated by the tenant's violation of the requirement of the act.

paying fees in the periodic rent payments.

Elizabeth Stark had recommended create an option for payment plan, which was included in one of the bills that was vetoed, establishing a periodic rent payment option.

Do we want to

Do you want me to, like, type things?

I love typing things.

If you would like to type things, you can type away.

It might be nice to have, like, an introductory paragraph about the importance of

Yeah.

And that's, I mean, tenant protections is one of the headers.

Right.

Is there anything else under tenant protections?

How many tenants do we have?

Sure.

To me it makes sense perhaps in this environment to encourage city council to broadly support bills that

will increase housing supply and support tenants rights.

It may be giving some examples.

because honestly the way the legislative session works and we're not close enough to the ground to really know like what's really going to rise to the top and you know what I mean?

And so I think maybe what Mary's suggesting as sort of overarching, we deeply believe that this is an important issue for these reasons.

And we hope you'll, you know, we urge you to support bills that achieve these goals.

and say these are some of the specific examples that were provided by knowledgeable community leaders.

You know what I mean?

Do you think that they know about issues like

The back of transparency in terms of a tenant or a potential tenant not knowing why they were rejected.

I think that's a good point.

I think about what made last year's, I mean, obviously the vetoes are frustrating, but we did have success with

People sponsoring things that were suggested.

And I know that those were pretty specific things.

And so, yeah, I appreciate the idea of like, this is the global issue, this is important.

But I think at least giving them a bulleted list of specific things that somebody could craft a bill around might be helpful.

Just because it echoes maybe what other specific things people are saying from

like home or legal aid or whatever.

So that it shows that there's kind of a common interest.

I don't know.

I don't know if I'm- Yeah, that is actually what I would think.

Yeah.

But so yeah, making sure that the similar language that we were hearing is repeated and, you know, like you said before, especially if we're going to support things that were vetoed before and we're hearing that from other

Agencies, just to make sure that that specific language is in there.

So council, cause I don't know that council has, I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And this is pretty deep in the weeds, right?

Like, and so I, you know, city council members may not know.

I mean, I think we're being, we're being educated.

Yeah.

I agree.

The bandwidth of, you know,

housing, trees, sidewalks and trying to be a master of all of those different things makes it very difficult.

I don't know.

We have a lot of ideas and

Nuts and bolts terms.

I have shared a working document with all of you.

You should have a link and ability.

It should be in your inbox.

Let me know if you don't have it.

And there's ample space for an introductory paragraph.

Right now, I'm just writing bulleted lists of the things that we've highlighted and putting them on here.

appropriate categories.

Right now, tenants rights.

And you also can look on the

Okay.

and probably logged into the one.

Maybe it made it kind of analog.

So I've had it agile individually as opposed to the, there we go.

Oh, yeah, we're streaming.

I don't know how top secret it is, but I was going to like hand signal it to you.

Do you have the reason?

Do you want me to send it to you personally?

I can do that.

Would you send it to one?

I'm sorry.

That's fine.

Can I pull it up?

Yes, I can do it.

It's marybauersoo.

It's just an awful lot of B-R-S-U-E-S at gmail.com.

Okay, somebody's in there.

That was so strange.

Okay, so I'm typing Mary Bauer and it was, yes, okay, but it was also typing that on the page.

Sorry, sharing absolutely.

It's not one of our recommendations.

Mary Bauer, Suze, S-U-Z.

M-U-E-S, Suze, as in Suze people.

You have, it's old.

It made it so secure.

I'm allowed to share outside of the city.

I think having triple stank Wi-Fi actually, which is like a whole other issue.

That's a shame.

We can do it in like a Google Doc too.

We can also take a look at it tonight.

Yeah.

You're in.

Yeah, I'm not in either.

It's like, is that Ernest?

This is a reinforcing function.

I don't think we need to do this right now, but I think

We need to explain what this whole pay or quit means.

Just because, like, it's easy to, you know.

It's like a quick summary.

Yeah, just as of now, this is what, you know, these are the protections tenants have.

I think we just, you know, tenants are given five days to pay.

Right.

Or an eviction proceeding can be commenced.

I mean, honestly, a 14 day pay or quit is a really short period of time.

So we want to stop attendance, right?

There's a little bit of a cost of entry or... Yeah.

Like there's an umbrella, I think it's smaller,

Oh, is that under tender?

Oh, then we can just use that.

Okay.

Let's just use it.

Yeah.

So transparency.

Okay.

Yep.

That's true.

Yeah.

Just access to housing.

We currently have a limitation of application fees and tenants' rights, but it is your point that they're not a tenant unless they can access the housing.

And so maybe access to housing could be another one.

No, tenants' rights and access to housing.

Right now we only have one category and it's just tenants' rights.

Another one of the recommendations came from Elizabeth Johnson was that we're talking a lot about transparency and rental agreements.

Do we have the, I almost think my screen got frozen.

The, the language, the suggestion of, of information being made available in multiple languages.

Is that, did that actually go into the document?

Okay.

Refresh.

Yeah, it's like there's the barrier to entry issue and then there's security once people are in the housing.

I don't think it's a statewide issue, but let's talk about it.

I just don't know enough about like, I was looking at all the legislative stuff.

Well, if you go back and look at the page that with the individuals that came that were here from this, from here.

Yep.

What I think I don't know is from a legal perspective and from a who's on first perspective, how many

Two things that are at the state level.

Katrina Kallsen points one and four, section four point B.

So one bill that she's hoping to champion is to support comprehensive probation reform that would offer more support to people experiencing reentry.

I feel like that's connected to homelessness just because hopefully the form of support would take the form of access to housing as well.

And then she's also researching out the potential allocation of Medicare and Medicaid funds to addressing homelessness and affordable housing.

So knowing those are already upcoming would be helpful to the highlight.

So you don't have a bill, but a champion.

What is funding, Todd, for homeless shelters, homelessness?

Like is that a state thing?

Yeah, a lot of it's federal funding.

So the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless, the Chayla Rhines, is the sort of pass through for funds that come from HUD,

I think maybe some through CBBG, but also others through HOME, HUD-funded funds that end up in localities based on your population.

They're supposed to be used for

Some of which is used for other things, but the home funds I think are typically used by the COC to do work to try to combat homelessness.

They also get donations like the non-profits like The Haven and Pocham are also getting private donations and grants as well.

But I don't know that any state funding.

I think there is some state funding.

I think I could actually ask that question.

Because we actually have an employee here that used to work in the state office that approved state funding for COCs.

Yeah, so I think you were going to ask.

We all have legislative bills that do not have a homeless bill of rights and some other states do.

I guess I'm curious if the 5,000 families voucher program would be considered homelessness prevention.

Face the Salvation Army, reporting that an increasing number of families are experiencing homelessness and limited capacity to respond to that.

So it's tangentially related.

I'm fine just keeping it in the other category.

It provides rent relief provided to families on a monthly basis to keep their rent affordable for the long term, will empower families and their children by providing them with a stable home.

Interesting.

So in terms of 5,000 families, what would our ask be?

I mean, it looks like a great program, but are we saying that we want it to be financially supported?

I know this bill was brought up.

Let me look.

I don't think it exists yet.

I've never heard of anyone who has a 5,000 families voucher or anything like that.

All I've ever heard is the federal and locally funded voucher.

Here's an establish the 5,000 families program.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the language on the website, it's good.

Well, under action on the website, the only action it has, it says is no longer something they want us to do.

It says donate.

Is there something about donating or no?

Oh.

Oh, OK. All right.

Okay, and is Virginia Housing Alliance?

So it was just a power program.

Well, I think it was, I'm not sure if it really was even a pilot program.

I think it was a bill that Senator Hashmi and Delegate Koiner put forth.

I mean, I have that.

Yeah, it says, you know, it would invest $100 million in the future of Virginia students and families, but I don't think...

Not at the state level.

If you go out to

48.

I think that's pretty good for only being up for one week.

What's that?

More truly affordable housing for individuals that are below 80%.

They don't have shelter options for families.

There's also something in there, not only about the expansion of overnight options for families.

I don't know if I saw it for women too separately, but also low barrier shelters is another thing.

So, well, Haven doesn't do overnight, but Salvation Army has a higher barrier to entry for people in terms of being allowed to stay there than perhaps Haven, you know, for folks being able to come in.

So everybody here has a question one, question two.

Support the development of these services for those with mental illnesses and such as these.

There are also some that are quite a wide set of needs.

Yes.

The top three that I listed out are the ones that were most frequently selected.

So in the responses are the

This was like the funding of 5,000 families.

It was tied with a kind of fine voucher for women.

Does everyone have a chance to go down and look at the answers to question five?

That's a very bad proposal.

Yes, some of them are great public.

Yes, there are many.

There are great ideas in here.

You are a waste of publishing.

You people just, yeah, we're not pleased.

On public records, we're the reminders.

I see someone specifically writing about a lack of restrictions on the landlord's ability to refuse renewal.

Yeah.

I feel like it could have come from one of us.

Could have come from one of our panelists.

I will say that two of the things that we had named as our primary focus area as a commission, shelter and wraparound services, are both embedded into the comments from the community.

Oh, sorry.

Should we add some?

Even if general pre-deeds had written in reporting, maybe you can press my memory.

The comment says support the development of increased services for those with mental illnesses and substance use.

Doesn't say if that was a bill that was proposed in the past legislative session or if it's upcoming, but

I think there was some that he talked about for upcoming.

Upcoming?

Yeah.

Maybe we should include that?

Yep.

I will make a category.

Are we talking about city stuff right now?

I'm still thinking state.

For that one, yeah, it feels like that goes into the state.

And this would also be for the city as well, right?

Yep.

Yep.

I think a couple of things that I thought about when reading these comments were one, I think this is a project that you all are doing somewhat in-house in terms of what is happening in terms of access within the city.

A lot of it is around what are the going rents for one, two, three, and four bedroom apartments in large multifamily complexes?

Are they at, below, or above voucher payment standards?

If they're above, when did they change?

And was that concurrent with changes in state law that said,

You'd have to accept a voucher, things like that.

And also looking at state of maintenance on units.

If a unit is in a certain level of disrepair, it won't pass a voucher inspection and therefore systematically excludes all voucher holders because it can't pass a voucher inspection.

And are people, my Lord, maintaining units

at a state of disrepair so they don't have to rent to bachelors when they know they have a market that's cornered and they will be able to rent the unit regardless of its state of disrepair.

So that's kind of the thing that we're trying to look into.

It's complicated.

The note I wrote here was shining the light on landlords.

So OK.

So yes, at some level.

Work in progress for sure.

It seems like hard research to do because how do you find out about these places and are they in a state of just, I mean, would they be on some sort of list?

Like the place has been rejected?

Collaboration with the voucher administrators to see what data they're collecting in terms of things that are coming back that didn't attach.

By which I mean vouchers that they issued, people went out, searched for their 90 days and couldn't attach to a unit.

What places did they try to attach it to?

What were they told?

Did things not pass inspection?

Was the price too high?

That kind of stuff.

So a little bit of that is collaboration with voucher administrators.

It's a work in progress.

Like I think that for us, that would be collaborating with Charlottesville Redevelopment Housing Authority and then potentially talking to Albemarle County Housing as well, just to see if they have any of that data.

And if they don't, is there a way they can start collecting it so that we have some sort of information bank to base this off of?

And then

And do you, you know, if somebody goes out and they spend their whole 90 days and they never find anything, is there a record of that having happened?

Like how many people have vouchers and try to use them?

Sure.

That's what we want to know.

So you have to find that, because that's just... All that we have to find out.

That'll be really good to know.

We don't know if it's the... And the challenge right now is that that was something that we were working on initially when Shiloh got here, but now Shiloh's case is still working on.

So we're looking at who can we partner with to help us with that research at this point?

you know effectively with individual complaints so yeah that's another thing to keep in mind yeah we haven't forgotten about it for sure so the work of the commission is working they are doing individual complaints that was a statement made in the feedback

It's hard to see sometimes.

I know.

And we don't see those things as a commission unless it goes to that point.

Anything else?

We have a lot.

No, the 15th.

Between now and the 15th, we need to look at that and scale it down and, you know, get a, I guess, a paragraph or so to this why we're doing and what are we proposing as far as state level

Okay.

Because in September, I was just looking at the work plan.

You have the regular meeting on 9-19, you talked about discussing the focus areas, city policy recommendations based on the same panels and research that you've done.

All right.

So that means that we can do the legislative stuff,

Exactly.

Yeah.

And timing, timing the policy recommendations on October was strategic because that's when the budget process really starts in the city.

So that's why, and obviously you got to get the legislative, not agreements, legislative recommendations and earlier, cause they do that before they work on the budget.

So we have to get that to city council.

So we'll work on that so we can make the vote, come up with the adoption of what we want to send to the state in our next meeting.

and then a meeting in September on the 19th and we'll talk about the citywide recommendations.

What are we doing?

Good question.

So what

That was held a little bit around the idea that what is our ordinance going to look like at that point?

I guess we'll know Monday, hopefully, what our ordinance is going to look like.

I need to think about a little bit more now that we've kind of restructured that.

I don't have anything set up yet.

I had some preliminary conversations with a potential trainer

Earlier on in the year, I was like, well, we don't really know what we're training on yet.

I think that, yeah, not ready yet.

So I think we'll maybe wait on that.

I want to talk maybe with the team a little bit more about what that could look like and maybe with you guys as well after the ordinance passes, like knowing what's in the ordinance and that enforcement section, what do you feel like are the gaps in your knowledge?

And then we can talk about who we want to bring in.

Thanks for reminding me about that.

All right.

Anybody else?

Thank you.

I think we have done a good work tonight.

Thank you, Wolfgang, for taking long notes this time.

And thank you.

Lots of time.

Anything else?

I just want to note, I have friends who are landing at some point.

on 815 in the early evening.

I may not be here, but what would be helpful for me to know prior to is if we are concerned about quorum, I can come earlier, like for the earlier part of the meeting, if we want to vote on anything.

And then, so I just want to name that piece.

I think ideally it would be clear that you voted to adopt a recommendation to council.

Yeah, it would probably be good.

Here's the thing, you make it easy on me if you do the pre-work and then

Since we've largely decided on what recommendations we want to present with some polishing, could we vote on it now?

We will clean it up and we'll turn it into.

Yeah, make it shiny and nice.

Yeah, we'll come back.

So no need to rush.

We'll have a quorum.

We'll have a quorum.

We'll do it.

We'll do it.

And if we have to do it another day,

No, we have those work sessions at the beginning of the month.

OK, fair.

OK, vote.

We're all right.

I just think that we're just getting, having a motion, doing something, that type of thing.

So we're good, we're all right.

Hope you get your Saturdays, what's your good day?

If you can come out, not everybody wants.

I can be there for the first portion, but I can't be.

If you do come out, then it's more than three of you.

To be clear, you can be in the same proximity to one another.

It's okay.

You can talk about the Commission to residents.

It's not that hard, really.

All right.

So again?

Oh, last public comment.

Do we have anyone?

Yes.

If you would like to speak to the Human Rights Commission, please click the Raise Hand icon.

And if you are joining by phone, you can press star nine.

Each speaker will be allowed three minutes to speak.

Nothing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you for your time on this evening.

I'm excited to see all of you.

And have a great rest of your week.

Thank you.

18th.

18th.

18th.

That's going to be a busy evening for you.

Yeah, 15th.

Yeah, see you.

Yeah.

Ready?

Yeah, I'm done.