Human Rights Commission Regular Meeting   9/19/2024

Can you start messing with it?

Okay, instead I have two of me.

Ah, there's the room.

Okay, great.

All right.

Thank you.

It's the room.

It's these cameras.

It's that camera.

It's on.

I wonder if we can switch it.

To the back of Ernest?

To the public.

You are invited to come and attend our meetings.

Amazing.

Thank you, Lily.

Very good.

Cheers.

Appreciate that.

I would like to call the meeting to order at 6.35 PM on Thursday, September the 19th of the year of 2024.

So we would like to do roll call.

And I always do roll call.

I have traditionally done roll call by first name.

Is everyone OK with doing that?

OK, that's how we'll do.

And I read the chair and vice chair first.

So Ernest?

Here.

Wolfgang?

Here.

Mary?

Here.

Great.

Jason?

Here.

Thank you, Tom.

Now the next thing we'd like to do is on the back of your tent, you have our mission statements.

So we'd like to say that all together as awkward as it may sound.

But we'd like to do that in unison together.

Nice echo from Mary.

To members of the public, if you are participating virtually, if you experience technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-3115.

I always get those last four numbers mixed up.

Again, members of the public, if you are attending virtually,

or by phone, you're having technical difficulties, you may call 434-970-3115.

Since we have no one in the space, as far as public comment, do we have anyone online other than Mary?

All right, so we don't have any members of the public online, so we have no, so we have no responses right now, so.

First I just want to take a moment, not yet.

I want to take a moment to welcome our new commissioners.

We are happy and excited that you put your application in and it was accepted and that you attended orientation.

And we're glad to have you here.

What I would like to do, and I'm going to give this to all the commissioners because I know we kind of know each other person, but I'm going to ask the other commissioners to be involved in this as well.

Music group.

Favorite book?

I am Ernest Chambers.

I am a physical education teacher for the City of Charlottesville at Brennen Moran Elementary School.

My favorite group, I would say, is God.

That's old school, it's probably in the 80s, early 90s, group called God.

And favorite book is a book called This Present Darkness by a writer by the name of Frank Peretti.

Alright, my name is Wolfgang Keppley, pronounced they BEM.

I have been a sociologist and demographer.

Starting next week, I'm going to be a data scientist, so it's a fun shift.

Wow.

Yeah.

Favorite group?

I love Nico Case.

Not really a group, it's one person.

And she's coming to Charlottesville in three weeks, so not a sponsorship.

Book,

I love anything that Donna Tartt writes about the secret history, the gold finch, and she's a Charlottesville local.

Is she?

She lives out in Cruzay.

I did not know that.

Very sort of private secret.

Me?

Yes.

Let's do it, Mary, next.

Kathryn Lahn, I am a member of the nursing faculty at UVA.

I direct the forensic center for the emergency department and focus on gender violence research in my research role.

I actually don't listen to music.

I told you, there are no fun facts.

There's a fun fact itself, I think.

And it was a really novel.

I'm getting some book recommendations.

Jason Melendez, my day job, legislative and political director to our delegate Katrina Carlson.

Yeah, you might recognize me sometimes.

I'm a little bit modest and behind the scenes and quiet.

I usually prefer to be that way.

But yeah, that's my day job.

So yeah, so favorite

our favorite singer or favorite music group.

I'm also going to take the Wolfgang route and go for one person, which I'm going to choose Jasmine Sullivan.

Favorite book?

I can't really I don't know.

I can't really nail down a favorite book.

Cool.

I'm Heather Roberson Gaston.

I research and write about human rights, primarily

in the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia.

And these days I am a PhD student in anthropology where I'm continuing to do that thing just as an anthropology PhD student.

My favorite band, I mean, these days there are fewer bands.

So like, I like Beyonce, I like pop, all that kind of stuff.

I don't read fiction, so it's like everything is nonfiction that I read.

I'm reading these really great Michel Foucault lectures right now on neoliberalism that I'm really, really enjoying.

for my dissertation.

I do.

I mean, it's good to enjoy your work.

You know, dissertation topic you don't like, you know, that would be so anyway.

I don't know why you drink the water.

That's not right, Sam.

I'm not a commissioner.

The public is calling the phone.

The public is calling the phone.

You have to go.

I'm Lily.

I am the outreach specialist for the Office of Human Rights.

And I was an English major, so I pretty much

Can't tell you my favorite book.

But I can tell you I'm currently reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which is a recommendation from Todd himself.

And music, I pretty much like anything that I can sing in the car.

Hey, Mary.

Okay, I'm Mary Bauer.

I am a lawyer and the executive director of the ACLU of Virginia as my day job.

Music, I don't really have a favorite band, but this week, and I don't even listen to her music this week.

I'm liking Taylor Swift for obvious electoral related reasons.

My favorite book is I have a little bound copy of the United States Constitution, and I like it.

So can't think of anything else either.

I think it's kind of a bad answer, but that's it.

Thank you, Mary.

Todd Niemeier, I am the, what am I, the director of the Human Rights Commission.

Yes, thank you, sir.

I don't know if I have a favorite...

I like a lot of music.

Music is... here's a fun fact.

So by recommendation from Lily, I bought tickets for my daughter and myself to go to the Sabrina Carpenter concert because I would have missed that entirely and blown it as a dad.

But I am now going to you.

It's going to be fun.

So she's fun to listen to as well, but it's even cooler that my daughter is excited about it.

And I'm going to take another daughter related

Thanks for the books.

So my daughter is really into the Warriors books, you know, the cats live in the woods and like fight each other and stuff.

So I'm reading those books now.

I am behind my daughter because I've interjected some other books in between the Warriors, but she likes to be ahead of me anyway.

They're good stories.

Sort of a little violent though.

We love cats.

I have Suzanne Lynn, CAT fan.

Are you a scout lady?

I am a child scout lady, actually.

Band or group, so many.

I, like Lily, I like, I just, I bailed out stuff.

I'm a terrible singer, but I just bailed out music.

I will say I have a deep, deep love of Lyle Lovett, who is, yeah, Austin or Texas guy.

Anytime I can see him, I do.

And then books, I am a voracious reader, but one of my favorite books was All the Light You Cannot See.

It's your turn.

Yes.

All right.

I am Dawn Lawson.

My full time job, I am a family empowerment coach.

And then one time I do work with at risk children in the foster care setting or maybe possibly a risk of going to the foster care setting.

Music, like writing music, R&B, pop, you know, love, love Michael Jackson, Prince, listen to some Rihanna, you know,

Growing up, I can't just pick just one, sorry.

So growing up, you know, I did sneak into my dad's records, you know, and, you know, really love like some of the old stuff.

So I love like Smokey Robinson.

I love Sam Cooke, Otis Rutton, Jackson Five, Salistics, a lot of the old stuff, but also some new stuff, you know, like, you know, Miss Brown, you know, Rihanna and

My gosh, so I listen to a lot of new stuff that I do.

Love Motown.

Hi everyone, I'm Elizabeth Stark.

My pronouns are she, her.

I am

the eviction prevention case manager at Piedmont Housing Alliance as my day job.

Music, I have a pretty eclectic musical taste.

I was getting some looks from my child who's here about the Sabrina Carpenter concert though so now I'm looking pretty bad because we don't have tickets for that.

But I have listened to a lot with my daughter.

And also my other daughter is a cellist at CHS so I listen to a lot of

Her piece is because I feel like I have to know them to know, you know, otherwise it's just all sounds great.

So, so I do a lot of that kind of musical listening.

And then I would say my favorite book that I've read in the past few years has been The Bone Clocks, which is a David Mitchell book.

It's kind of in the Cloud Atlas like universe.

But it was really beautiful and has a really beautiful portrayal of kind of like the

kind of like our world, but if it just unraveled a little bit more and kind of what that would be like.

And I read it during COVID and it really terrified me.

So it was really powerful.

Bone clocks.

Bone clocks.

Well, thank you guys.

I know that was like a little terrifying, but a lot of times,

Hopefully get to know each other.

There are times when we get together en masse, we kind of have to have a public notice and have to be careful of talking shop and stuff like that.

So again, thank you for us getting to know each other a little bit.

And I'm glad that we have such a variety of talents in the room, because that will definitely help our work.

So it's nice to have someone that's involved on the legislative side to kind of say, hey, you know, this is da da da, or we'll be talking about housing.

Don, your ability to talk to us and help us with families because that's a big thing too that's out there that you know some of the families that are don't have places to live or have a difficult time getting housing you know because you know

I see that a lot, especially in school setting where kids open up, they sort of have to be evicted or just moving into a space or they're bumping from school to school to school because they're with this family member today, this family member tomorrow, that family, so.

So good, I'm excited and only to add on to the talents that are already here.

So thank you, thank you for your commitment and time.

Let us go ahead and approve the minutes from August the 15th.

That was our last meeting.

And the new commissioners, if you read the minutes, if you abstain, that's fine.

Can I ask a question actually?

Are we supposed to abstain if we were not at the meeting?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I've always, I've wondered that for much longer than I have been.

I'm glad I've asked a year and a half later.

You're always learning.

You're always learning.

You do not feel pressured to.

So, all right.

All right, ready?

So the motion is to, we'll vote for the eight, 15 minutes first.

Okay.

Do a roll call vote on that.

Wolfgang, please.

Dawn, probably will abstain.

Suzanne.

Approve.

Jason will abstain.

I think I should also abstain because I've missed about the first 25 minutes of that meeting.

I hope that that's OK.

I mean, I trust that they're fine.

I was here for most of the meetings.

I just missed the very beginning.

Yes, I mean, I do approve.

All right.

It was, right?

What's that?

From orientation.

Sorry about that.

So that would just be, guess what, you guys get the vote after this.

I don't know why I put regular meeting.

I meant, yeah, the special meeting.

Yeah.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes from the September 9th in-person meeting.

Great.

Yeah, you were there.

Okay.

You get to vote as well.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

You were there.

It was your orientation.

It's confusing.

Jason.

Approve.

And Elizabeth.

Approve.

OK.

And just as a procedural note, if in the future you read through the minutes and you decide that I have wildly misrepresented something that

took place, you can either email me or just say so in the meeting and I will fix it.

Just so that everyone knows.

Thanks to Lily for taking minutes over, right?

Yeah, my iPad is not...

Chair update.

Just thank you God, thank you to the commissioners.

Thank you Lily for being at West Haven Day.

We'll ask about those when Todd does his updates and stuff, okay?

and the office minutes.

Other than welcoming the new commissioners, I don't really have anything new.

Again, thank you to the commissioners for getting the legislative stuff out and getting that back to Lily and getting that to

to, where is Juan Diego?

Juan Diego did send a return email to us.

So thank you guys.

We'll do that tomorrow.

Our work is not done.

We still have some stuff to do dealing with things, policies here in the city that we're going to try to tackle as well.

Okay.

So yeah, that's all I have as far as Sheriff Gates.

Office.

Sure.

The outreach report is largely the same as it was last time because there are a couple of sort of ongoing projects and we have new audience members, so I figured I would just repeat them.

But we now have our complaint brochure in

Six languages in addition to English.

And I'm working on trying to determine how we can best get that information out into the communities that speak those languages.

So if anybody has any thoughts or input or ideas about how to conduct outreach for those audiences, please let me know.

And also I'm working on a new brochure and some other outreach materials related to newer protections for pregnancy and childbirth and related medical conditions, particularly in employment.

Whatever you feel called to do.

That would be great.

Or if anybody wants to think through if there might be like a presentation to make or some sort of other way to make those protections more widely known and understood.

We can talk about that.

Does that answer the question?

This Saturday, we will be at Sbarroso, which the time says two to nine on here.

I believe it's now one to 10pm, which is quite a long time.

I'm not sure that we will be there until 10pm.

If you'd like to coordinate getting those guest passes, we will need to talk about that ahead of time.

And then there's one more event in there, which is Saturday, October 26th, which may be some version of a Latino health fair.

All I have for that right now is the date.

And I will let you know when there are more details about that.

Thank you.

Okay, so I'll pick up from there.

Thank you, Lily, for that.

And just for folks new on the commission, a standard component of our agenda packet is this monthly report from the office that gives data about the individual service that we're providing,

The outreach that Lily's been working on, some administrative updates, those kinds of things.

And it also has a table at the bottom of all the things that the commission has done so far this year in terms of trying to realize its work plan that it develops during the annual meeting.

That's a permanent fixture in each agenda packet.

We try to keep it updated, the data especially, each time that we put this out.

So if you ever read through it, have any questions about what any of that data means, just feel free to send an email, reach out, give a phone call.

Happy to talk you through it because there's a lot of numbers in there and sometimes it's a little bit hard to understand what it's telling you.

Just to maybe also bring this up for new folks, we've talked a little bit in orientation I believe about we're pursuing a federal work share with HUD called the Fair Housing Assistance Program and what that is in a nutshell is

It's a work share agreement with the federal government such that fair housing complaints that are jurisdictional to our office, so those that occur within city limits of Charlottesville, that would otherwise go to the Virginia State Fair Housing Office or to the federal government, just because that's how somebody found a way to complain.

would get referred back to us and so we would be handling any jurisdictional complaint if it was received by a state or federal agency here in house.

So that's exciting.

It also comes with some training opportunities, some funding for capacity building, good things like that, and some

Just general support from HUD to be a better enforcement agency for fair housing.

So it's exciting.

We have the big thing that we just did back on August 5th, we submitted our draft revised ordinance, human rights ordinance to the city of Charlottesville with all the provisions I think that we need to finally get into this work share.

It's been a big work in progress, like three years.

I think we've been, we've revised the ordinance twice now to get

to what they call substantial equivalence to federal fair housing law in our local ordinance.

So that's a requirement of entering into this work share.

So crossing our fingers that by October, we will hear something from HUD that says you're in and we start with an interim certification.

which gives us three years to sort of build capacity before we become fully certified as a Fair Housing Assistance Program or a FAP which is not as appealing of a word to say but it's kind of fun.

In any case you'll also note in the administrative updates that we talk about the potential for a Fair Employment Practices Agency work share and that would be with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that's the federal agency that enforces

Anti-Housing Discrimination Law.

That's kind of on hold while we deal with the other work-share agreement with HUD.

So both of those are things that we are mandated to pursue by our Human Rights Ordinance, but they're both big projects.

So we took on the biggest one first, which is the housing one, and the next one would be the employment one.

So there's that.

Next big news is that we have a new intake specialist in the office.

Her name is Lauren Harris.

She started on Monday.

And she's doing great.

She is currently drinking from the Firehose of Information.

That is me trying to explain all the things that we do and how to work in the city.

But she's doing great.

She's taking it in and learning quickly.

Super excited to have her here.

That means we have a full team in the office again, which is tremendously helpful because

Lily and I have been fielding the intakes and not doing it as well as we'd like because it just gets overwhelming sometimes with all the other things we got to do.

Where did she come from?

Oh, she's tremendous.

Yes, it's OK.

Sorry C&E.

I was there the other day and noticed she wasn't on her team.

I didn't think much of it.

OK.

Yeah, she's extremely personable.

She's going to do a great job in the very sensitive interface that has to happen when people will come and bring complaints to the office.

Yeah, really excited about that.

Yeah, real lucky.

Other person update is that we are going to be working with a UVA student from the Batten School who's working on a master's in, what is it, an applied policy project or a master's degree in public policy.

Grace Macon, Systemic Housing Barriers,

You know, basically the length of time of a school year to research and then ultimately analyze and give us some policy recommendations.

But kind of cool, right?

We haven't done this before.

So new, new track.

Maybe if this works well, maybe we can keep it going like each year.

That'd be kind of nice.

So, um, other things.

Let me try to scroll down here.

We, yeah.

Ha.

Complicated thing.

I'm going to call attention to you if you go down into the active complaints.

Page.

We've got a bunch of things in pending alternative dispute resolution, which is great.

We also have a committee that has reached determination.

And while it's under legal review in the city manager's office, there is a likelihood that we'll come for a vote as to whether or not you all will hold a public hearing, which on a case of, what's that?

Yeah, yeah.

So this is a finding of reasonable cause.

So in cases that when there's a finding of reasonable cause, if both parties don't agree to pursue alternative dispute resolution or some other sort of resolution, it comes to the commission for a vote on whether or not to hold a public hearing.

Now, glad we just discussed that.

However, this case was filed under the ordinance that was passed in 2013 by council, which means technically those rules apply.

So I'm talking this over with city attorney's office to say, what is your discretion on what rules you use to run your public hearing?

What is the opportunity for the two parties to maybe come to an agreement as to what rules they want to use?

So things like that.

So under review at the moment, I'll have some answers.

And when I do,

I will pass along a redacted case file to you for review.

Fair warning, it's going to be in the vicinity of 350 pages with all the evidence, but that doesn't mean you have to read deeply all the evidence.

The evidence is there for reference.

What you will really want to read is the investigative report, which is basically the summary of the evidence, the determination, which is, that's the finding, and then a little bit of response from the respondent in terms of the findings.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

I think we want to be timely about it.

You know, I would present them to you.

The other questions I have is what if that is

needs to be disclosed in an agenda packet versus what could be considered private.

It's going to be redacted.

So in some ways we could release it.

So I need to figure out the timing of release.

How does that go?

Does it need to be an agenda packet?

Can I just send it to you?

All those things, all those details, this is all new.

We're going to work that out.

But what I can say is that you have, what is it?

Fourteen day, I have to look it up in the audience.

I'm going to mess this up.

There's a 14 day provision in there.

I believe it is, you need to schedule, you need to announce that you're going to do a hearing.

You need to set the date within 14 days, something like that.

I can't remember what, there's a 14 day provision in there to read.

I'm going to tell you what it says because I don't want it in this quote.

And I'm going to quote the 2013 ordinance, which is that provision remains the same in the current ordinance.

But let's just read it from the one that applies to this.

And by the way, for everyone, if you want to see any version of our ordinance, they're all five, four, five, five versions are on

The City's website on the Human Rights page.

It's not too hard to find.

I can't remember which tab.

Look at that.

We have a zone section.

Okay.

So let me find it here and just give you that number just so you can have it.

But you found it already?

Oh, the day.

Gotcha.

Am I not finding it?

The notice and statement shall be served no later than 14 days prior to the date of the hearing.

That's what it was.

So once we schedule the date of the hearing, we need to give somebody at least two weeks, basically, to prepare for that.

OK.

That's that.

Stay tuned, stay tuned.

And again, if you want to read a little bit about what that old ordinance says, it's on like page six of the old ordinance, section 2-439.1, Enforcement Authority, the Role of the Commission.

Yeah, the actual hearing is open to the public.

That said, we've seen examples of partial pieces of hearings

I just want to make sure that he gets what city attorney to make sure we know what is suspected of us in that.

meaning that if we do, if it is public hearing, what are our parameters as far as when that happens?

So we know for sure what we are supposed to do on our side of it.

So as soon as City Attorney lets us know, we'll let you guys know.

That's all I have.

Thank you, Todd.

As you see that, if you go back and look at that summary, it gives a lot of information about contacts, who's been to the office, who stopped in, the numbers, and what have you.

They usually peg us to do that in June of each year.

No, that was something that was on this stuff.

I think you came to the annual report as well.

I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, so we'll do another one.

We usually try to get it done before your annual meeting in March so that you guys can use that as a reference point.

So more fun to come.

Any questions for Lily or Todd?

One thing that has been very important to me has been trying to make sure we have a work plan.

I've been with the commission for about six years now.

I haven't had six years.

And it always seemed like we were always spinning our wheels or we were getting caught with having to have something put together and having to

spent a lot of time in meetings putting it together.

If we would have been taking steps toward that, we could make things more streamlined.

So that's why we have a work plan.

Page 45 in your packet.

And that gives you what our primary focuses are, our secondary focuses,

and then also if you go down, it gives you what we have done.

It gives you what we have done and it helps us check off what we've done, next steps and things like that.

So we are in September.

We did not have the public hearing training on nine

True, true.

Now it seems like we may want to do that.

I just made a note about that, yeah.

I don't want to do this unless, let us get information from the city attorney that said we need to do this.

And then we'll use one of our early month meetings.

Not necessarily, because part of what we're trying to figure out is which process we're teaching.

And that was the reason I was like, why are we going to bring somebody in to train us on public hearings if we don't know which system to train?

Because if we're not- Because we changed the ordinance.

Oh, because- Yeah.

All ordinance on the new- Okay.

Yeah.

And so in this case,

Yeah, we may need to know what, how to carry out the old ordinance.

And so that's why I want to talk to city attorney and potentially we work with them to do that training because they could help us work.

That would be nice.

Yeah.

So we're to be decided, but yeah, I know it would be great to have done it, but it's also better and helpful to have trained in the new way and then do the old one.

Exactly.

So today we're supposed to be discussing the focus on the city policy recommendations based on early panels and research.

And then our action between the meetings are to amend the HRC rules and procedures regarding elections, language around annual meetings.

All right.

If you go back up, you can see what we have tackled

We have time to start back in February.

Oh, start in March when we had our annual, I think we had an annual meeting when we did it in April.

And all those, you know, all those things you can see done, done, done.

So, so now we are on policies from the city.

Yeah.

Do you have anything for us?

Yeah, because we already, I mean, when we were talking about the bigger legislative recommendations, there were some that we knew were more localized, right?

Yeah, there you go.

Just not remembering those off the top of my head.

Can I just ask, and I know I asked this question before so I'm sorry you may just need to answer it for me again.

We had that meeting where we talked to a person from the Salvation Army and then we sent a follow-up letter.

Do we have absolute clarity on their policies around gender,

et cetera, our concerns.

And I'm thinking of that in the context of talking about city policies and the fact that the Salvation Army is going to be taking an even larger role in addressing homelessness.

I am not sure as far as I know there has been correspondence back and forth, but I don't know where.

There was supposed to be a response back to us, right?

Because we said we support the idea of more housing, right?

More shelter.

But we also feel like we need to make sure the Salvation Army is meeting the city's own human rights principles around

Providing care to people in same-sex relationships, transgender individuals, et cetera.

Could I add one more thing to that?

Yes.

I believe

that they also can require identification to stay at the Salvation Army shelter.

And when I got this news, it was presented as coming from like the organization itself, you know, the higher ups.

And there was some back and forth as whether like someone who was undocumented would, you know, like they need basically what I understood the policy to be after quite a bit of back and forth was that they needed to be able to verify their identity.

So they had to have some kind of documentation of their identity.

Yes.

So the letter that was sent in requesting additional information, there was a letter that was sent.

And I think the conversation ended there because they address a lot of our concerns in a very positive way.

One being

Are they providing adequate services for transgender individuals or are there barriers for those individuals to access their services?

And they mostly built on about plans for the future building, the eight beds that will be available for the future building.

They're currently constrained, but the plans are designated for members of the LGBTQ plus community and will have more capacity to serve them at that future point.

We may want to still work on advocating now

They addressed the language access policy, sharing the contractor that they use for translation needs, not relying on family ties or Google Translate for translation in the moment.

And they also addressed our concern that the conversation that we had, the language was clunky and we struggled.

And they recognized that and said that their intent was not to cause harm.

the ways that they train their staff on the language that is should be used that we are all learning all the time how to be more affirming and supportive and had some other other things in there that I thought sounded open positive.

So that was sent to Jessica our former chair last August of 2023.

Seems like there's a space that we could in my take is that we could do more to advocate currently but we are I think we're already doing that too to like make sure that housing is available

or whoever needs it as the lowest barrier possible to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

So there was a letter that was sent following up.

That would be great.

Thank you.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I was going to ask, is that a potential, I don't know if it's a legislative recommendation,

You know, asking the city to reinforce human rights expectations for anybody providing housing in the city.

I'm not quite sure.

It doesn't really fall under legislative.

It seems like a policy.

Yeah, yeah.

But reinforcing that policy.

So if you, you know, if you're thinking, I think this is a great track to take, given what you shared in the email with the Daily Progress article, you know, there's active discussion about creating low barrier shelter in which Validation Army and Pacham are partners, right?

That's, that's a discussion that Sam is having with those partners now and where, how that comes to fruition is going to be

Really important, like what are the aspects of this that we really want to see from a human rights perspective?

It is one of the reasons we timed city policy recommendations to hit in October-ish, November-ish, is this is when budget season is happening.

And so if the city is going to make a financial commitment, city council is going to make a financial commitment to this project, wouldn't it be great to say the commitment that we make to fund this is tied on the assurances that we know that, you know, you're going to have

Good supports for people who identify as transgender or gender diverse, people who have disabilities, people who speak different languages, all those things, like put those in your recommendation letter.

I think what I think may be clear is that we do want additional emergency shelter and we do want low barrier, but we also don't want, yeah, we also want it equitable.

We don't want to create other barriers unintentionally that we've taken away others,

Let's make sure we're not creating new ones.

So I think that's a pretty solid policy recommendation.

What would you need?

Can we go through other possible policy recommendations first or?

Sure, you should and certainly could.

To then understand like all the things that we might need to craft.

So we're in the road.

I'm on the brakes.

Are you accelerating ahead?

First, I'm saying get in my van.

I have a big van.

Great.

So I will share a document with you that you can all see that we add things to.

Good.

Let me see it.

I can't recall the other things that came up when we were talking about the state legislative recommendations.

Sorry, no.

I thought when we were talking about state, I thought some things that came up.

I can't remember if there are specific things around landlords or access or things like that that actually had, like I said, I don't have my regular notebook with me, so I'm feeling a little lost right now.

But we had some things that we were like, that probably doesn't fit in the state.

It fits more in the city.

We have a long form document that we edited down.

Yes.

And if it would be helpful, I could also email you the summary of the conversations you had with on the expert panel.

And I don't know that we started the document.

We didn't put anything in it.

What's that?

So I've got a notebook with some really good stuff at home.

Yeah.

Like I don't think we're starting from scratch.

Elizabeth, question.

Since you work in addiction stuff, concerns.

You pay and then they check your credit to see if you qualify for the house so they'll have you pay a fee.

You know, could be three, four hundred dollars and just to see and then, you know, just to hold, quote unquote, hold the spot.

Right.

I don't hear that.

I want to say this.

That is a possibility.

I'm trying to think of the process of one.

I had one, I mean, I know some of the families that work where they get vouchers.

So with that, and that's the whole issue with that.

So because they have to pay the double fee and then if they can't, if they need a voucher, how are they supposed to pay?

That's just still in the hole.

So that's not really helpful if that makes sense.

So I do know sometimes they have to put down like a deposit or not deposit, but they do have to pay for the application fee.

And then they're,

and then they check the credit.

I feel like it can vary.

I don't necessarily, so I'd be able to double check on that.

I think some of the problem is like when some of them pay like some like a fee that there's money that just came to mind that they actually paid like for um put down a paper for the four apartment

but it wasn't even up to date.

Like there was some like housing issues, like it wasn't even livable in it.

So it didn't even pass suspension.

So it was like, how can you take their money?

And the thing about it is like, because this person has a voucher, the assistant's gonna come house, he's gonna come in there and check it out.

That was actually one of the issues.

It's related to that, that we were talking about from a systemic perspective.

Again, that's probably a state level issue, like to be able to, or even federal issue.

But when a landlord maintains a house in such a state of disrepair that it can't pass inspection for a voucher, then it systematically is excluding all voucher holders, right?

Because no voucher holder that applies to live in that apartment

can live there because it won't pass inspection, whereas somebody out in the community who also deserves protection from bad conditions can just rent it.

So yeah, again, I think from a city policy perspective, I don't know if there's much we can do.

That becomes more of a looking at systemic issue perspective, which we're working on.

I attended a talk, and I can't think of his name right now, but the executive director of the Richmond Eviction Lab.

And it was a really interesting view of

Kind of like that market fixing rental software, you know, that was exposed recently and kind of some of these really like systemic moves that landlords are making to decrease the availability of units.

For instance, some landlords are being pushed toward pushing tenants toward 11 month or 13 month leases.

to stagger when units become available.

So like, you know, in Charlottesville, we all know it's like June, July, August, that's when there's a huge moving, but it's like, if you stagger it, then there's less availability for tenants when they need it or strategically keeping units empty for the same purpose.

But one of the things he highlighted that's very low hanging fruit is that a lot of landlords are adjusting

and slowly shifting the standard language in leases.

And, you know, one thing that I think that could be really useful to the community would be, I mean, it's harder, it's, you know, a lot of this is in the county where we have these huge corporate serial victors, but having some kind of resource

to look at leases and say, hey, this lease says this and this.

Now, most people are so desperate for housing, they'll sign it anyway.

They don't have any leverage because they just need the place.

In that vein, should we bring back up right to council?

So my understanding was that like a certain amount like 60,000 or something was allocated.

It wasn't right to, you know, we called it right to council, but turns out it wasn't right to council.

And then we tried to call it something else like

Universal Representation said it wasn't universal and it really relied on the capacity of some institutions.

So what is the state of it now?

It was initiative that we talked about, I think back in 2020.

of drafting a resolution to council to request that we have the right to council, right to, specifically for individuals facing evictions to have legal representation paid for by the city.

Well, it went forward.

The city went forward, put money in, the county never matched the money, and then we had this.

So we never followed up.

Yes.

And I think that was COVID money that I think was a one-off, but I don't think that's perfect.

Yeah, I think it was two or three years of funding, but it was at a very low level in terms of, I mean, it was never reasonably calculated to provide representation to even, you know,

So question, going back to this, because it's been a while since we've thought about it.

Is there state level legislation that enables localities to do, I don't know, make that a mandatory thing that every tenant has

You know, like in criminal cases, right?

Like, how does that work?

Right?

I don't and I don't know the fields.

But, you know, we have, if you go into a criminal case, unrepresented, and you meet certain financial guidelines, then you have right to an attorney, right?

So appointed by, you know, that this is a state funded attorney.

So my understanding is that localities in Virginia probably don't have the legal authority to enact an ordinance that says you have a right to counsel.

But they could functionally do the same thing by providing funding that would, you know, in a contract where an organization would agree to represent all tenants, right?

They could achieve that without an ordinance.

So how would you, if you were to bring it back to council again, like what do you think would be a new strategy to make that more effective

And how would it be funded and ultimately, I guess, staffed by attorneys without putting undue pressure on like LAJC and CDLAS?

Yeah, I mean, it would have to be a lot more money.

That's just the reality of it.

It would have to be a lot more money.

So I think we could go back to council.

I mean, we could counsel with the CIL and talk about it and ask about the status of it.

Any other questions?

It would be.

So we should have localized recommendation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe some of the 2130s.

Sometimes that can be an issue, especially if some of the residents feel like they speak up on something, they're maybe being retaliated against, and they're being threatened with the 2130, and some of them don't know their rights.

What is the 2130?

This is where they give them, like, this issue they give them so many days to fix something, or they're threatened with eviction.

But they're feeling like sometimes, like, this landlord or whatever, they're feeling like they're abusing the power.

If that makes sense.

Not much, but do you think that what you're talking about is important?

And I think

Understanding the reasons why people are getting those and looking at.

So I think it goes back to state level legislative recommendations, which we also do.

And I think if you're seeing those things, keeping some notes on that to bring that back, you know, in the middle of next year, because that's when we start to gear up for making state level recommendations, but 2130 kind of

Guidance is usually under the Virginia Residential Landlord Intended Act, which is state level legislation.

So yeah, if you see some specific things, like there's things in that law that could or should be changed around 2130s, that would be a good one to hold on to.

So don't forget that.

I'm looking at the notes from

for the minutes from the August 15th meeting.

I'm the only one that, yeah, the outreach specialist was one.

I would speed out this year.

I think that's correct.

For people experiencing homelessness?

Yeah.

I think that hire is in process, though.

But I think, yeah, just advocating for that money to remain available for that position is not a bad idea.

Sheila Brack, I'm pointing because the term desk is right over there, is actively interested in hiring that position and being the agency that hosts that person.

But I think funding, because they're nonprofit, is always an issue.

So ensuring that that money is available for whomever is willing to take on that responsibility makes a lot of sense.

Lily reminded me of a thing that I can't remember where it came up, but I think it's a good one because it's a direct city policy thing.

And this would be around equitable city holidays.

So that respect different religions, different practices.

30 of your agenda packet about halfway down the page there is a comment submitted by a member of the public about I think a way that they had seen holidays from work and leave for holidays used and I think that that would be

I like that as well.

I'll bring up the issue of, so there's a lot of advocacy around

Affordable Housing at the very low income level.

So building and some of that work is coming to fruition with new construction.

One of the things that could also be something to look into and recommend to council to put some attention to is the building of housing for folks

what they call it.

I wrote it down because I always forget the acronym that fit in the Alice population.

So that's like people who are asset limited, income constraint, but employed, by which I mean folks who cannot access vouchers, live in low income housing tax credits funded for subsidized housing are employed, but don't make enough to pay

High market rate rents.

And so they get kind of stuck in the middle and they usually, you know, move out to other places.

So these are often people who are in the like 50 to 80% AMI bracket.

Alice.

So asset limited income constrained, but in that void.

And one of the things that really comes to mind for me about this is that how many city employees might fall into that bracket.

So is that above what's in the new zoning ordinance, which has a lot of language around that like 60% AMI?

The missing middle, the muddy middle, some folks will call it.

I don't know what to do exactly with that other than to say, Hey city, when you're thinking about

The benefits that you provide to your employees and maybe pay structures also think about the fact that in our current housing market, many of your employees are falling in that bracket.

And are there policies that you could enact to lessen some of that rent burden or ease the blow of that?

I don't know what those would be, but I think it's an issue

And also that could, this is an unverified statement, but it could hypothetically be affecting people in a disparate way that reflects other

It's a little vague, but if you want more information on that, let us know.

I know

Ashley has some interest in this.

I know she's been doing pulling some data on it about it.

Is it related to city pay scales?

There is some of that.

It's complicated because everybody's pay went up a bit.

But it's not quite keeping up with the housing costs.

And it is a challenging situation where

You know, at the state level, we're trying to get policies that may help, you know, pie in the sky policies like rent caps and things like that to keep- Deeply affordable housing.

Yeah, keep rents from going so high.

But while those, while we don't have that, are there any policies we can do?

Because you can't really solve the problem through increased pay at the city entirely because you'd always be trying to play catch up.

So what are the, are there any other creative things that can be done to alleviate that pressure?

And I don't know.

I mean, it's a,

It's a question.

So putting it through your mind.

There just needs to be housing built.

And I think that might be what it is.

Housing that's being built needs to be built in a way that it is affordable.

Yeah.

And that means it needs to be smaller and denser.

And not going to all UVA students.

So it's kind of a

It's kind of a realization of the new zoning code, right?

Like make sure you're consciously implementing.

And I know there's a work plan coming out around implementation of the new zoning and comp plan stuff.

I have heard, but I don't have solid information to present here, but

that there is confusion among developers about what really the zoning code requires and that there aren't as many applications under the new zoning code as would have been expected.

But you have heard that.

So, I mean, you know, we could maybe have a conversation with the planning and zoning, somebody from planning and zoning or request that the city

and Puppet's efforts to really explain, okay, this is how the zoning code works and this is what's required.

Yeah.

Right.

I think we'd want to bring in somebody from,

Planning and Zoning.

We wouldn't really want more.

So I think somebody like that, maybe the livable Seville guys would have good information too.

Yeah, I saw.

So maybe the neighbor could ask her to.

Ernest, Mary has her hand up.

So this is like a really interesting and robust conversation and it seems very appropriate given that we have new board members.

But I do want to say that I think we do our best work when we're like

Focused on a couple goals and like, you know, we come together in the work planning meeting and we kind of say, these are the things we want to accomplish.

So I guess I'm just urging us to not try to do a hundred things and to try to do, you know, one or two big things and to think about that and identify what those priorities should be moving forward.

And I don't want to curtail the conversation.

Thank you.

And I hear you.

I think right now, what I felt like we were doing is trying to get out what are some of the things that we could get information on, some of the things that were going to make a difference as far as

We get into city council that it's heard and it's supporting what's going on in the city right now with housing.

I don't want to do put anything in place or send anything to them that because we've had many

Individuals come in to talk to us about housing and the need, not just locally, but statewide.

So I want to make sure whatever we give to city council, one aligns with that.

And that's the people that have been here to let them know that they were heard by us so that we can get that information to city council.

So that's my concern of getting the information.

So where are we now?

The ones in bold, I bolded because there are things we've either discussed before that could be concrete policy recommendations or things that are currently in progress, such as the homelessness service outreach coordinator position.

But we want to make sure that those things continue.

And with budget season coming up, it's a good time to make those policy recommendations now.

So can we do right to council for individuals facing the vision?

We could ask them to do it at a level that would actually guarantee all tenants in eviction proceedings, a lawyer, right?

Okay.

Right, so as and I have not done personal legal research on the on the deliverable aspects of it.

My understanding is that localities cannot enact a legal right to counsel, right?

It can't say like everyone is guaranteed the right to counsel, and that's enforceable.

But they can allocate as much funding as they want toward that goal.

How about the homelessness services outreach coordinator, we definitely want to send that back to them, especially they are still working on hiring that person.

And something new was the rotating of the holiday for employees.

Anything else?

Not finalized at all.

We could just have a conversation about that.

I can email a couple of people.

But I mean, I take Mary's point.

If we think that we have those two or three things to be laser focused on, then let's go for those.

I wouldn't put zoning issues that probably the Planning and Zoning Commission, maybe that's really their area.

I really like the idea of localized, the illusion of access to council because it is a large movement on the criminal side statewide to increase access to council.

Sounds like we should draft a letter.

We want to draft a letter separately from the right to counsel.

We keep calling it right to counsel.

What should we call this?

Maybe you could call it right to counsel.

One of the big barriers with the program though that, you know, what the limited program that was implemented was the capacity of legal aid organizations.

And that capacity has just dwindled further.

So that's really something to keep in mind that it might be something that like before we press for this, we might need to speak with partners at, you know, CVLAS and LAJC and say, I mean,

You know, could you do this?

And I really think, you know, they each have sort of mandated clients that they work with.

I don't know if you all are aware, but it's like CVLAS.

You have to be below the poverty limit to work with them.

And that might have even been something I brought up to you all when I came to present because the Venn diagram of people who can afford market rate rent

and make below the poverty limit is like a sliver.

So many people are being left behind in that model.

And then LAJC focuses on LIHTC and voucher holders.

So again, huge swaths of the market rate population are being left behind and that's primarily who's being evicted because they have the fierce protections.

So kind of seeing how, I guess even talking to those potential partners about what is possible

I don't know.

Mary, this might be a question for you.

Does it have to go through one of those partners?

I agree that we should talk to the legal aid programs.

I would argue that they are the appropriate recipients of that funding.

And it also has a mandate as well.

In this letter, and it feels like more of a separate letter than a bullet point in a list of local policy recommendations.

Maybe we make the list of local policy recommendations, but also have this as a separate initiative.

I'm seeing nods.

Great.

Okay.

Same idea.

Anybody else excited about that?

You want to be my letter?

So a specific letter for that.

Can't we send them a letter and say, here are things we'd like to focus on.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so it would be four policy recommendations.

The equitable low barrier year-round shelter, effective right to council.

We will follow up.

Homelessness service outreach, coordinated position.

Keep funding it.

And can I just say about the shelter piece?

Can we say we want to make sure they are foregrounding the need for that shelter to respect the human rights ordinance of the city?

Yes.

Yeah.

Maybe we will be following up on this as well.

Sounds like

We did sort of draft regarding the overnight shelter back early this past summer.

I think it was mostly predicated on the whispers.

The city was going to make that building that used to be Seville Bikes into a homeless shelter at any moment.

And so based on that context, it needs to be redrafted.

But we did start something and that's linked in that document.

Anything else that we need to touch on?

Do we need the October 3rd?

Is that the third?

Do we need the October 3rd meeting or just something that we can do, email us?

We know they want to publish your rates.

I don't know.

I understand.

To notice and understand.

So really you're going to let us know.

You're going to let us know.

We need to know.

Let us know, because.

Yeah.

OK. Yeah, it's a good point.

So with the idea being that we would use it for

through February is blank because you had tabled it to come back to it at the point that has now arrived.

So meet on the third for work.

Updating the work plan.

Updating the work plan.

What time do the work session meetings start?

Same time.

Same.

It's the first.

It's the first Thursday of the month.

And we'll go for about an hour to fill that out.

Do we need to vote on, we'll need to vote on this list of local policy recommendations before it goes to council.

So maybe we want to, do we want to vote?

We voted on the state recommendations.

Yeah.

Do we want to keep, I feel like we probably want to keep thinking about it.

Those are the things to add other than those four.

I know that.

We can talk about on the third, as far as any information that we've gotten that's new.

And you guys are working on constructing the right to counsel letter.

So let's go ahead and try to construct the letter.

that we want to send to council and have a preview of that on the 3rd.

Yes.

Question about two of the recommendations that we're making are related to budgetary items.

For the budget season.

Okay.

So the 17th of October could be a sufficient, okay.

So then we kind of missed it last year.

Now we'll try to see if we can work with our

City Attorney Partners to still hold the 11-7 work session for any matters related to public hearings.

Ernest and Mary, I'm trying to recall, I think you predate me joining Human Rights Commission.

Okay.

I was curious if either one of you or both of you could look back in your inbox and dig up the resources that you may have about Right to Counsel, the conversations.

I may have even written it.

I think I probably did write it.

Letters on the website too, Mary.

So you don't have to do too much hunting.

I think if you have like behind the scenes conversations, that might help with this next draft.

OK.

Anything else?

We'd love to hear from you.

This weekend as well at Mount Zion First African Church is a men's day health event from 9 in the morning to 2 p.m.

Can I throw one other good event out there?

Yeah.

I know on Wednesday, Charlottesville City Schools will be hosting

I guess they're ribbon cutting for Summit Elementary, which is a renamed school, so be able to get out there.

That's maybe 8.30 in the morning.

I don't know if anyone will be up early.

Next Wednesday?

Yeah, next Wednesday, the 25th.

How early?

I happened on the- I don't get up that early, so- Yeah, the Trailblazer renaming ceremony.

Yeah, the Trailblazer one was great.

You stopped to watch it, and it was amazing.

It was so great.

Katrina was there.

I heard it was great.

Anybody got anything else?

No?

It is 8-12 and we are adjourned.

Thank you.