 I'm the chair of the housing commission and I'm going to go in and it is 5.05 and we're going to go ahead and get started with roll calls. Dr. Paul Furukawa, Robert Abraham, Jessica Guerrero, Mary Ann Kestenbaum, Keith Holm, John Kenney, David Nisi-Bocha, Sarah Sanchez, Lourdes Castro, Reyes. We have a quorum. On the agenda, you go ahead and go through the public signing sheet that has signed in and one individual, one citizen that has asked to speak to the commission. I'm going to go through each name and as I call your name, if you would like to address the commission, please let us know. The first person is Rich Bosta. Not speaking. Darila. Russ. Thanks for being here. You have three minutes if you would like to go out. In the end, we normally would start us so that as we go into the presentation on the item and discussion on the commission, we have an opportunity. Two August to go. That day I moved in. I think a lot of people already know just about what happened there. What people may not know is that nobody really ever got in court. The people who we were able to contact with and retain relationships with and make sure that we gave them the information to go to the city to get relocation funds did mostly. Most people there never received information about the city. If it did come, they didn't really have enough information to go get the support that they needed. There's still many, many people there. I just drove through today and was driving through the parking lot and asked a guy because I always ask everybody. I'm like, hey, how's everything going here? He's like, man, I'm moving. My rent's gone at $300 in the past year and a half. I live in an efficiency apartment. My neighbors are moving. Their rent has gone up. The management is really awful to us. Nobody's really getting the support that they need that the city should be addressing with the big deal that SoapWorks became over the past year. We've been trying to work with the namehood of having services development to what should have been done. This first mitigation policy should have been created with the input of SoapWorks tenants. Rather than having meetings outside of that scope and inviting all of these advocates, it should have been going to people who are being displaced in order to get real-life data on what displacement is actually like. The way that it is right now, there's way too many people who aren't going to be protected. What I really think needs to be done is that this needs to be tested on SoapWorks tenants so that everybody there does relocate securely. At the same time that we talk to them and get information on what displacement actually looks like, because how can we create a displacement mitigation policy or prevention or anything? How can we talk about displacement if we don't know what it looks like? We don't know what it looks like. We don't know what it is. That's very clear and obvious, by the way. I would love to come out here that the city, the department, goes to SoapWorks and holds meetings. There are a few meetings, not just one, because with one, then people come, and this is what happened when we invited Councilmen to be out to SoapWorks. People came, they heard kind of that the city wanted to help, but that there wasn't really, quite honestly, they felt like they didn't want to do that. And so a couple meetings to make sure that the process is really thorough and that people get the relocation funds that they need in the way that they need it when they want to move. And at the same time, through those couple meetings, getting information on the emotional cost of displacement, on the medical cost. You know what it says? There's people who have had strokes in SoapWorks and who have to go to the doctor for high blood pressure because of the stress of losing their homes in the communities. But the economic cost, and not just having to move all of yourself from one place to the next, but the stress that that causes on the body and reimbursing everybody for that. It's a city-sponsored displacement that happened at SoapWorks. And so we need to make sure that we actually do the work to help all of those people move and then with that information that we get about displacement, make sure that we help everybody else in the Senate. I don't want to wear that authentically. It's considered as their experience. One of those things I just want to ask the audience that would like to address their questions. One more. You can go to the podium so much for keeping me in at the last minute. I just wanted to talk a little bit about some concerns that I have about this risk mitigation policy. In looking at other cities and what other cities have kind of done to protect tenants in these situations, I noticed that San Antonio's policy seems to kind of lack any consequences for landlords who decide not to participate in it. Landlord participation in a program like this is intended to help people who are being displaced. It should be a requirement. It should be a suggestion or an opt-in situation. And if I'm understanding correctly, which it may not be, it seems like this is giving the landlord the option. So I know we don't have a lot of control over what private actors decide to do, but in other cities they've found ways to attach, I'm sorry, I just got her on my bike, to attach this to things that the landlord is requesting from the city. Things like a zoning change, things like a request for demolition or alteration of the existing multi-family building, a condo conversion, land use change, even a request, of course, for city funding or tax increment financing money. In Austin, for example, the policy is triggered, and I think you all know this, at NHSD, they spoke to the city of Austin, a request for rezoning by the landlord or discretionary land use approval by council or also if the landlord wants to demolish a multi-family building. That would trigger they have to participate in this. So it makes me wonder, and I'd like to hear from NHSD about this, why didn't San Antonio decide to link a landlord participation requirement to these kinds of requests? So where we do have power as a city, why don't we take it? Why do we put the onus on the landlord to come and do this without giving the city any power to push them to do it? The other thing I want to know is, is there a legitimate reason why the city isn't requiring the landlord to contribute funds to this program? Why should the city, all of us, be left holding the responsibility for landlords who end up displacing tenants? So those are two things I'd really like to hear about today. Thanks so much for giving me time to speak. Absolutely. I'll just say a couple of things. First of all, I'd like to ask that I'm Flournoy, I work for the Elma Area Council of Governments and the Aging and Disability Resource Center and the regional housing navigator under collaborative agreement between HUD and Health and Human Services to do what we can to support special populations, particularly those that we serve. I just wanted to say that while it's been quite a long time that we've been working through this process, it's given me an opportunity to see how we have engaged the challenge before us. And while I know that there are still many things that we can do to continue to serve our special populations, but in effect all citizens in San Antonio wanted to say thank you for the efforts over the past 16 years or so, that we've been engaged in this process. And as I'm looking through this draft, I see that you have in fact acknowledged that seniors and individuals with disabilities do oftentimes have challenges or are presented with challenges that in effect create an additional financial burden as they're engaging their own relocation process or effort. And so I just wanted to take a few moments to say that while I know that there is still much work to be done and I am looking forward to continuing to engage in all those processes, I did want to say thank you for taking the time to seriously consider the input that I have offered in the past to have you consider the additional struggles, obstacles, and financial needs of the aging population and folks with disabilities. So thank you again for that. Thank you President. Thank you go ahead. I'd like to turn it over to Michael Rodriguez with the Labor and Housing Services Department and the Director also of the Labor and Housing Services Department, that we'll make that screen. Thank you. Good afternoon, good afternoon we're with the Labor and Housing Services Department. talking about the risk mitigation policy even before our budget was adopted. And I have to say there is certainly a high level of interest in this. And so I'll go through a presentation to talk and brief you on where we're at. This is a special meeting of the housing commission. Since you were reconvened and appointed, all the work has happened before that event. And so you had not seen the policy before you got appointed to this. The work on the policy started actually in the conversations that led to the creation of the mayor's housing policy task force. And I have to say that the mayor continues to be engaged in these conversations because just today he sent an email reminding my boss, Peter Sinoni, with this manager and I of the framework charge that we were supposed to develop a compassionate and comprehensive framework to address affordable housing. And he stressed the compassionate part of that. And that as we move forward with this policy, we not lose sight of that. And so I do wanna share that because he continues to be engaged in the work with affordable housing. He sent us that reminder note that this is about making sure that we address those who have the most need, the vulnerable communities, that we not lose sight that we want to help families regardless of income to have safe, affordable, stable housing. And this is one of the elements by which we can attempt to achieve that. Is this the answer for all of that? No, this is one piece for that. And so I will not go through a presentation to start briefing you on the housing policy work. And so again, as I mentioned, this really came as a result of the housing policy framework adoption. There were a lot of conversations, really ground up community input that shaped the final report and included in this report was recognition that we needed to address those with need who were facing imminent displacement. It was part of front of the year business plan. We put that we would have how to utilize this fund set aside this year as a deliverable. So this fiscal year, we have to give you a policy for how to utilize the funding that was approved by city council. And the allocation this fiscal year is $1 million for the risk mitigation fund. And as I mentioned, this is one piece of a larger puzzle really. There are people who are facing this condition now as you heard. And so those folks that now need assistance need to be able, we need to be able to mitigate that. But this is not the only thing that can address those issues. So we're looking at location assistance for those families who may be facing that difficult situation. We need to be able to also offer emergency assistance. But there's a lot of things that can help us prevent displacement overall. This is one piece of a larger puzzle. We have to have places to help people move into or we have to create more affordable housing. So we have to have enough affordable housing either preserving or creating new. That's one way in which we can help families by having enough housing stock that is affordable in our community. We have to be able to make sure that we address currently existing affordable housing because in the conversations with the Mayor's Housing Policy Task Force, the phrase the most affordable home with the most affordable housing is existing housing now. So how do we educate our residents so they can retain their homes? How do we let them know of the tax exemptions and preservation tools that are available now so that they can stay? And then for those families that are in this situation where they might need relocation assistance or they have a one-time event where it's putting a strain and could potentially put them on a path where if they're not assisted at a woman in time, they could be in a path for eviction because they couldn't afford the rent. That's a mitigation fund. So we know this is part of a larger conversation. And so I address that because in all the community input sessions that we've heard and I will go through that in a little while, we have heard a lot of other comments about other things the city could be doing. And so there's not one root cause for displacement. You heard earlier that there's a particular apartment that because there was public investment, now it has caused the rents to go up. But it wasn't just that, it was the fact that the property was sold and the new investor is the one that is raising the rents. It wasn't the original owner, but that was one of the causes. We know that housing education, if perhaps we had stronger information to share about renter rights, if we had programs that devoted more time for helping our community members realize property tax exemptions are available in full participation, if we help families understand how they could use the insurance, if the move needed to be fixed and they could fully utilize the insurance. So there's some education. We know there's vulnerable members in our community, families that live paycheck to paycheck. And so one instance can be the one that becomes the cause of displacement for them because one incident makes them fall behind and then they never catch up. And you mentioned either forced to move because they face eviction or they have an emergency event that's more important to take care of than utilities. We know there are market forces that play as well. As well, we know that there's some areas that have market forces, growth, development, redevelopment and investment that are at play as well. And so that's something else that makes an area that was 10 years ago not as attractive now. And so that is another cause. We know there's investment or sometimes lack of investment that could be the cause of displacement investment because again, private sector is now interested in a particular area. And so it leads to pricing people up or lack of investment when we have deterioration of rental units or deterioration of a single family home. And that leads to a code enforcement action because we end up with a dwelling a home that is not safe. And so it would be unconscionable to have that. And so the effects when we hear what we see is that there's redevelopment of affordable housing sites, there's code violations. So now we have to do something. There's the tax and rent increases and we heard a lot in our public meetings about that. Or you know, someone complains about apartments not being fixed and there could be potential retaliation by rental. So these are the things we see and the kind of things that happen. But there's not one root cause always. It's not always A causes B. It could be A causes B, C and D and therefore family has to move. It could be a combination of things. It could be one thing or it could be a combination of things. And so I go through that because that's a lot of what we heard. So again, these are some of the causes of displacement. We heard a lot of this feedback in the one-on-one conversations in the meetings with those stakeholders as well as the five community meetings. And here's some examples so that market forces could be, property evaluations are increasing. It could be investment in neighborhood amenities that now make an area, yes, they can make an area more attractive. It could be crime rates in a particular area, make an area unattractive for people. Or it could be the poverty of a family just does not allow them to have other options. And so those are some of the things that we heard as we were having this conversation. Would you please? Thank you, I appreciate that. So that pause I used to recognize our city manager Eric Walsh just walked in. Thank you for being here. I told you there's a high level of attention to this issue. So here's proof of that. Thank you for being here. So I'll go ahead and continue that we have heard of potential additional policies that could be considered other things we should be looking at to have citywide displacement prevention. We heard about having tax relief. We heard about making sure we have a strong coordinated housing system that helps folks be able to navigate if they are facing these hard situations. Making sure we have enough housing. We have a petition program so that we can keep families in their home for a longer time to serve the housing stock. And these are some of the things we're thinking about as well. So for the property tax relief, we are working already. We haven't briefed you on that but we're working at the state level with state representative now on the tax bill that will set legacy homes where continuing those conversations. So that's something in the works but it remains at the legislative level. We do have the coordinated housing system underway. We've only had one meeting planning a second one. So that's work that's underway. We have allocated funding for the housing. We have the location and preservation programs. Big focus on that with both the owner occupy agree have with a huge allocation trickling them amount of money. The under one group program that also has preservation. Those are underway. We're meeting our metrics. When it comes to that, you've seen those reports. And so we're focusing on those programs for the preservation and protecting neighborhoods. We do have conversations about neighborhood empowerment zones preliminary stage. And that one would help with property tax exemptions but we have to make sure we fit into the state requirements for that. So that's just to share with you some of what the city is doing some of the conversations that we've had as we've gathered input as well. And to acknowledge that we know that this is a difficult situation for families that we wanna be able to utilize this risk mitigation fund to help those families with the most need that we wanna be able to provide the services in that compassionate manner. Because you understand this is a highly stressful situation. And so we wanna talk about who this policy is for. This policy is focused on residents with low and moderate incomes who are facing displacement because there's rate development of the site because there's a code enforcement action pending against the property owner of that site or they are facing a rent increase that is just not affordable for them. We're looking at families who are vulnerable to displacement because they have job or wage instability because they have lost wages because they have a medical issue that they have to address or they have a major unexpected expense that doesn't allow them to either living paycheck to paycheck to take care of those issues. So this policy again intended to assist people facing imminent displacement. It helps us create a standardized and efficient program where we're clear from the beginning what the assistance level is, what the rules are. So we don't have the, how come they got more than I did? How come someone got treated differently than I did scenario? It ensures those that are facing displacement can be relocated to safe, decent and sanitary homes. Again, having that compassion and realizing that we have to help these families in this tough situation find that safe, decent and sanitary home. As was mentioned in the note from the mayor, it allows us to have flexibility with how we use money or funds because most of the programs we have now are federal funds and they have medical limitations and stipulations. So the general fund, $1 million risk mitigation fund is more flexible because it's not federal money. This policy by itself will not stop displacement. This policy by itself will not address the negative impacts of what people call gentrification. This policy is not gonna help us create or preserve affordable housing. It's not gonna address property taxes nor will it house the homeless population. All of those issues are also what we heard but this policy is not about that. This policy is for those people facing displacement that they have to relocate now, facing that emergency condition now. And so we wanna be able to address those other issues as well, but our charge was come up with a policy by which we would utilize this money. We could started talking and addressing all those other issues. I mentioned early on that this is in the mayor's housing policy task force. It's not the only policy, it's not the only approach. It's not the only mention of displacement in the mayor's housing policy task force report in our housing policy framework. We use that mayor's housing policy task force to build our affordable business plan that's part of our budget. And in that budget and three year plan which you all have as housing commission, you know that there's different policies by order that we are addressing. And you know some of the deliverables by order. There's a lot to do in this first year. We could shift our resources because it really was in 2020 that we were gonna look at the larger displacement prevention strategy starting through the end of this fiscal year but really having a deliverable in 2020. But that means we have to shift some of the things in our business plan. And so that means redirecting our resources to look at the larger question. Again, there's a high level of interest. We've heard from a lot of folks about that. But here's things that we would have to say let's delay or let's wait until 2020 if we do wanna shift the priorities or shift the deliverables. We could delay the buy rights only which is starting to gear up. That's something we had looked at as potentially focusing on production. And our business plan really focused on production creating more affordable housing. We could delay addressing how we could have the exemptions for affordable housing. Again, another big item that was really focused on producing more affordable housing in the community. We could delay part of the coordinated housing deliverables not the meetings, not convening the providers within the coordinated housing system but delaying the accountability dashboard that's part of what we wanted to deliver this first year. We could also not focus as much on the annual report that's part of your charge. So that's something we could do because staff resources are devoted to that. We could look at redirecting funding that has been allocated for current programs and hire a consultant to help us. This is one staff member having to do a procurement process and receive a consultant but it wouldn't take more than two or three staff. But there are things we have to deliver to you now. The recidivation policy is one of them. These are other things that are in our first year. We could delay them and redirect resources but these are options. So two dedicated staff are starting work on the buy right zoning and this was supposed to be completed by the fiscal year 2020 and this was addressing zoning code. We could have those two dedicated staff focus on prevention for the fee exemptions. Again, two dedicated staff, we're gonna work on this and have by the first quarter of fiscal year 2020 something to bring forward so that it would be more feasible to have more affordable housing. We had that. Again, three dedicated staff are a part of this and we could not work on the dashboard, perhaps to lay the annual report or do something refer and we have three dedicated staff that could address all those other questions or finally again, the option of redirecting some of the funding for our program, perhaps the program where we're struggling a little bit more. We allocate some of that funding for the items that were focused on production and have a staff member manage the consultant and develop a wider displacement prevention strategy as well. So that's just to say, it's something we can do. We have a lot of deliverables for you this year but if you want us to shift priorities we're happy to take our recommendation as to what we should focus on. If you want us to look at that larger strategy. We started this work before the housing commission was reconvened even before the fiscal year started because at the housing summit, the mayor's housing summit before a proper one we started the conversation about proposing the risk mitigation fund and how to utilize that. So we started sessions then. Since the start of the fiscal year we have had a series of community meetings. We had a wide community service with stakeholders who participated but also their clients participated in a lot of stakeholder meetings. We even had one of one conversations with advocates. Everyone from TOPS to the Spadansapisa Justice Center and have continued that outreach. We have gone to the comprehensive plan committee numerous times. Here we are in front of you. We had hoped we could go to council this month but we're eager to hear your feedback. And so implementation, that is utilization of the fund will be in April. So we could start assisting those folks who today are facing this very difficult condition. So let me walk through what we are proposing. The risk mitigation fund policy proposes that we have most of the money for resident relocation assistance. Portion of it for emergency assistance and then a small piece of it for the rental incentive fund partnership. The resident relocation assistance is again when someone is in that difficult situation where it's untenable for them to stay where they're at to help them. And so it's unaffordable rent increases, there's redevelopment or health and safety concerns. The emergency assistance is that one incident that occurs that puts the family on a path to potentially be evicted, to potentially be homeless. And this really helps to keep that family where they are. So keeping families out of that emergency situation both for renters and homeowners. And this is providing assistance for rent and utilities whereas the resident relocation assistance is the deposit and two months rent. The rental incentive fund partnership is to work to see if certain landlords would open up units that they would not normally make available for what they consider at risk renters. And so that's an incentive to potentially have more units available throughout the city that currently landlords are reluctant to utilize for someone they consider high risk. Someone has an evasion of their record that families consider the high risk tenant. And our goal is to have our housing navigators within our Fair Housing team and our Fair Housing managers here help these families and offer that assistance. So we have a set of experienced case managers who work with each family. Eventually we evaluate the condition of the resident who would do the paperwork to have direct payments made to vendors, to the landlord, for example, with a deposit with a rent for two months. They meet with them on site. They go to their apartments, they go to a coffee shop across the street in their neighborhood so that we don't force people to come down and visit with us. We also do Fair Housing education. There are Fair Housing issues to address. And then they also know who all of the other support services providers are so they can make appropriate referrals. If we happen to find out that a family may also qualify for pre-cave, we make sure we make that referral. If we know that there's a food pantry nearby, we make those referrals. And so our Fair Housing staff who are experienced case managers work one-on-one with each family and we don't make the family come to us, we go to them. And so that's the kind of service that would be provided to the risk medication funder. So the Resident Revocation Assistance Program is for families who are renters or mobile homeowners. We are looking at assisting families who earn up to 100% of the area median income on the sliding scale since we want most of the assistance to be for low-income families. We would have enough notice to vacate because we know it's a very difficult and stressful situation to be in. And so more than typical notice to vacate, the city would pay the relocation cost and of course housing counseling would be provided. I mentioned we're looking at 100% AMI but this is for residents within the city limits of San Antonio. It's folks who are at least in an apartment or a mobile home. And again, if there's redevelopment could enforce an action that's when that's the trigger for this assistance. And of course we would wanna make sure that those families are not receiving other federal relocation assistance. And then the eligibility guidelines are here. Again, the scale approach in terms of assistance with the most assistance provided our families with lower incomes. We know that a rent increase of 5% for a family out of low 60% AMI could be the difference between them staying or not. Whereas a family who makes slightly more, 80% to 100%, 81% to 100% AMI may be able to bear a 5% increase but maybe over 10% may not be something that they can afford. And so that's the scaling impact that you see in front of you. And so those rent increases are what would trigger this assistance. Here are the limits because I talked about consistency so people always know what is going to be made available. And so that no one can say, well, they got more than I did. So standardizing that for both multifamily renters and those who reside in mobile home parks. And all of these numbers are based on the actual figures we have from our fair housing staff where we averaged out how much assistance is needed to do this work. And then for the short term, give me one sec. The resident relocation assistance, again, we partner with our city departments. And if there are developments that are getting incentives, we are making sure that we revise the policies. It started with the seat chip policy where there's a provision where if a developer is seeking those incentives and they're displacing families, they're not eligible for the incentive. Our housing bond has a similar provision where we can't use the housing bond funding if there's going to be displacement. So we can't displace. And so these are additional incentives where that language would be folded into the programs as well so that there's no direct displacement for these incentive programs. Then moving on to the short term rental assistance. Again, this is folks who are looking at a one-time emergency situation, looking at families up to 100% AMI and hear the limits. Rent and utility assistance for up to three months. And again, the standard as to how much would be provided. Looking at residents within the San Antonio City Limits and those experiencing a temporary hardship. And again, this is to keep families housed so they don't have to move. Counseling and referrals will also be provided. Here's the scale of approach with the most assistance provided to families at or below 80% of the area meaning income, but being able to provide assistance to families between 81% to 100% AMI. Then the rental incentive fund, I described it briefly earlier, but again, this is to make more potential units, especially focused on apartments available so that landlords are able to lease them out to families that are considered riskier. I mentioned we had a lot of input and a lot of conversations, five community meetings in every part of the city, three technical focus groups with providers who work with these families every day, stakeholder meetings with advocates who work and represent these families. We're very passionate about the work they do and very passionate about how we have to do a good job for these families. And then a survey that had over 200 responses. We had meetings in every part of town to make sure families in every quadrant could participate. Originally planned at only three, but quickly we figured out we needed more. And our reach was to 1,700 participants through all of these sessions. So we started hearing about, we needed to have this risk mitigation approach in the mayor's housing policy task force that we needed to have the location assistance provided that we needed to consider emergency assistance. All the community input at all those meetings gave us looking at families up to 100% in AMI and making sure we had housing navigators who did the case management and making sure that the emergency assistance was also available for families to have that stability in the house and the home for families up to 100% AMI. And so again, this is a balance. We have the available funding. We have the priorities from stakeholders. We have the community need. And we know families are facing this. So what we're looking for you for some recommendations is hopefully, and this is that hope and recommendation that you support the policy as drafted. So we can move forward to city council on the 21st and can start utilizing the funds. We can make minor revisions to policy. If they're not major revisions, we can still try and have this before it comes on the 21st. But if there are substantial revisions that you want, we may have to postpone going to city council in March. But we definitely want your feedback. I know you weren't seated as housing commissioners as we had all those public meetings. And I know some of you could participate in that process. And again, if you want us to take the larger beyond mitigation, look at the wider displacement prevention strategy. We can shift some items within our business plan. Our hope is that we continue with our current business plan so we can deliver the things we said we were going to deliver. The option is we lay some items to move this forward or again, we allocate funding from the current program so that we can move this work out. And that concludes my presentation. I am our staff are happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you for allowing me the time to go through the presentation. I also thank city manager. I also wanted to acknowledge that we have two members from the mayor's office with both me and Marisa and Victoria who are very involved with the mayor's housing policy task force and very much appreciate our committee for us to ask questions of may go and routine with regard to the mis-indication policy. But I'm going to just turn it over to my colleagues on the commission. But before I turn it over, I wanted to sort of preface the conversation with a little bit of background and some of which could be of a previous year. Okay. I'll move closer on these technical challenges. But I wanted to just preface before we go into the conversation with the commission and Q&A with the staff that the mayor's housing policy task force which I was a member of along with four other individuals. And I thought I saw Jim Bailey. Yes, that he is. We in the mayor's housing policy task force had an opportunity to sit down with the housing commission about two weeks ago, really as a way of providing the history, the background, the thinking around the recommendations. In this particular discussion today is a really crucial and important discussion for us to have. Why? Because it was one of our, the five areas that we focused on. The five areas of focus for the task force including protecting and preserving neighborhoods. And really the spirit behind that was that we recognize that San Antonio is growing, it's changing, it's dynamic. And we want to embrace the change. We want to embrace the improvements that are happening but we don't want it to happen at the expense of individuals that have been living in neighborhoods, which we call legacy neighborhoods for many years. So we basically said, we need to be thoughtful. We need to think about how to proactively address what we know will happen, direct or indirect displacement. And so the task force put forward a set of recommendations. And I want to clarify the policy from the strategy. The policy that we recommended as a task force was a policy that was comprehensive and was looking at preventing, mitigating and minimizing displacement. Really what I think at the end of the day, the bottom line was that we don't want to see displacement. However, we do know that it's happening. And so how do we quickly get our arms around this? We had the example of soap works. We've also seen what happened with mission trails. The strategies that we outlined were, one, we should take a look at property taxes and the impact that that is having. And I'm glad to hear that Beto shared that the city is looking at some legislative proposals that might address that. Two, we also said, we know where this is happening in our city because there's a vulnerable community study that was produced by the city in partnership with a contractor. So we have an idea of where this is happening so we can try to get in front of it. Three, we have public entities that are also investing and if they're investing, can they conduct an assessment to again understand the implications of their investment and the impact that that's having in that area. Four, we said for families that are already being forced to relocate or can't stay at their current sort of place of living, we need to be compassionate. We need to figure out how to help them. And so hence we propose the risk mitigation fund as a strategy. That's not the policy, that's a strategy. And so I wanted to provide that context because I'm really pleased to see that there has been a lot of effort on the city's part in developing the program and the fund and the guidelines. But it's one component of a larger set of efforts that were recommended. And I recognize that the report has five broad areas, lead and policy recommendations and 24 strategies. And there's no way possible that the city staff and the community can implement that at once. I recognize that. But I also recognize that we need to make sure that we don't lose sight of kind of the big picture which sometimes is the hard work, right? Of developing that sort of comprehensive approach. So I'm sort of taking the numbers of the commission and my colleagues to get that background because I think as we go into the Q and A and then deciding on option A, B or C, I just wanted for you to have sort of that perspective and sort of consider the thinking that went into the development. And it was really not just the thinking of the five of us on the task force, it was really the thinking of the community members that were involved in this process, whether through the technical working groups or through the various meetings that we had. So with that, I'm gonna sit down and I'm going to open it up for questions. And I apologize to people in the audience. If you are having a hard time and hearing the conversation, we do encourage you to move over. Unfortunately, we don't have mics. We will make sure that we have mics for our next meeting. But if you can't hear, we encourage you to try to move over and we'll do our best to speak up. To learn more about what your outreach will be counsel or to adopt this strategy and talk about not hearing about. So this process we have to help very much from where this comes from. There's those pressures to visit those areas. And so they're being targeted mainly for example, if there was so forth or go back to so forth to say now this is unavailable if there's someone who qualifies we can do that. And so not just the participants but that being part of the airport outreach. We have our public information officer here who would help us make sure we had enough press press releases so that this information goes through the different media. We have our social media platforms from the city that would help us do this. But we would focus a lot on housing providers, those who are already serving and providing support to families in need to make sure that they cross reference cross refer rather close to us. And then our outreach, if we found areas, neighborhoods and or current existing affordable housing developments where we need to go and do targeted outreach we would do that as well. We know so forth is one where we have to go back and say now we can assist you. We continue to offer assistance to residents there but that's part of the outreach. And as people said, hey, this is a particular area where you need to go visit and you just get to a meeting and we failed to mention our neighborhood association registered participants as well. So using our neighborhood engagement staff will also get the word out. Our department participates in housing fairs and events like that throughout the community every month and so we would do that. Of course, all the council offices would, they get a lot of the calls of making them aware that this is in place so they can refer clients to us and help us get there for now as well. So how many people would you expect would avail themselves of this program? Has it been any sort of estimate? How many people would purchase me? How many people would participate? We think we could have held probably about 200, about 200 families if it depends on the level of assistance and all of that but about 200 families would be assisted with this. And is that estimate, I'm sorry, if you can jump in, is that estimate based upon emerging redevelopment opportunities where you see displacement happening over the next year? I'm curious as to what the analysis was based on. That's based on the funding level so I know that with our current programs we have held today about 150 families and the funding available to help those families is around, I would say about similar to just under the one name so based on past trends. Because we do have some smaller pockets of money for relocation assistance, counseling, et cetera. So we have been able to assist about 150 families just in six months with just under a million dollars in other reasons. So you're not saying a million dollars for 200 people? Around, yes. That's 50,000 for families. I think you might want to look at that. We'll clarify that but around 200 families. Our relocation assistance, we show the high level that sometimes we do pay for a hotel space when we can't find an apartment unit. That gets very expensive very quickly and so that's part of some of the assistance. This kind of gets to some questions that had to be raised because at this point, we're all just doing the best we can estimating or projecting our best guesses based on best information we have. And so one of the things that I think has been mentioned in a specific instance but generally, I wonder if this can identify as a pilot test entire how many people are served, to what level they get served, because we're all doing just the best we can with what we have with our experience. And since we're working toward, I think it's great that we're working toward, for example, having a very robust dashboard with great data and so much of what we're experiencing is at least 30 years giving a proper in-depth analysis of the reasons and what they really cost. Because in a way, I mean, when you think about it, those are limited and so yes, this is a big new thing that we have a million dollars for emergency assistance. But clearly, when you look at the numbers, that's, while that's an infinite increase in what we had, we really see how limited that is in what we address and we know you're gonna address that by prevention. We know that that's gonna happen. So I'm wondering if that there could be some really detailed analysis of what really happens. And in the context of the pilot study, I got that because the criteria, some of it is a scale of percent, a rent increase, some of it is percent AMI, some of it and some of it is you have to be 30%, you have to be cost burden, housing cost burden. But in reality, every single one of the people that this will be directed to has a completely different financial profile. And so let's say someone is, it's probably not that likely, but what if someone is living in substandard housing but they're making it by somehow with a lot of, they have a large family, under that circumstances, it's conceivable that they wouldn't be 30% cost burden if they're in a, if they are living in a place that has been inherited with the, you know, mortgage paid, obviously there are taxes, but it's conceivable that there's a variation that makes either any of these particular criteria folks that surmount, yet a person could be in a great amount of need. And so I don't know how to do this. I'm asking if it's possible, you know, maybe to look at a couple of things. One, the criteria established and two, establishing a point system for eligibility. As similar to our contract, we have certain points assigned when people evaluate and you know, you get certain points for being, you know, woman in minority, they're being located. So is there a way to provide this, you know, being within this percent of rate increase? Because I mean, for some people, as little percent increase is gonna send them over the edge. So. Yeah, I was going to just sort of fill a little bit on what you're proposing, Mary Ann. And I'm thinking about to provide oversight and to help with tracking sort of our progress with regard to the implementation and also sharing that publicly. It also like learning from how things are being implemented and you know, course correcting or adjusting. So what I'm hearing you say is that maybe one sort of way of looking at this is so there's, you know, million dollars that the council has allocated to implement a risk mitigation, really a relocation plan that potentially could serve up to 200 people, which is a very small group or small number I can think about, you know, the size of our city. But then maybe we go into this with, let's implement based on the guidelines that have already been developed, but let's look at them care, let's monitor and track perspective and then come back and maybe make some adjustments. You know, because this is, this is not something that most cities have. So there's, you know, like we can just look to another city and say we're gonna copy what they have. We're sort of creating something that is responsive and that's unique and it's based on, you know, kind of our own sort of local challenges. So the idea of pilot to meet is sort of a reminder of our charges that have this commission, which is to track these things and to be able to come back and say, hey, we, you know, we serve 200 people but along the way we realized that this population wasn't really able to access or whatever that, you know, that that may be. And it gives us an opportunity to be able to make some recommendations on changes that can be, can lead to many further improving the program for the plan. So I guess from the staff perspective, does that, that makes sense. I mean, in many ways, the whole risk mitigation fund is a promise. And our department, the whole city is committed to that continuous improvements. There are ways that we can improve something. Well, of course we just always look at that. Or if we miss something, you know, it may not be obvious now, but as we see clients, it would be become obvious. We're always committed to that improvement. And let's start this. My name is Jessica Ogarredo and let me know who not speaking loud enough and volume please. Thank you for putting this together and thank you for putting this meeting together at late notice that it was because it is important that this group take a look, a deep look at this policy specifically because it's, you know, very at the most minimum part of our charge. So I'm glad that we're, you know, able to really deliver clean and honestly check that off before it goes to council. I want to request that I'm assuming and hoping that detailed notes on our feedback are, you know, being taken today. And that some of that is shared in your proposal to city council. I would like to hear more than we rent this through housing commission. I don't know today if we're gonna decide yay or nay if we love it or hate it or not, but despite, you know, whether we give a final collective perspective on that, I would like for city council to hear more detail about our insight. And I wanted to add to what Marianne was suggesting right now and proposing. Just one thing to note is that so for the town center started off at about 300 or so units, roughly 381 units, roughly about 200, maybe 250 units might be still inhabited by the original, not original by tenants that were there when all of the renovation and the new ownership started to happen. So I just want to make sure that that is considered as we're considering this pilot idea for what would make the best sense and be the most supportive to about 200 families in San Antonio that are currently facing imminent displacement. I think that would be a great example. Are you suggesting that we limit? Not that we limit, but that we start there in a very, that we prioritize outreach efforts there and it really makes sure that we go way beyond a mail out or a general call that SOPs and town center tenants are specifically targeted to make sure that they are aware because we know it's generally acknowledged that there is a need there and not only because it's generally acknowledged that there's a need there, but because the need there is due to a public private investment as you stated as one of the root causes. And I know and fully understand that this policy is not, the purpose is not to address those root policies but I think we all have effective multitasking where we can make it happen. And that would be a good way to start looking at how to deepen our community collective understanding of what that is, of what public private investment impact really is. So it's those two reasons that I think it's important. I would just add that we have, as I said earlier, the vulnerable community study that shows a lot of other neighborhoods that are impacted. I agree with your point that there has to be much more sort of focus on community outreach education and kind of going where we know that this is an issue. So, kind of doing really our best, even if we don't have all the resources to take inventory to try to get a better idea of like the impact that this is having, because 200 is not going to go very far with it. And if it's, we're going to kind of learn from this, we would want to do that. We would want to do it to cover as much of an area as possible, but I understand your point about making sure that we don't neglect places that are already experiencing this place. And if I may, we can certainly do that, but we don't need is to let the city, just last month, we had an example within council district 10, where we had a court enforcement action forced families to have to be located. So it would not have shown up in the vulnerable community studies in council district 10, 51 families in an apartment complex, because court enforcement issues caused by the landlord forced us to have to assist families there. And so it's not limited to that. And those 51 families would have been living without any utilities, we not skipped in and our fair housing staff offered that. So the need is not just in those areas, we certainly understand, but that was just last month, where we helped 51 families be located and had our fair housing staff provide peace management services. Thanks, manager. I also want to echo a lot of my associates earlier explanations or acknowledgement of the mayor's office who continues to shine the light on housing issues and how important they are. I want to thank Peter and I want to thank Eric for their attendance and for all city staff's work in producing this, it takes a lot of work to do this. I have a couple of questions if you'd allow me to. The way I read this, mostly focuses on large-scale multi-family displacement. I'm curious, was there consideration for emerging neighborhoods and single-family units that will see a drastic increase in their rent, all right? And I think we all know what some of those neighborhoods are based upon the investment and it's going on in those neighborhoods now where there's a large-scale single-family rent properties in that. And I was curious if there was a perspective there and then to get way into the weeds, I noticed in the relocation assistance, there's discussion about paying some outstanding utility debt that's associated with that. I was curious, is there a timeline on that? Because someone could have two-way a fair amount of utility debt all onto theirself before we even get into the relocation. Is there a 30-day, a 60-day look back on that debt or has one, if there's any consideration there as well? So those are the two questions. So it talks about renters. It's not just multi-family because we know families rent houses as well. So if they've met the criteria, they too could be eligible. But most of our renters are limited to multi-family. With regards to timeline and utility debt, that's mostly the emergency assistance. So there has to be a triggering circumstance in that family's life that does that. So it's not paying back utility, but rather there's one instance and the support we provide is to pay the utility assistance. So it's not, or they haven't been able to pay for many months, it's rather there's one triggering debt or one triggering action within that family's life that now causes them to not be able to pay the utility. So the assistance is just that. So it's not about the other scenario that I think is right. We're gonna go back to Justin Bennett. Thank you. I just have a few questions for now regarding this kind of part of the conversation. Can you, various funding that are currently available for relocation assistance or emergency assistance because this is not the only funding available and that should help us understand what 200 families, potentially serving 200 families with this policy would mean in addition to other services available. And I also wanted to bring up the need for, as far as looking at standards of quality of service in this policy, right? We're not just trying to placate an outcry. We wanna make sure that we're actually addressing displacement in our communities. And in order for that to happen, I think there needs to be a really respectful and thoughtful approach, not only to how this policy is informed and put together, which there's been a lot of discussion about that, but also how it's evaluated and how it's effectiveness is studied and considered. Throughout the policy, I don't see any mention of housing navigators working to create a collaborative relationship with the people, the heads of household that they're working with who are going through this hugely traumatic experience of having to move outside of their scheduler preference, right? And I was also wondering how many housing navigators or is it housing navigators that are the people that are working with the heads of households looking for these services? How many are there? How many of those positions are funded by this $1 million or the funding beyond that, that was recently, was allocated for housing? Sure. So the current funding sources, we use CDPG funding for our fair housing staff and some of that goes to direct services. So it pays for staff as well as direct services and that's CDPG fair housing funding is part of our annual action plan. And so we set aside some money for that. We use ESG, the federal program, emerges solutions grant funding to help make sure it's mostly for homeless prevention and there's some direct services there too. And so we use a portion of our ESG federal grant for that. When you say direct services, is that what this policy is? Yes, yes, it's direct services because it's assistance to a family. Even though the money is not given to a family, it's assistance to them. So direct services is that. So ESG pays for staff as well as direct services. So those are two, we have the CDPG funded short-term rental assistance program. All $100,000 of that goes to direct services, no staff is paid for that. So those are the federal resources an additional one. We have a very small grant of $26,000 that goes to fair housing education. So that's the counseling services that one we use for promotion, flyers, marketing information. So printouts that we utilize when we do case management and offer fair housing counseling. So that's a small grant. Those are the federal resources. The general. Can you speak up please? Oh, yes, sir. Sorry. I can't pull you sorry about that. I was, what? There's- Yes. The first part of Jessica's question was the funding. The second part was the staff. So I'll get to that. So those are the federal resources that we utilize. Then for general funded, the development services department has a boarding home fund that we utilize as well. It's about 100,000 for them. And so we have that available to also offer direct services, no staff. And then there's another $100,000 that's also out of the general fund. The staff is mostly paid out of grants. There's eight staff in total and only one, one and a half staff is general fund. Isn't just one? It's three. Three staff are a general fund. All the other eight staff, rather the total eight staff, all the other staff are funded through federal resources. So it's the ESG or the CDPG fair housing funding that pays for the staff. The $100,000, all of it is direct services and not one penny is for staff. It's an existing staff, not for the federal community or general fund. And one of the positions with the new position added that is the housing navigator. So the other positions were existing so they already had a title like community service specialist but they provide housing navigation services. The new position created was the housing navigator position. And so that was the new position creating the budget out of the general fund. We didn't have that position before but it's not the risk mitigation fund. Just so clarification, another $1,000,000 for staff. No. It's all in the program. Correct. Thank you. That was Marianne. Yeah. I'll probably jump back and forth and I apologize for that. Getting back to the emergency assistance benefits and it's probably just incredibly obvious and I just am not getting it. I was wondering why homeowners don't get financial assistance to, you know, that they could apply to, they're all they're getting is utilities or funds to cover utilities. And what about mortgage payment? No, it is the mortgage as well. It's the mortgage for utilities or something. So I'm, so where do I see that? Cause I'm emergency assistance benefits. Do I, can I have one? Yes. You're not the first one to tell us that. We've looked at best practices across the country. So we started off with that only providing utility assistance. But we have expanded it to mortgage. It's just not in the most updated version of the policy. Thank you. And then another thing I just wanted to, just from my clarification again, to look at sources of funding. So, and it's related to the utility support. Is this also coming from the million dollars or is this from the programs that CPS and SAWS have? The emergency assistance sort of, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was just that. So the, we have utilities assistance for emergency assistance benefits. That's from the risk mitigation, the one million dollars. The one million dollars. And so anything else can be coordinated or they can see if they have additional support they can get from CPS. And I also, you know, I'm just really kind of a difficult person. And I really need to chime in again, colleagues that I really do appreciate the work that you've put into this. This is, you know, a first time program is an innovative program. It's something we haven't had. I understand it's not, you know, it's like you're balancing. Like you said, we could go long-term. We could go short-term. And we're sort of needing to, you know, just because this is short-term and it's not addressing prevention doesn't mean it's not at best. So there's an immediate need among people. And I appreciate that in a sense, since this money did not exist anywhere else and we have people in need right now, I can understand and I can value the choice to develop this as quickly as possible. But at the same time, we want to get it right. And there are people in need now, but we also want to get it right. It certainly gives some flexibility if this is considered a pilot or a term-limited policy that will be reviewed. So no one can get things perfect at the same time but we just do our best. And then this is general and not specific about the benefits and you've heard this, Vero. So I'm gonna say it again. Our city has long had an issue about identifying stakeholders. There are some people or some groups who are easier to identify with, identify and communicate and reach out to in terms of stakeholders. Yet there are, we look at the community and we think about all the people who are holding multiple jobs who don't have access to electronics, who don't have access to someone who happens to be active in the community to learn about things going on. And partly in relationship to, it's kind of related to the outreach itself but this has to do with developing the risk mitigation policy but everything else is that there needs to be a way of leveling the playing field when it comes to reaching and naming and identifying stakeholders. Yes, we have neighborhood associations. Those are, there are stakeholders who just for the way their life has been designed or they haven't grown up in a community activist, they're stakeholders and don't know it and they aren't approached. The distributive thing, I don't think people like that. So in some ways, kind of like related to what Jessica said in terms of identifying the specific feedback from this commission, it's also like rather than naming, we've seen this many stakeholders group. I think it's really important, really kind of just to identify, cause stakeholders has a very good, wonderful, strong bonding. You get a lot of points for reaching out to stakeholders but sometimes that can be an exclusive as opposed to an inclusive issue. So I think that is something to possibly address with this and others and efforts in the future and I also wanted to say I do appreciate a reflection of the fact that you do reach out and you do respond to public input. Part of the, I think part of the energy behind public engagement from the outside is that this at once, at one time, was named a risk mitigation and prevention policy and you heard all at every meeting, we don't see any prevention. And I think that this presentation reflects not only just saying, fixing it by checking the box but I think in a sense you have responded to that need for the community in terms of saying, okay, this is, this is not prevention. We know we're not addressing this is not part of that policy part of the framework, this is a strategy and you've acknowledged that issue and that kind of back and forth I really. Thank you, Mary Ann. So I have three points. One is related to public comment about property owner participation in landlord. I noticed in the policy that most of the burden for qualifying is on the family that's impacted and there's not a lot of clear expectations in terms of the landlord and property owner. So I'd like to see if you all could go back and take a look at that language or that section and come up with additional sort of expectations or requirements of property owners. I've heard you mention I think on slide 23 that the city already has some provisions related to city fee waivers and tax evasions and fee chip but that maybe that should be called out in this policy or plan because it's not in there so no one would know that hey, if you are a property owner or developer and you're tapping into some of these resources here are the expectations that the city has. So that's one point. The second point is I'd like to better understand the timing in the schedule for the more comprehensive anti-displacement policy because you mentioned during the presentation that you're having to look at the work plan and there might be some implications if we accelerate on something it has impact on something else. I want to understand sort of what is the timing of that and of course the Health and Commission will be very much involved in hoping to shape that. And then the third point that I'd like to sort of come back to really as a commission is we have three options before us. I think option A is we can provide support to staff to move forward but the policy is drafted. Option B is we can offer recommendations on minor revisions to the policy. And then option D is if there are substantial revisions to the policy it could delay this item going to council. I'm sort of where I'm at as a chair is I think that there are some revisions that need to be made but I think there are minor revisions that my perspective is that the staff can address and make and present next week. So I'm not hearing anything that is substantial or anything that is drastic. Additionally my perspective would be that I think it's important in this plan and guidelines too to count it in the context of this is one strategy that is connected to a much larger effort and the city is committed to doing that but we also recognize that families are impacted right now and we want to be able to address the issue now. And we're also committed to learning from this initial sort of approach and coming back and maybe tweaking it based on the data, based on the analysis of this. So those are my thoughts there on that. Yeah, and we'll come back if you can to talk about that. So you have funding for about 200, you get 400 applicants. I mean it's just the first come first serve and when you run out you run out. Correct. Which is what we do with the current funding and we have all the programs I mentioned in total they're just over a million dollars. Remember some of that. So this would double the funding we have for these kinds. I'm not recommending this but I would offer it as a consideration that we have potentially some sort of contingency fund or whatever that the first but the first strategy is coming out of sort of the task force and everything can potentially be capped. I don't know how many people or maybe it'll last all year and we'll get 187 people and it'll be perfect. But my sense is that probably you're gonna get many more than 200 applicants. It just seems you know the first program that's coming out of the task force is something that may be very limiting in terms of the participants in that program. So it's just something to offer for consideration. Keith, wouldn't that mean though that we would turn people away? Wouldn't that mean that we would turn people away? So if we had a rush of people we would, you're saying tell some people we're gonna hold off just to make sure we have some left for the later months and we would turn people away. Is that what you're saying? We just want to be clear. Yeah, two other people and they've gone full. Right. And beyond that you're saying they've gone full. Right. Right, but he's saying if somebody comes in tomorrow like they did in district 10, we would tell them now we're gonna, sorry we can't help you today. Even though we have money, we want to kind of save it in case somebody else comes in later. I mean, if you get more than what you have subscribed, if you're estimating it to 100 people. Right, right. So let's say you get 400 people. You have no flexibility in the program right now to serve 400 or 300 or 250 people. Right, right. So there are times when you have a contingency that if the program goes beyond what you had anticipated, you might be able to draw upon those funds to pay for additional services that you hadn't anticipated when the program started. I think people understand or you guys are budgetary restraint. Right. And we get that. My looking at it, 200 units or 200 clients that you'd be serving through development. And I also know that the timeline of the redevelopment and the relocation efforts don't always line up with your budget year and your fiscal year. So I think I hear Keith's concerns about the flexibility but I think he also got a balance. And I think it's a very good first step by the way. And I think we're gonna learn as a community as we go how much resources really need to be dedicated towards this because as San Antonio emerges and grows and more investment comes into these neighborhoods, there's gonna be a larger need. So my gut feeling is this is somewhat of a pilot program. There's gonna be more resources in the future dedicated to it than I understand the challenges you guys have at staff. But sometimes the timing doesn't always line up, the number of line up to the budget relocation efforts. Like to say something, also I think that's again part of the analysis, the really granular analysis required is to identify who got served, who didn't get served. So if someone calls in, for example, and says, I would like service and you say we don't have any money, it would be helpful not just to talk for sure, but to get the information about what their profile is as to whether they would have qualified or not. And I also like, let's see, well, I won't go there, but I also wanted to just mention this has been just a little thing that sticks in my little side here is I'm glad that you will be reviewing the tips. I'm glad that HSD has responsibility for them because one of the things that horrified me last year or something looking at, I don't know why I was looking at the tips, but if you look at the original documents or the formation documents of these, almost uniformly, right now, of course these are older documents, almost uniformly, they answer a question that says anticipated displacement. Uniformly, they say no, displacement is the answer. I think there's a lot of careful analysis. It's, again, the oversight, there needs to be, I think the department has an opportunity to tighten the oversight of these and the recording and the intentions. And also just wanted to mention that I'm not sure if this has occurred, but several years ago in one of the year-end budget reports, it identified some auditing issues on the tips or the TERS, whatever. And since then I have not been able to find any documents to know whether those have been resolved. It was linked in 2016. So maybe it has just as a heads up when you address tips in your review of policies that will be there. And the other is Amelia had mentioned, I think one of the things, I don't know if it would be identified as a linkage and I know that's not legal in Texas, but I think to acknowledge Richard Costa, who is I think the king of the incentive options for owners is that in addition to making sure that there's understand what limitations they do have if they're gonna take city, if they have used city financial support is actually, is it possible to look into incentives, at least we can't do linkages now, but can we do incentives for making them participate incentives they might be? Just a request doesn't seem strong, a combination of the care of the state. So I wanted to request that along with the proposal for this policy that also an outreach plan be submitted given that only 19% of the people who participated in the community input process to shape this policy have actually experienced displacement. I think that means that we need to really make sure that it indicates what a challenge it is. I mean, I am fully acknowledging that it is a huge challenge to reach people who will be most impacted by this policy, not asking you to do anything easy, but I'm asking you to do it because it is a need that is acknowledged and that we have a responsibility to move. So I'm requesting an outreach plan that includes really looking at how to reach people who will be most impacted by this policy and reach them to make sure that they know this policy exists, as you mentioned, and to also engage them in ongoing evaluation of how this policy is gonna, if this policy is going to succeed at what level. I believe that the people most impacted by the policy will be the best judge of its success. So if that outreach plan could include a function that also serves to collect additional data like the people that have brought up that will evaluate the policy, but also give us the insight we need to continue to build on it and to understand how to best utilize that policy as part of the larger framework to prevent displacing. I also wanted to request that a evaluation process be also proposed alongside this policy that would again include the people most impacted during that evaluation. And I just wanna point out that all of this discussion, I think really for me confirms how important it is for that high level city official to be found. Like for that to be a priority as far as fulfilling the rest of the framework that is ultimately going to prevent displacement and do the best to mitigate its impacts. We need that high level city official that can help coordinate these efforts and also coordinate the funding because we know it's not gonna take a million dollars, but there are, I believe, other options to other funding sources to leverage to make sure that this is a good success. Can I ask Robert before we go to you, can I ask sort of a question of staff? So what I'm hearing thus far is suggestions from the commission to policies presented and so I think sort of tracking some of those suggestions. One is from my perspective, I think including a preamble that speaks to the spirit and how this connects to the larger commitment of the city has to prevent and mitigate it in my system. Second, I've heard that it's important for us to include language that speaks to, this is our first try at developing a risk mitigation resident relocation assistance program. And so it may not be perfect, but we're committed to learning from it, gathering data and analyzing it. I'm also hearing from my colleagues that it would be really important to add a section to the policy that speaks to the commitment to conduct intentional outreach education and that we have a good sense of where this is happening. And so that let's make sure we start there, but let's not leave anybody out, you know, and so is it, can we do more sort of comprehensive outreach campaign, you know, public service announcements, you know, that kind of information to get it out. Then there's the four pieces, can we have more sort of robust language around property owner and landlord engagement and or requirements to ensure that there's balance between the property owner and then the family that's impacted so that the burden is not just on the family, but maybe there's a way, maybe there's a way to engage a property owner to avoid the prevention, right? Maybe there's some incentive that the city has that would allow the property owner to say, I'm not gonna raise a rent, you know, keep that. And I think those are the final points that I've captured thus far, but I don't see those as like significant changes and I guess my question for staff is, are those changes that you all feel that you can make going sort of along the lines of providing minor revisions to the policy and present to the committee next week at the council? Everything I've heard except one is doable. One is more challenging and not to say it's not doable and that has to do with the landlord property owners. So unless we're providing a direct benefit or something where they're getting something, there's no better word, there's no hope to get them to comply. So that'll be more challenging. Everything else I have heard from all of you, we can do, but there would be a lot of pushback from the development committee and perhaps the apartment association on that, not to say we can't do the average, but foresee the participation and all of that. That's the one way to see more challenging. It is not more stupid. It's maybe, you mentioned that there are some programs already in place that have provisions. So maybe beginning there when Colleen goes out and if a developer or property owner is seeking support for the city or X, Y, Z, there are some requirements, right? If that's already in place, if it is in place, I think it would be helpful to cite it so that's the end of this policy. In those situations it would be through, I guess I didn't hear the copy yet, but unless there's direct benefit they're getting, we don't have a mechanism to say you have to comply. So it would take more legwork to do it. Again, it's not that it's not doable, it just would be more challenging to implement. But everything else I have heard, I think that's on as well, all of that, all the feedback from each of you, I think it's doable. Robert? Yeah, I guess the thing is that we're breaking ground here and we have no history at all on this. So what I see with the minor revisions that we've suggested, I think we should move forward with it because as several people have said the need is now, and there's nothing there for them. The one question that I have is that when we talked about the million dollars and everybody's saying that's 200 people, we're just gonna say, okay, you qualify and here's X amount of dollars and is everybody gonna get the same amount of dollars or is it gonna be based on, this is all I need right now and you can get up to a certain amount? Is there any? Yes, all our amounts are up to, so we have the maximum amount, it's not to say that everyone's gonna need that. It could be, we have up to, or the mortgage, but the mortgage could be lower, up to this amount of rent, but the rent could be lower. So this are the maximums, but it's the actuals that get paid out, if you will. So in effect, it could reach more than 200 people? It could, yes, but we- Do you want to just ask them that? About 200, we said about 200. We would be hopeful that it could reach more. That's fine too, if you want to say yes. This is just a small detail, I forgot one of the, thank you for asking that question. I think it's the, maybe the rental program where it talks about one time, like are we talking about since it's one time at the labor time or annual? Annual, so the emergency assistance, since it's one time since this year. Okay, so that might be a good point, I apologize. So to your point Robert, you know, it's not option B, minor revisions, do we take a vote, or are we, is that expecting for us to have a motion? I'm looking at our return. Okay, willing to make a motion. Move to second. Just one additional comment that I think was raised by Jessica, I want to make sure that repeated is that, you know, because this body is now meeting on a, will be meeting on a regular basis, it would be helpful at least once a month for us to receive a report from staff on the implementation, assuming that it moves forward. And really just an opportunity for us to, to see how things are moving along and to provide input from the public that want to comment. They, you know, it's an opportunity for us to hear from them. So that first report should take the role of a city council would be, or an outreach fund of those efforts are going. Yeah, Lord, as we, we sent you all a copy of our monthly memo for the first time last Friday. Did you all get that? Right, so when that memo will include facts about this risk mitigation fund and how it's going on a monthly basis. So it'll be added to that memo. So you already got memo one, you'll get the next memo in April. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so it's been moved to second. Attorneys making sure that the motion has to be clear. So to capture the items there. So it's minor revisions to include. Yes, my motion is to provide minor revisions to the policies and recommended to move forward to the city council. Yeah, we've been with the commission going forward as the recommendations were made by the audience. You're going to just make those and incorporate them into draft policy or to present them to council. Yeah. This is a question. I just want to bring up what I had requested that when it's reported to council that it not be reported as simply a vote day or night. I don't know if that needs to be stated in this or if it's not, so just want to do it. Who's requesting the money? Who's requesting, yeah, the full company or name front? Yeah. Who are you on? Oh, this city staff. Where's the city staff? Okay. We're trying for you. You're trying to get the housing for different services. First rules of order, but I will just clarify this point. So this is the housing commission basically hearing from the city staff on the creation of some guidelines to help individuals that are either be forced to relocate or be displaced from their home. The funding for this program was allocated or appropriated by the city council and the mayor back in October, November, last October, I guess, September, October of 2018. And so the city staff have gone through process of gathering input from the community to devise the policy and that's what we're. And so it's going to help everybody. Okay, so it's been moved in second and it's basically the changes as summarized earlier. Is there anything else that I missed in the summary that you all want to know? If not, all those in favor, say aye. Will we be able to see the summary of the changes prior to that point of view? We will do that in the first place. It's going to get better. But we'll make sure you get it. The city council agenda for next Thursday. This item is going to city council next Thursday. So the agenda item, the agenda and the backup material to include the briefing memo will be posted tomorrow. So in the briefing memo, we'll include these four items and make mention of tonight's meeting and the policy will be attached to the briefing memo. So everything that you talked about tonight will be reflected in the materials presented late and tomorrow probably around five o'clock is generally when they post the agenda. Okay. Is it possible to see it before post destination? Yeah, they can, who do you want to send it to? You? We can send it to the lawyer. We can send it to the lawyer. Okay, just mindful that we do have a posting deadline. So if you want to comment, you'd probably have to get it then by three o'clock, no later then. You can send it to everyone and then if you have any comments, you can come to the right and do it. You can send it to the right and do it. But just be, we want to be mindful of your input but we do have a posting deadline. So just to let you know that. So probably by two, three o'clock if you can get your comments in. Otherwise it's going to be too late the week. Yeah, okay. So I know that this was not on the agenda that really maybe this is for the city attorney's office but we would like to talk about the items and the agenda for our next meeting. Can we do that within the context of this meeting or is it, what are the parameters? Yeah, you can bring up the general topics you would like to recognize for the next meeting or for subsequent meetings. You can't get into a sort of discussion or in detailed debate about them now but you can sort of say this is the topic. This might be the information that would be relevant to that topic and that would be sufficient. Okay. So those staff will take note and then we'll work on the agenda. Just be mindful that we can't tackle everything in one meeting so we're gonna see each other quite a bit, we'll have time. And also I have a commission member that's requested if at the end, if there are any additional sort of public comments, I would like to grant the ability to hear from anyone in the audience and then we'll wrap up. So Maryam, I know you have some suggestions. One is I would like to have this one of the agenda items the agenda items, thank you for sending us the monthly report or the most recent report on the business plan and I'd like to be able to have dialogue or discussion about that as one of the items. Also, I would like to talk about the possibility would like to talk about the possibility of being able to regular or more frequent meetings in a way that's still complying not with it doesn't require that it would be optional because a lot of us are thinking about this all the time in a way that would be compliant with Texas open meeting that maybe there could be an ongoing meeting possibility without that people would know about it. It can be posted for the public to attend but it would be no votes, just discussion especially in terms of planning what are the priorities between and especially the end of May because of the short terms we have. And maybe a discussion on an update of the walking quorum because of the recent court case on the Texas open meetings at which could reduce which could eliminate the need for an ongoing meetings but in terms of right now the walking quorum provision has been overturned is that an opportunity for us to communicate with one another in between meetings without require? Essentially, I think what you're really asking for is to have regular quorum sessions for its briefing and presentation but not necessarily a requirement of action by the body. So I think that's something we can look into and we can report back out about possibilities for how we structure that. But I do want to ask us what's your advice on the fact that the walking quorum provision has been overturned? The criminal aspect of that has been overturned. My recommendation is still going to be done. My for agenda items would be to hear on the status of amendments to the consolidated plan and to also hear from Saham on the status of your, I guess, development plan or some shifts in the new housing development plan. I don't know what the name for that plan is, but. RSA Management Plan. Sure. What's related to public-private partnerships and new housing developments can be a reason. Happy to provide an update. And, thank you. And also, may I ask, would you say consolidated plan? You're talking about the annual election? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yeah, come on. Consolidated plan is every five years. Annual election plan is every year. Which one is the one that the amendments right now? There's public comments right now. Annual election plan? Annual election plan. Okay, then. Thank you. And also, if we could also discuss the potential changes that staff shared with us today, I would like for us to discuss what we think on that or what possibility, yes, for the, no one's sorry for the affordable business plan. Oh. Love it. To the agenda, being done, I do want to recognize Christine McPhee from District One. Thank you for being here. And do we have any members of the audience that want to comment? I know we started at the beginning. We do. Okay, we have one individual, so. Yeah, in regards to. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself, your name and what district? Yeah, I'm Sam. I live in District One, Sam Woody. In regards to outreach, I think it would be good to, like any time an eviction court case is filed with the county, y'all could be notified of that and that could trigger education on this one for these families that are gonna go through this eviction process. Because many of them go on without a lawyer and they have no chance. So that's a person with a high risk of being displaced. And y'all can take the burden off of them to find you and contact them using the show up for the court case. Like you know what they'll be. Yes. As far as the funding concerns. Can you, your name? I think the last of district ones. As far as the funding is South, East and West, is the funding gonna go towards that for the people in the city of San Antonio? I know that's the minority level and I know because this funding is gonna be for everybody, is it going to be incorporated within those areas during public after the meeting and so I would recommend that you talk to the staff. And they should be, thank you. Yes. Coasting on Paula for one neighborhood coalition. I'm a landlord and I'm also a housing, affordable housing advocate. So I straddle that fence. And I would like to turn, mention an option on the landlord requirement idea. We often talked about somehow I would use the word even penalizing the buyer of the property who then is displacing tenants. It is the seller of the property that has made the profit on the backs of the tenants that have lived in that property. It is the seller that knows the timing of the transaction. It is the seller in my opinion that you have a better chance of asking to participate in a displacement fund. They walk away with the check. Often times has a pro forma, has a debt service, has financial limitations that can make that more difficult. And what you don't wanna do is put a buyer in a situation where over time, they're not able to do with the property what they wanted to and you end up with unintended consequences for closure or whatever. So I would ask that you look at what can be done to have a fee on the seller of the property. You take soapworks, which is the perfect example. James Litchford's owned that building for 30 years. His tenants were loyal to him. I know people that have lived there for 10 and 20 years. And he sold them down the river now. I'm being harsh in my language, but you could say that by not letting them know, by not communicating with them, I'm going to be selling the building. Perhaps I can help you relocate or six months ahead of time, letting them know. Letting the city know we're gonna have this coming up. So I would ask you to look at that in the reverse. Also, we're guarding the apartment association. Hector Cardenas is up in all of these meetings. And so is Mark Ross. And that is a strong working relationship with the city. They can help. They should be asked, and I brought this up, as Dr. Kamal knows in one of our working group meetings that education, asking them to help educate their landlords. For a landlord, a vacancy, a special immigration is expensive. If landlords knew of resources to help their tenants get help, they would want to take advantage of that. Evicting a tenant is not to a landlord's advantage. That is not the business we are in. So buying a little bit leverage on the apartment association and SABOR for that matter, to provide this education to landlords so that it cannot be, especially, as to your point, the single family homeowners and others, where they can help their tenants and help their tenants stay. Thank you. So we have one, two more public comments and then we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you. Yes, right here. My name is Silvia Rodriguez and I'm from district one and I come from the SOFOR apartment. Right now, I'm going to some crisis. My lease is up in April and they're gonna raise it $100 more. They want to pay and they never let me get me a chance to look. I went to the housing but they told me a year, two years before I could get procedures and I need help. I don't know what to do. So that's why I'm here today to see what I could get. I don't know what they're gonna do because my check doesn't pay. It goes to the rent. So that's all I wanted to say. If I could get some help. I'd be happy. I appreciate it. Thank you. Can I practice? You can do that. Sure. My name is Chrissy McCain. I work for Councilman Trevino and I'm the Director of City Planning and Development. I just want to make a note that City Council is part of the public hearing process of policies like these. It is not the rubber stamp that finalizes these things. And so if you have thoughts, comments, ideas, please don't hesitate to reach out to your Council members to reach out to their staffs and make sure that not only do we give feedback as the policy moves forward, but also that as the policy is implemented because these budgets, these policies, they are reviewed on an annual basis by the City Council every September as we move to the end of the budget process. And so I just want to make that note that, yes, it goes to Council in a week but that does not mean that there's no more chance for public engagement or input on these policies. I'll try to be really fast. Okay. One minute. I can do one minute. How many people at this table have been displaced before? How many of the audience has been worked for this? How many are going to be? You're about to be. How many are going to be? Yeah, we have several subordinates here. Okay, so anyway, one of the biggest problems that I've seen is that I've actually worked with several people today even who are trying to find homes. They can't find a home to begin with. And so, you know, relocation assistance is great but they can't even find a place in the first place. And so that's one of the things that I think is that if we had gone straight to people being displaced for this policy creation, then we would know stuff like that. Or for example, there's a neighborhood at the end of the San Pedro Creek development that is all getting harassed by the developers. They won't really benefit from this either because they don't have mortgages. They've been there for generations until they own their homes. And so these are the kinds of things that I'm, you know, trying to talk about where we can't really create this displacement or mitigation fund or policy or how to implement it efficiently and effectively and the most resourcefully with our money if we're not going directly to the people on. So it feels like we kind of need to do a lot of work in that regard. And I kind of just want to express my discouragement that we're still just sort of sweeping soaps onto the rugs. I received an email this week of sort of a list that the city did to outreach to them. And some of it was lies. And another of it was just like deceptive truths. And so I think that we really need to, and I think that it's because we don't want to see the reality of displacement. Like we see a lot of people in this room don't know what it's like to be displaced. And the people who do can tell you that it's extremely traumatic. And I don't think that this policy addresses that in the way that it needs to. And so I hope that, you know, pass at that time because we need something immediately. But beyond that, I hope that the Health and Commission continues to wonder what's going on at Soapworks. Are they being helped? And supported in the way that they should be? Because this kind of came out of Soapworks tenants coming and kind of re-traumatizing ourselves over and over again, revealing our stories. And so I hope that you guys help the tenants. That was our last comment. Thank you very much, everyone, for being here. Our next meeting is March of 27th. And it should be taking place. Facility, I believe, on the 27th. Oh, we don't have a location. We don't have a location, but look out for the location. It is March of 27th. Thank you all. Thank you to the commission members.