HomeMy WebLinkAbout3/5/2024 Item 8a, Price (SLO Rent Coalition)
Wilbanks, Megan
From:SLO Rent Coalition <slorentcoalition@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday, March 5, 2024 1:55 PM
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:March 5, 2024, Meeting: Agenda Item 8a
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Dear Mayor Stewart, Council Members, and Staff:
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the Housing Needs and Opportunities study session and
offer comments and recommendations. The accessibility of safe, secure, and affordable housing at all
levels is directly tied to our homelessness response. As Director Tway noted in her Staff Report, fair
housing, affordability, and community stability are integrated into many of our Major City Goals.
As a regulator, the City has an important role to play in securing the housing market, not only to remove
barriers to construction, but also to erect guardrails for tenants to ensure they have homes that are safe,
healthy, and fit to live in; are protected from no-fault evictions; and are not subjected to illegal rent
increases in violation of the California Tenant Protection Act. I encourage the City to update and
modernize our housing codes and provide more resources to Code Enforcement for Safe Housing and
Neighborhood Wellness response. We understand that Director Tway is working on a memo regarding
some policy options to protect tenants and help preserve and expand the stock of low-cost rental
housing. When do you anticipate distributing that memo?
The best way to prevent homelessness is to help keep people who are already housed in their homes.
That can be challenging, especially in light of some key statistics cited in the Staff Report: the cost of
housing in our community is more than 50% higher than the national average—fourth highest in the entire
nation; average rent is now upwards of $2500 per month; the median rental household spends 38% of its
income on housing; and nearly a third of our residents experience poverty. The risk of losing your home
due to one unforeseen medical expense, one major car problem, or other unanticipated circumstances
makes life extremely precarious for many of your constituents.
One of the most demonstrably effective ways to do keep people housed is to ensure legal representation
for any tenant in the City who has received an eviction notice or been served with an unlawful detainer
lawsuit. Rates of eviction are significantly lower for tenants who are represented in housing court
compared to those who are not, yet just 3% of tenants are represented in eviction cases, compared to over
80% of landlords.
Providing representation is a cost-effective measure for the City when taking into account the resulting
burdens on the healthcare, foster care, emergency shelter, education, and correctional systems. This
might be accomplished in collaboration with the SLO Legal Assistance Foundation (SLOLAF), CRLA, San
Luis Obispo College of Law, and similar agencies. Perhaps the existing SLO Solutions program could be
expanded to include this service? At present, however, these agencies only serve a very small segment of
the affected population and don’t have the resources or capacity to serve the vast majority of tenants in
distress.
It’s been noted that the City has met its RHNA target for above-moderate income housing. At this point, I
urge you to signal to the development community that you’re not going to approve any more applications
for above-moderate housing—end of story! If they want to build in the City, they need to build the kind of
housing our residents need, not just what generates the most profit.
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The City is already supporting transitional housing at Welcome Home Village and other properties, and we
encourage you to push Welcome Home Village to completion. Moving forward, we urge you to put
available funding into permanent housing, not transitional.
We are very supportive of downpayment assistance and would like to see the City apply a racial equity
screen to applicants to ensure the broadest possible representation when providing such assistance. We
believe that programs funded and managed by local agencies are more effective and more equitable
than those funded and managed by the developer/builder, with payments going into the revolving fund
to enable program sustainability and expansion. Pairing this program with a “right of first offer” policy
would enable the City to ensure that such subsidized homes remain available for the program when
buyers elect to put them on the market.
It’s also important to recognize the need to develop other funding sources besides developer fees to
supplement the Affordable Housing Fund. Some of the sources you might consider to generate additional
revenue that would support permanent supportive housing and BMR housing include:
Fees on residential and commercial buildings that sit vacant for extended periods. In addition to
artificially suppressing the housing supply, vacant homes and businesses attract crime and blight and
become an added burden on our public safety resources.
Transfer fees on high-end real estate sales, both residential and commercial. Here’s an
informative article from the LA Times on transfer fees.
Additional fees for second homes and properties not occupied by owners.
Although the City does not currently build or manage housing directly, that landscape is shifting and the
City should be prepared to reconsider its role in that regard. With the anticipated passage of ACA 1 and
the Justice for Renters Act in November, new avenues will open up to create BMR housing and institute
more protections for tenants. I ask that you include support for the Justice for Renters Act and ACA 1 in
your legislative platform, and begin preparing now to respond promptly to the passage of these
measures.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer this feedback.
Barry Price
SLO Rent Coalition
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We are a Tenant-led organization dedicated to defending and advancing the right to safe, secure, and affordable housing for all in San Luis Obispo County.
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