HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/28/2025 Item 5a, Wyatt
AR Wyatt <a.reneewyatt@gmail.com>
Sent:Tuesday,
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:10/28/25 5A Housing & Renter protections package
Dear Mayor Stewart and Councilmembers: It looks to be a long night with 111+ letters in the file already,
and now, this one more... Thanks, in advance, for wading into this lively, elemental swamp, housing
policy. Five recommendations and other notes here:
Recommendations:
1. Authorize staff to proceed with a smokefree multifamily housing ordinance--there is no
reason that residents should have to suffer deleterious effects of second hand smoke in or
around their homes when we know the hazard
2. Bolster good neighbor and landlord training through expanded educational training programs
and mediation and legal Resources and safe housing checklist for landlords and tenants; lots of
existing programs and agencies can assist with this effort to minimize staff load, maximize
distribution channels and help minimize friction
3. Utilize existing business license system to begin to collect more information about rentals
and landlords--do not create a cumbersome and expensive new registry system at this point;
use funding for education and mediation, above, and/or for direct assistance to struggling renters,
such as augmenting limited TBRA funds that provide renter assistance through existing channels
now or to create new affordable rental homes
4. Update the Mobile Home Park Rent Stabilization Ordinance--mobile home owners, in a unique
position as both homeowners and also renters, cannot pick up and roll their purchased homes
down the road, so this is one special case where special carved out protections in place continue
to make sense.
5. Keep your eye on demographics and home type mismatch and consider further incentives
for production of smaller, more efficient housing units, including ADUs, THOWs and
homeshares, as you go forward--More than one in three City households are single persons
(roughly 36%) while 80% of your homes are 2, 3, 4 or more bedrooms. Aligning single-person lower
income households with homes--and even serving lower income renter couples--with smaller,
less expensive home options, would require doubling the availability of studio and one-bedroom
homes from current supply. (Yes, the City is ahead of targets on ADU production, yet could still
ramp up production of lower cost, smaller secondary units (both ADUs and THOWs) with well
targeted incentives and assistance programs to homeowners with available yards yet limited
means/skills to develop.)
General notes:
1. Kudos to your staff for a comprehensive, informative report. I learned a lot there, and
appreciated the various stakeholder suggestions, statistics and notation of where useful
statistics are lacking and further information is needed
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2. As an affordable housing developer, a private landlord and a non-profit operator of a program that
facilitates private market room shares and ADU production to provide added affordable housing, I
walk a fine line on renter protections, and often find myself at odds with my colleagues. Yes, we
need protections, and yes, we shoot ourselves if our renter protections are so draconian that
they keep a lot of private (particularly small, low end) landlords and their often older, lower
cost units out of the rental pool because they are afraid that if they take someone in that they
will have to live with them for life, suffer lawsuits or pay high relocation fees. I've seen these
fears first-hand as they preclude potential landlords from constructing ADUs, entering their
rooms or apartments into the rental pool, and I see it reflected nationally in the census numbers,
with a high percentage of " vacant other units," some millions of housing units, which are to some
degree, rentals left vacant because landlords, among them myself, don't want to take on the risk
factor of taking in tenants. Having empty lower cost homes does not help renters; it simply further
constrains supply of lower cost rentals and makes rentals less affordable as supply further fails to
meet demand.
3. While there certainly are bad actors, raising rents drastically and you name it, I'd like to echo the
form letters from the Realtors Assoc and cite my experience working with hundreds of community
minded landlords, who recognize great, long term tenants, and voluntarily keep rents below
market. I hate the thought of more hoops for them or scaring these community minded persons
out of the market and their units out of the rental pool.
4. Correspondingly, there seems to often be assumption that funky old less perfect rentals are
inherently problematic. A number of renters seek out funky older rentals for a variety of reasons:
charm, lower cost, chemical sensitivities (to new carpets, flooring, appliances, etc), ability to
keep pets, ability to live in a desirable location, income too low to qualify for traditional
management standards--or maybe their only option to being in the creek or 40Prado. If you
threaten or penalize landlords and pull these units out of the supply pool, do you really help
tenants--or do you just further limit low income already highly constrained set of housing options?
In days gone by (urban renewal 1950s-1970s) we demonized an older housing type then prevalent
in cities, single resident occupancy hotels (SROs), thinking such dens of iniquity (said the
reformers) led to societal problems, and we razed them, thinking our problems would go away. Ha
ha, We didn't eliminate any people of lesser means housing problems, we only exacerbated their
problems and effectively dumped those people who had been housed onto the sidewalks,
eliminating anything they could possibly afford to live in, welcoming in our modern day homeless
problem. I don't mean to be overly trite, but a realist: you just don't get everything everybody
wants for $1000/month, toward the high end of what very low income renters may be able to
afford. Everybody can be unhappy, and that $1000/month imperfect dingy SRO, room, garage or
whatever can still be better than no rental or another beautiful new $3000/month 2-bedroom
charmer that single guy working at the gas station convenience store 50 hours per week simply
cannot afford, even with 100% of his income, and the overtime. You know the math there, and you
know your budget projections--your municipal budget is not likely to be flush in the coming years.
Help that landlord find ways to improve that lower cost older little studio rental, not remove it
from desperately needed low end housing stock with nothing affordable to replace it.
Tough spot, without easy clear answers to anything, and I thank you for your work to find equitable
solutions and your compassion for our community members that are struggling. We know this number is
not small, and it will take all our concerted efforts, and then some, to find the suite of solutions to serve
the scale of need. (Recommendations and notes expressed here are mine as an individual, not
representing any organization or agency... ) Appreciatively, -a
Anne R. Wyatt
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