so it's time to call this meeting of the stabilization board to order i we have an agenda in front of us originally we had planned to have the close session first but if it's ok with everyone we're going to have that last so first of course is the approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda a move that we move and you know sessions and i will second that anything out in favor which brings us to public forum i don't have any cards is anyone here to make public comment are you here to comment on the soft story stuff would you like to wait until it comes up or would you like to make a comment now ok does anybody know where these came from do so that brings us to the approval of the minutes first we have the june seventeenth regular meeting minutes that language should also appear in the main motion which was approved approved as amended all in favor ok and that brings us to the next minutes the july fifteenth minutes i don't have any changes does anyone else brings us up to a brief overview of the main stabilization program capital improvement petition process i believe that our senior hearing examiner katherine lee and our staff attorney not brown are going to handle this adjustment and the whole underpinning is really the idea of fair return and before we cut costs to hawkins landlords were guaranteed to get a fair return under our ordinance and regulations either by their net operating income analysis of base year net operating income alice's or in  n the other way is through capital improvements which are defined as fairly major sorts of improvements to a property and also include a later amendment included what are called major long term repairs so the idea of capital improvements is not for the ongoing maintenance repairs and operating expenses but for some of the larger items that improvements that might a landlord might make to a property and the major long term repairs are things like a new roof or  sense ongoing maintenance but in another are so infrequent and large in terms of dollar amount that are considered to be eligible for a rent increase at market for due tendencies and so the theory is that a landlord is taking into account his or her expenses when renting and those include any capital improvements they might make excuse me and so the regulation as amended after hawkinson does not allow t of the initial rent and not only that for any of the units that might qualify that haven't had a cost increase any  of the amount was that a landlord gained in a cost of hawkins increase the vacancy increase would serve to offset any amount that would be eligible to a non but the theory is because they have landlords have been able to realize so much of a gain by setting a rental market that they're still getting their fair  is presumably contemplating any improvements that there are about to make or had made in the past when setting the rent so therefore  particular unit they would not be able to assess and increase for capital improvements if they are otherwise qualified so in this kind of say i was right and my second question was a clarification i no more questions so then the question becomes what are we going to do now we have the presentation on the soft story coming up at seven thirty so we should probably postpone that i was in response to a statement that the board never grants captain improvements in the entire history will be granted six what i did with about a day to to respond is  are for capital proof but involve some form of a renting crease so there it's easy to it's definite that there are hundreds perhaps thousands of capital improvement petition i think that the response perhaps imply that there were four thousand you i'd say it's in the thousands as far as capital improvements that have been a plate of been approved by the board if you were to last a few years since they can see the control that's the you know and frankly that's the very logic of vacancy control and that owners would be able to as units turned over capture what they felt they would need for both known increases taxes higher lee you can go home thank you for coming process staff heard the facts and made a determination that the property did need to be registered with not a single family dwelling owner came in and still continue to say but january we sent out a bill for the property and there was no response later in door standard practice which i believe we followed with in the cases where there was money on the books was like i said first we had a conversation based upon the inquiry explain that we felt that the register we held a hearing they got the decision saying they needed to register subsequent to that we sent a bill  with the amounts for registration none of these were responded to affirmatively by the owner other than reiterating that they didn't believe that they needed to i believe we also based upon how we treated june it would go over to the person who would be actually going to small claims court to make one final effort to contact the owner it sounds like they indicated that they were that that actually was successful that they i think they in their statement they indicated they will they indicated they spoke with mr gonzales i think they mean mr sanchez and our office to concerning that the debt that was on the books as we notify all owners in the month of may and june and throughout that the debt isn't resolved by the end of june for something that was for registration fee that was that  started the previous july we have to file a lawsuit with a lawsuit by the end of june prior to july first in order to protect  portion of the of the debt from being barred by the statue limitations that's our standard practice if something remains unresolved from the current year it's like we have from july second through june thirtieth june twenty eighth r notified them that we were in the process of doing just to follow up we when someone comes in what we do is in order to protect the board's interest we file the lawsuit unless if there's anyone here we filed a lawsuit and then you'll see over the next few months you're going to get a lot of the waivers where it's because there was a litigation pending so we don't actually go to court on those cases until hopefully there's some resolution if they wish to apply for a waiver of the penalties we let it go to the board first in this case i think they responded because there was still that outstanding debt  to determine what's you know how you want to respond i have commissioners blake and tally absent from the discussion i realize it was not appealed so it doesn't technically matter but i'm most they claim to have one kitchen i believe that during the time of the hearing both were actually being rented in one form or another and it appears if you look at the top as of august two thousand and thirteen one of them is  of rent controlled units through illegal conversion duplexes into single family homes you can pretty easily convert a duplex to a single family home if you're restructuring its original use you can get a permit to do it but just taking out the duplex that was my impression that the owners legitimately didn't know that they had bought a duplex although i did see the original rental listing did list a studio with a separate meter tell me i make a motion all in favor  you going backwards in our slightly reordered agenda i think that we could now have a special presentation by the planning staff on the proposed ordinance to require retrofit of soft weak building official and wendy cozen deputy planning director that the speaker asked to speak right before this presentation so i called been working on it or what i felt was simple yes but not as long as several commissioners here including commissioner tally so thank you for your efforts and i am absolutely thrilled that there is no staff within the city designated to project managing this there are a few recommendations that i have after reviewing the staff proposal i have sent some of the more specific comments to  jenny at this point i'm going to just talk about the really broad issues that have become apparent to me number one i believe the boys should look at waiving permitting fees on their sorts and conditions during my limited time on the zab i've been able to see firsthand the costs that applicants in court for simply applying for having us permits and while they're doing it towards the show enjoyment of modified or expand of property that can be considered one thing in this case a seismic retrofit ought to be seen as a public good for the tenant for the property owner and the whole city on that basis i believe a strong argument exists for one can determine a nexus between that fee and itself then that would be a different matter however a number of property on earth at the public hearing where this was discussed by staff to getting the permit for the retrofit itself in this case i urge the wind for it to take a hard look at what is associated with apartment itself and to the amount possible to streamline that moving when moving some of the impediments that property owners face right now the ones that actually are interested in creating and being compliant with the ordinance at this time stuff has also come up with a proposal for a property owner who is in hardship and i would orange staff and board members to look at this to better define what hardship means when these seismic days of action would come to a stop in other words the city that bears the ultimate responsibility for providing that and forstmann mechanism would do the job that it is assigned to do right now by the ordinance and i think assigning a full time staff member to that end is a very important and necessary force step in response to the latest seismic day of action an email this was the first time that they were hearing about the ordinance or that they were not in compliance with it i think it's important and i certainly tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and while this ordinance has been on the books since two thousand and five it's true that for a long period of time there was a gap where the city was not going out and physically in forcing these properties if it is in fact the case that these property owner this would never contacted them that should be the first step and that the absolutely the job of the city contactees property recommends two styles of placing but as several engineers expressed at the public meeting there are no strict guidelines for property owners to adhere to as an engineer myself i know there are sometimes times when it's important to not provide one explicit stand to it but to provide sample options so the safe harbor yes but the city needs to be very specific so that once a property owner commits to following a particular stand do it there is no situation of the city moving the goalpost and asking something else thank you so much for your work on this and i invite you to attend our september twelfth housing advisory commission meeting in which we will be discussing the same thing thank you stay right there i believe commissioner blake has a question  pointing fees for those property on a list that want to get into compliance right away so a carrot sort of approach the reason i ask is because several people have of course completed their retrofits already  paid their requisite permit for use in the interests of equity and i do know that we offer to future employers should also be extended director art of leader the people who already paid these fees would do so it's a good point philosophically that makes sense to me but this is the beginning point it's certainly an issue that i can tell you right now i'm personally grappling with and i will probably have more to say about this in a few weeks at the housing advisory commission meeting but at this point i'm just interested in providing the white set of carrots and sticks to make sure that these properties that have not yet been wet for fear that would in inappropriately thank you very much i'm very excited to be here and looking forward to making progress with the soft story program so we're here tonight to talk to you about the proposed ordinance that will require the retrofit of soft weak or open front buildings with five or more residential units starting january the first so we'd like to just introduce the ordinance to you we would like to also share with you the highlights of public comment we held  public outreach meeting july the twenty fifth and also a really here to seek your input to find out any feedback you have on the ordinance yourself answer your questions and you know and hear your thoughts so what are soft weaker open front buildings these are buildings that have a common structural weakness due to large openings in their perimeter walls for parking or storefront windows and few partition walls of the ground level the open condition makes the ground level significantly weaker than the floors above it the condition is commonly known as soft story and during strong earthquakes these weak ground level walls cannot support the side to side or front to back movement of the stiff and heavy stories above them leading to structural damage and in worst cases to collapse so here are some photos of buildings that were damaged in the one thousand nine hundred nine earthquake with that all had that software open front condition and as you can see oh thank you that's as you can now see you know that these these big these buildings are quite vulnerable all of these are of our photos from the loma prieta earthquake and  were very primarily this is driven by concern for the safety of tenants and the desire that tenants be able to safely get out of their building in the event of an earthquake so the risks of soft storey buildings in an earthquake for tenants include personal injury damage of their possessions and a loss of housing for owners they face property damage as well as a loss of rental income so originally there was a phase one an ordinance that was adopted in two thousand and five which is stablished an inventory of soft story buildings that had five or more residential units and berkeley was the very first city to do so there are other cities that have since taken action in this area but berkeley was a real leader what the ordinance required was preparation of an engineering evaluation report that analyzed the ability of buildings to resist earthquake forces identified weaknesses and ways to remedy those weaknesses it also required owners to notify all tenants that the building was a soft story and to post an earthquake warning sign but it did not require owners to retrofit  i did want to address the comments that you were made earlier and the concerns that have been raised in recent months about the posting of earthquake warning signs because we actually have have taken pretty significant action about that in the last few weeks we've done a mailing and we printed earthquake warning signs with an int he said backing and checked the most recent address on record for all of the properties still on the list and mailed them to the side and we also have worked with our housing inspectors and the city attorney's office and are planning to inspect those properties so we've notified them that starting october the first the there will be a housing inspector coming to check that the sign is actually posted and if it is not posted they will face an administrative citation of five hundred dollars and i also had my phone ringing quite a bit with questions from people after getting this mailing which is also been a really nice opportunity to let them know that it's going to be most likely mandatory that they retrofit so you know just getting them thinking about how the more important issue is actually doing the retrofit so any opportunity to encourage that that action is a good one here's a map of the two thousand and five inventory of self story buildings as you can see there's a sort of u shaped around campus where there are more apartment buildings are located and where where more of these buildings exist and want to just give you the results of that the initial there are three hundred and twenty one buildings on the inventory wood framed buildings and since since the ordinance was passed fifty one of the buildings were actually taken off that list either they proved they didn't have a soft story condition that they didn't have five or more residential units some of them had had office space or you know for other reasons they were taken off the list one hundred nine of them actually retrofitted so it's  concern about the state of the building and many many many people did retrofit and there are several projects that are that are currently underway one hundred forty three complied with the requirement and they submitted the engineering evaluation report but did not go ahead and retrofit and then just eighteen so six percent of people didn't comply at all they didn't do a report they didn't do anything so here you can see the red houses represent buildings that are still that still have the soft storey condition and the greenhouses represent buildings that have done their retrofit the slightly more green buildings closer to the hayward fault but it's not  not that not that big of an indicator so what's phase two about there's the new ordinance that's being proposed and copy of it was included in your packet adopts mandatory seismic retrofit requirements for software or open front buildings and this ordinance will affect one hundred sixty one buildings that have not yet retrofitted that remain on the list and while it's a small number of buildings it does impact a significant number of residen because these buildings contain one thousand five hundred and ninety three residential units so why should you retrofit retrofitting can save lives it strengthens the critical story which reduces the likelihood of collapse it provides elements to resist lateral forces imposed on the building by an earthquake increases the possibility people will get out safely from the building and increases the value and lifespan of the building you can see a couple of examples of how to retrofit by enhancing the walls or adding a moment frame on the previous slide there's you know someone is adding a shear wall we've got a photo of a moment frame there so in terms of the time line the target effective date for adoption of the ordinances january the first two thousand and fourteen we're proposing that owners will have three years to submit a building permit application to do their retrofit once they submit their application though they will then have two additional years to complete the retrofit so the engineering for the criteria for the retrofit there are several options for these criteria while the ordinance affects a fairly small number of buildings these buildings include a significant diversity in construction methods materials and irregularity irregularities which makes it difficult to apply a one size fits all engineering standard to the whole group extensive consultations took place with a structural advisory panel of engineers and it resulted in the inclusion of the engineering criteria which are listed on the slide there are also listed in the ordinance and there is one more handout i've given you the frequently asked questions so you can see them all there and alex is here to answer any of the detailed questions you may have around the engineering standards in certain cases the deadline to complete a retrofit will be accelerated two to six months and six months to come to submit the permit application and eighteen months to complete the work for example if title is transferred or the building is sold to a new owner we exclude cases of inheritance or transfer to a spouse or domestic partner if there's a cash out refinancing if there's a change of building used for occupancy or the building will be reoccupied after being vacant for six or more months those are a few examples a hardship exemption may be granted and deadline of a one year extension if documentation of why the exception is needed is submitted along with a written plan for proceeding with the retrofit work including an agreement to seek all available financing to be accepted for this there must be no imminent threat to life safety the owners must have submitted the engineering evaluation report they must be able to document they have not been able to qualify for financing or there may be other exceptional circumstances also if that it would require raising the rent for low income tenants which would be problematic so what are other cities doing so richmond and san leandro require notification oakland as is  asking all property owners to mandatory screening alameda and berkeley currently require a mandatory evaluation fremont and san francisco are requiring a mandatory retrofit and we're proposing that berkeley also starting next year require a mandatory retrofit so if you'd like to look at your handout you can see really a detailed summary of all the public comment that we've gotten but to give you just  all highlights of public comment obviously landlords expressed an interest to be allowed to increase rents to support the cost of paying for their retrofit and this is something we were definitely eager to get direction more direction from from their own board about this this question many express that there are too many roadblocks when they apply for a permit one of the roadblocks that was brought up was that when you come in to get your permit to retrofit your if you haven't already put in a fire alarm and your building has three or more stories or sixteen or more units you're told to get your building permit that you'll need to get your fire alarm and that might cost ten to fifteen thousand dollars also people felt that it was difficult to obtain approval to eliminate parking places to do the retrofit several owners expressed the need for a loan program they said they couldn't qualify for bank financing or that they'd face a really steep prepayment penalty with their existing loan or they just didn't have enough equity in their building to be able up to borrow more money against that building the tenant concerns primarily number one was that they felt they were there if their personal safety was comprised was you know they were concerned about their personal safety because they live in buildings that have not been retrofitted and that some of them felt their landlords were very negligent about building maintenance as a whole and they were skeptical about the that their owners were going to retrofit other other tenants really expressed their fears about the possibility of facing rental increases if these were to be passed along to cover the cost of the retrofits the property owners are really interested in and getting more clarification in detail about how the rent board will handle rental increases and you know we are looking to the right board for direction and as much detail as possible so we can inform city council and so that owners will be able to to get the information they're seeking staff have indicated thus far that rent increases may be possible that it will be decided on a case by case basis that they're more likely for properties where most apartments have been occupied by long term tenants since before one thousand nine hundred eight and less likely with properties where the units who rented after one thousand nine hundred nine most retrofit work will not require relocation typically it's work being done on the ground floor owners must notify their tenants if we location is needed ninety days in advance and the tenant can contact the board for more information the tenant owner may mutually agree on relocation while the work is performed and mediation services can assist in helping the both parties come to an agreement so what's next titian's coming up will be presenting at the planning commission next week and at the housing advisory commission the following week we may hold a second public meeting it's the goal is to have the ordinance approved by city council by december so townley has already requested that he take the first two questions jesse has been our point person and sub story on officially on the board for many many years maybe officially because you chair that committee possibly thank you very much appreciate the kind words it's been a long time to this point i'm very excited and looking forward to working with you in the rest of the planning been pushing for for many years i know the report has at times offered our inspector to you know pitch in wherever possible and i'm glad that we're doing it and i'm also very glad that we are able to get signs physical signs out to every single for the signs for science this is the first time that we have mentioned the possibility of a fine it's not in favor so there was nothing that said you'd be fined for not posting  we have a process where we documented how many times they were notified and such that the city attorney said it's you know they gave us approval to start issuing those citations immediately there will be an appeal process and then there are there will also i worked with both council members on this item to talk about different carrots and one and in that include it includes permit fees refunded future point of sale for people who have already done the permit work the permitted work so people have already done the retrofit when they sell the building they get it back if the playing department wants and refund the fees now for work that's been done in the past few years that would be great more immediate and more immediate recognition of property owners who have already done the work  if the work is or has been completed within the timeframe of the ordinance so that would again play to people who have already done that better fits as well as people who do it within the time period of five years under the proposed i would like to see a time limit to the exemptions as in right now it's a one year extension for a hardship i don't want  or people in surrounding properties to be at risk of a collapsed building for more than a year so i would love to see only one extension being available to hardship cases i also think that that will help push all of us all the stakeholders all the people in the city who are involved to address the very tough yes but if we basically address these hardship cases as two point five we'll be able to actually see how meat cases there actually are and have a better idea of how to handle them within the framework of all of the incredible amount of work that's been going on over the past couple of years at all levels of the city so i think now's the time while the iron is hot hot to figure out the hardship  it going so we're we've been gambling with our friends and neighbors lives for the past ten nine years so i want to time limit to the i think the criteria has to include the net operating income financial status across buildings across properties if someone has in the music business we call across collateral ization where you have stuff an artist has five records with a particular record label and one record doesn't hasn't made any money but others have you balance them all out based on the whole of all of the different records  you don't say well this one record has made a lot of money while ignoring this record that has made as they've been losing money and so it's called across quite as they should i would like to see something similar  so that we look at property owners entire portfolio of properties not just the single property i think that's very important and i would also like to direct i wanted to ask the question has there been an analysis of the landlords who have complied with the retrofits and how much equity they have received in their property since the retrofit do we have an estimate or a kind analysis is that possible ok and with the eighteen that are not in compliance is there a possibility of strong in a additional fine into this current new ordinance if they're out of compliance with phase one and throw it in there say well if you haven't been in compliance for several years and still five hundred out you a day until you get it going start jenna first if you're providing the material for them to post and they have posted and that's totally disrespectful to the tenants and surrounding neighbors of those buildings so that stuff like to put that in there at some point maybe we can make that a motion you know with the permit fees as a city employee i know that  we're cutting all the time and i totally disagree with my good friend or trade group in terms of waiving permit fees also in the retroactive waiver of fees and i just think that's financially irresponsible at this time with our city government and our not our cash flow i want to have staff look at nineteen point three nine point zero five zero f section f in that where talks about the penalty the reasonable fee i know that the city can charge up to five hundred dollars a day for buildings that are out of compliance with and i would like to see you know businesses that basically have windfall profits and who feel like they should disrespect the city ordinance and their tenants with a five hundred dollars a day fine so that b f rather than me charge reasonable fees and say maid char shall charge five hundred dollars a day yes p because the thing for me is i want to charge as much as we can to people who are putting people's lives at risk and know it so that's where i'm coming from other area  nineteen point three nine zero nine zero section c one i believe correct me if i'm wrong it could be appropriate to add in section c one including all assets held in the united states from that property owner i know some people i've spoken to gone as far as saying we should look for their global assets and i'm like that's a pretty far out there but i think it's reasonable because some people say well what about al county what property they own county what about the united what about california what about the united states i think if we can if they could prove all their assets united states that they can't afford to retrofit i think we should have  yeah does that make sense yeah ok ok are we making motions or are we what's more through in the sense that we can't take action in a subsequent meeting and still make a timely comment before the council so i think that right now this is sort of a working session where the staff is getting ideas from us about whether or not we have things that would help the god guide them in the are file working up of what they do present to the council to do so i just don't think right now will profit tremendously from from doing the most we can do which is to set some letter to the council saying hey we really think you should do this so let me ask have any discussion that we have here would tend to modify this ordinance or are you just getting feedback and put in the chart and submit it to the council at this point say anything certainly and and wendy and commissioner blake made it fairly clear this bunch of very quickly any motion that's made should be made in the form of recommendations since we have no power to directly change any of the ordinance that's been proposed in front of us so if you're going to make a motion i would suggest that that have the word recommendation right just briefly in this on this point issue and then i'll step back we're going to have a the next round more is on the sixteenth yes i was going to say that the next meeting is on the sixteenth and that hypothetically the four by four committee may meet the week after next as well although you never know for sure so perhaps  may just like they want to dodge as i can ask wendy this if we did want to make a motion perhaps we'd be advised of it so you think it'll fit your timetable that we hold off till the next meeting so we can have our subcommittee meetings and think about these things before we jump into it  and that will still be in time to have an effective so for now let's just stick with passing on what we think which i'm sure stathis so inclined to agree with us that they will take of almost all of them and work them into the  i appreciate staff hard work and your flexibility hearing from a variety of stakeholders in the community because this is an expensive project for any property owner i also recognize that there are people who put things off the press and made until they're forced to do it but we do also need to be realistic and reasonable in our approaches there could be reasons why people have not done retrofitting and i think the statistics that you gave earlier most property owners are already began to do it voluntarily and i have one question i have several concerns but what in addition to the letters that you've mailed have you done additional outreach particular to the small property owners who are older adults in their eighty's and ninety's and i'm listening to the fines and i recognize that fines are often necessary but five hundred dollars a day to a person who's retired a small property owner with one maybe two properties that may be five or six units that's an awful lot of money in addition to the retrofitting work so could you share with us briefly have you have reached out in addition to letters are there other protests because i'm also thinking about people who are property owners but english may not be their first language the so there are host of other concerns but i'd like to hear how you are reaching out to folks in a timely fashion because i realize you have a timeframe and a commitment that you need to fulfill so the first thing i'd like to clarify is that the fine for posting this sign it is not a daily fine  it is a one time fine of five hundred dollars we debated two hundred five hundred thousand we thought five hundred would get their attention more so than a two hundred dollars fine and we wanted to get their attention in terms of the outreach for posting the signs we have only completed a mailing and then it in the mailing it included my telephone number my e mail address and so i've had people calling to ask me exactly  to be posted or to tell me interesting things about you know where a tenant has moved their spine to make sure that it's still in compliance or you know really just junk wire about what they need to do to retrofit one was recently bought their building didn't even know it's on the inventory so so i've had that opportunity as people are calling me i have not gotten on the phone with them we'll have our next contact with the owners after the inspectors go out and that will just be those owners who are not in compliance who have not posted and they will be receiving further communications and they will get it they will get a letter and a notice of the citation so in terms of doing the sort of phone outreach that's something that we intend to do after this ordinance passes when we actually want people to complete the mandatory retrofit so that's where in addition to sending out you know something in the mail where we're where we have phone numbers will be you know i will be calling people to let them know and to offer my system as they go through the process but around the posting of science we're not going to devote the resources to trying to telephone and know people and secure translation services with regard to the permit ing process there has been a lot of discussion about how it works the permitting system and the like and i've heard from some property owners where sometimes they get contradictory information from the permit office you have to have a permit for this and not for that and they want to meet the deadlines i think that the public hearing in july one gentleman was just exacerbated by the permeating process so are you going to we're taking care of him ok good very nicely good because that's been a lot of concern and anxiety for folks about the permit process and then not being fined for other violations so we want property owners to be in partnership so that they will get it and it not be an adversary aereo kind of beating people down because that doesn't tell anyone so i hope that the process is one of partnership we want to help the owners because no owner wants to have a building that's un safe that's that's it's just not good business and you wouldn't want your property destroyed our lives  so the one thing that is new that we're really going to be will be promoting with the soft story program and we have begun with with as we're getting inquiries is that we are offering a pretty application meeting where whereby the owner and if they would like to come in with their architect and their engineer can come in and we will convene a group which might include depending on the project  engineer could include somebody from zoning plan check engineer where we can discuss with them their design so you know one of the concerns that owners have is that they're spending so much on these soft costs they haven't even gotten to construction and they are they feel as drain of sophy's and so the desire and setting up a meeting of that nature is that before they've already submitted for their permit they can get significant feedback and direction of what kinds of comments they'll get and obviously with the engineering calculations you know in our meeting it's not sufficient to review the sorts of engineering calculations that go into some of these more complicated retrofits but there is an opportunity for you know raising the initial issues of like to also see if alex wanted to add anything about your question  potential problems in the plane that will process even though it won't have enough time to review the calculations but at least will be able to tell them up ron to whether or not there will be any difficulties mourning for example parking spaces or whether or not they to find a way forward for the two important programs to co exist not and so they create conflicts for each other because we actually have a number of buildings which had been approved for s will take up the issue of parking and retrofit because that's a big issue with tenants and i think sometimes we need to look at if at all possible if the retrofitting can maintain the parking space which was a service that tenet's had originally but there may be projects where the parking has to go in order to do the retrofitting safely for the building and i think in that instance we need to look at how a tenet may have to give up that parking space so i think that needs to be looked at and discussed because i know that's been a big issue for some tenets the loss of a parking your that's not the word i didn't really need it i don't really believe in it plus the word for it facetiously there's the word thank you wendy this is a hard thing  earthquake retrofit it's hard because it's a capital improvement that doesn't make you any money now if you've got a cap unproven like fixing a roof if you well in a sense it could but it's not like other capital improvements if you've got a cap on proven in the worst case like fixing a roof you know you've got to fix your roof or roof has a fifteen year rule for a twenty year roof you're going to amortize that everybody works it into their estimates for doing their building and then they go look forward and they go i'm making this much money but in five years i got a i got to replace my roof i know i'm going to have to pay for that somehow it's normal to work again and other things we haven't considered a capital improvements like replacing old appliances very controversial part of our history  at least you get a new appliance it's something you can show a tank go look you've got a nice new refrigerator when you're going to fix something invisible and crucial it is people's safety it just falls into a category that doesn't that doesn't have any other members so it's very hard to for a lot of people to look at it in a normal business sort of way this whole business of earthquake retrofit so where apply this to thinking about  they've got to do it they've got to be made to know they've got to do it they've got to be pushed in a lot of ways you know harder to make it happen but it's got to happen why the city should take a hit for doing the normal work that we are required to do something that landlords have to do and should know they have to do is unclear to me if we word to reduce permit fees it would be of the this is part of the carrot and the stick approach that people think works are great it would be our carrot offering to them let me tell you how a carrot works the city wanted to encourage homeowners to locked and tied their foundations than to their peers below their house so  city do this is said were to get the one of that have to transfer taxes in the state so if you buy a new house instead of paying your track transfer tax will pay to hold your house to your foundation we were give you the entire amount if it's a reasonable doubt out of your transfer tax that's a carrot ok people who are reluctant go let's see it cost me nothing ok i'll do it now what's important about earthquake retrofit is people have been recalcitrant to do it in forty percent of done and i think it's amazing and wonderful but people are not happy to do something that doesn't necessarily come figure into your bottom line in any way what we desperately need here is we need a stick it's got to be a fair stick everything's got to be reasonable but no one's going to do it because they go oh i'll be in a lot of trouble if i don't do it and look look at this nice incentive to do it it's not going to work that way incentives are not going to help very much this is a bad way to waste our city money giving incentives to something which we're going to force them to do anyway and which a lot of them won't be affected by it all they'll take it but they're not going to be incentivized by it so it's important when you look at carrots and sticks to really see how they work together and i don't and i don't think it's a good idea for us to i think i don't think we should look at it as a profit center or a place where we make up for other deficits but i do not think we should be trying to encourage this fight reducing permit  fees i feel a little differently about these other weird things that are these horrible synergistic things that are happening like the fire alarms the loss of parking spaces the a t m requirements i know it's a shot in the dark but i here's how i think on the whole subject all these things are happening because the state the state figures in the city figures when you're doing a major improvement of some sort and we call these improvements to your property that's the time for us to step in and say go ahead do your improvement but we're going to make sure you get up to code on certain issues of safety right now well these are not improvements in that sense these are not things that are going to make anybody any money for these landlords i don't think it's substantially i think it's a shame that they're getting triggered to do things this if there's anyway i mean if you putting in a retrofit and it and hardware takes away a parking space obviously the parking space is going to be gone we should do we can to make them find one or help them find someone lot of many you can fit too many almost into one parking space as a way to reconfigure let's find every way we can not to make anybody suffer if we can just instead reconfigure i even think it's a shame that the fire alarms are required for these which are not discretionary improvements so to the degree that we can look at situations and find ways i feel if the retrofit is involves a part of the building where otherwise you wouldn't be able to put in a fire alarm retrofitting later easily that it's a good time to try to compel people to put in fire alarms if that's the part of the building there if it really facilitates the putting on the fire alarms otherwise i really sort of feel bad for people who are being required to make an improvement which we all want but which nobody really directly profits from it's also trigger all of these other thing i feel us i mean i think we should lobby the state and say come on let's not for it compel people to do a proven and sign something which is a matter of life and death for everybody involved so i'd like to see us help these mitigate these these unfortunate synergies that  that are making it harder to finance these things i don't know where we stand i didn't quite understand where the ordinance where the staff stands on the question of pastoral which is the big thing which we will have to deal with and we will be recommending to the council on but i would like to say that my position on pastors is this is the same as the staff present it presented a capital improvement process that we now have no matter how a landlord looks at this sudden expense this one time in his lifetime expense that's going to cost a lot of money it doesn't necessarily have to be recovered i don't really i'm not sure i'm going to go as far as one hundred  notion that we should look at everybody's holdings as a group that seems to be administered of way complicated and cathy whispered to me that everybody sixty's things a lot of people take these things and separate out c c s anyway so you're going to have a lot of veils to pastor or to make an evaluation but mostly i feel that we have a fine process right here for us passing through costs to landlords based upon what happened with with when the fair the fair market value the fair value ended with a vacancy decontrol and we've and it's worked fine for us it seems perfectly fair so i urge the council to use the process that's in place right now for valuating whether past is required and it basically it says if you haven't made enough money beyond the fair representation the fair value that you were getting in the previous process by increased rents due to  vacancy decontrol that you're entitled to pass it on equally to your tenants or do we do something for older tenants where we pass through more or is it just equal it's always equal under the current regs it's equal but i think the board could money's worth these guys are sitting there they're sitting on a gold mine and i'm barely making any money on it of course that's in contrast to their vacancy controls are they getting market rates and they're making a lot of money this is a pretty rich time in general for landlords and we have a process that looks at their specific situation so i don't think you can take that as a sign of fairness that people have been there for a long time and they're so essential benefiting from the new tenants who provide the new income to the landlord because of the vacancy decontrol that will pay for these necessary capital improvements like seismic retrofit so i guess i'm saying i like the way we do it now i don't see any reason to change it people will complain but any large term view of what's going on even in even a mid sized view of what's going on establishes where fairness is and fairness is to look at how  much they've made off of the building and whether they should be paying for their own necessary crucial repairs the only other thing i want to say that i was going to i was going and without but i just want to remind you i'm sure you know by making hack the apple it board that their electrical was in compliance and building staff said planning staff said that it wasn't in compliance and so we heard from both sides well it sounds you were part of that right you want to dress to generally echo commissioner sort of the hills point about us property maybe california property maybe just berkeley property but any more than just the particular property when we're looking at hardship cases i think that is very important i want to give i want to thank the planning department in their response to the public followed for the city and for our citizens i come from working with the disabled and this is incredibly important and it has been state and law since  sorry i mean it's it's fire safety it's another part of life safety and if the fire department is willing to come and maybe me to guys maybe instead of a three month maybe get up to six months to do the work maybe that's a way to go i don't have no idea where your discussions with the fire department have gone but that may be a way to ensure that of life safety use terms of fires at the trust in these buildings but maybe just risking the lives of the tenants for an extra three months instead of some undetermined time would be a good way to go so i would be happy if there is a limit to an extension basically for the fire because it is law and it's a good law and protects the all of us his life safety ok moving right along i do believe that we the planning department coming forward with the consultations the free hour long conversation think it's incredibly important i think that will really help soothe things along so thank you also the parking issues i think your answers in here about parking made sense and i think it is a logical way to move forward the only thing that is maybe difficult and here's we get in a kind of like service for a unit then they are owed a decrease in rent and that comes under the red control law and our regulations again that's a what if what if what might but i think that new owners have to hold realtors and sellers liable if they're on aware of what they're buying you know all property owners were notified that they their buildings were on the so story list in two thousand and five and if they then went ahead and sold their building to an unsuspecting buyer then those buyers have to go after the sellers and after the realtors and i think it's very important to do that but at a certain point all property owners have to take care of business whether it's you know fire alarms whether it's accessibility under the a t f state law whether threat refitting this has been the law since two thousand and five signs and evaluation so at a certain point the problem meets the road and the stuff has to get done and that's part of the responsibility of being a property owner and the service that propaganda provides to the community i think of the panel think appendix a here sorry two things two more things one i'm a little concerned that the public nuisance is the only is that the only stick declaring a public nuisance is pretty time intensive very very time consuming so my obvious concern is so you can have a scofflaw property on one of these eighteen who haven't done anything so far and they can be a hold up like th masonry program had people for ten and twelve years who just dug their heels in and didn't do anything and had these unsafe buildings around the front around our city they just study heels and didn't do anything and then so that's my i want to avoid that with this program ok so that's i don't have an answer for that but i would if you were just reaching for them i just wanted to know what you would in fact considered public nuisances automatically yes ok again the you also have to understand that the city's citation process is persuasion based which means before you go into the say taishan phase will basically will have to engage all those property owners individually and they might in here in fact have certain reasoning behind their not being in compliance with the ordinance your rights about the your you know certain is that true yes so and this is a law that was put in effect in two thousand and five so that's why i want to and i it's and i can't already done the right then and they're not they have delayed so why are these other people getting away scot free comparatively without having to do this i mean it's really i mean on that level just within the group of these buildings it's an equity issue ok finally appendix a i would like to see in appendix a this is the notice to tenants that they are in a building that has on the list i would like us to beef it up in terms of adding more information for tenants i would like to see a notice that informs tenants that they have a private right of action is it ok great well that case i would like to sign and they should be doing it in a valuation in phase two which is what this is part of is that if it's political this building will be retrofitted i would like to let the tenants know that they have a right of return relook relocated for retrofit and that if there's a loss of services such as until we figure out the parking thing that's the main item that may be reduced because the blocks of services saying just very briefly what we can and we don't have a specific recommendation but what we can do at the committee is look to see if assuming councils interested if there's ways that we could utilize the red ford regulations to create additional incentives for owners to comply so in the stack i had me commissioner so that they get and commissioner webster i was going to say that i got a public comment card and so if we were going to have any motions or any votes i would certainly want this person to speak before then so i'll just sit on that per second because i've been waiting my turn i wanted to encourage planning to have a second public meeting i went to the july twenty fifth hearing and everything was great it was very well attended by landlords not so well attended by tenants part of that could be because as we've acknowledged there is a concentration of these buildings near campus and the hearing was held in the summer so i would really like to encourage you to do all of the outreach and make sure that all of the stakeholders are represented to maybe have something when students can go and i was going to speak to the parking issue because that was actually something where i really heard the landlords were saying on july twenty fifth that often these retrofits take place in garages and they might have to lose a space but it seems like it's been pretty well covered but i didn't express my sympathy for that  if they didn't how would the buyers know and one of the things i wanted to point out was that on the personal conditions on the city's website in the map room there's a unreinforced masonry line there but there is no line present whether or not they're on this list condition that noticeable inclusion has been removed so in the in the example that i mentioned of someone who contacted me today saying they hadn't they didn't know you know their their real estate who would have pulled th title report should have seen that and inquired you know more about what that meant because it has a whole paragraph this building is on the city berkeley is a list is an article from the east bay rental housing association about retrofits and this is primarily speaking of what commissioner blake said it says for every dollar spent on retrofitting now owners could expect to save up to seven dollars in property in income loss after an earthquake and it also discusses that owners may be liable because they're aware the tenants are unsafe so those are hard bottom line benefits to retrofitting other than the moral implications of doing so talking to pass through as i wanted to point out that item nine eight thirteen in our pocket does some economic analysis of how many soft story buildings probably couldn't afford to retrofit and it came down to maybe ten possibly and so i just wanted to kind of weigh in there that i kind of stand with commissioner blake on the pastors i think that we have something that allows a fair rate of return and that we don't need to change it and let's see oh and i want to say that if a private right of action is in addition to fines and action that the city would take then i'm all for it but if it instead of that i just don't see that as i really nothing gets me down more than having a law that's not enforced and i would certainly like to see strong enforcement mechanisms clearly spelled out for posterity and not just rely on the idea that an aggrieved tenet might be able to sue if it's in addition to however that's great because putting some power in the hands of the grief people is is a good idea tabs on the soft story stuff as it develops because it'll affect a lot of not a lot but about half dozen clients that we have so want to say first of all that eleanor hall it's great to me personally it's kind of like  specificity lead paint or one of those things where now that we know to not do something is you know ethically you don't know now what i want to be so that's good guides about a half dozen folks that are affected and we've been really actively trying to help them a lot of them don't have the time or the know how to go down to the permit office to follow the steps that we've been trying to parenting here and help them with that  aspect of things because i'm more privy to it and so far we've got about half dozen ready done total to run in the primary process one in the middle of construction and then two that we'll have to probably rely on on the ordinance itself to make that happen i want to comment real quick on a small aspect of this that you guys had mentioned and that would be the carrot and the stick and the retroactive care and the stick sounds like it's contentious whether or not there's going to be any carrot if there is a carrot i would like mr tregear that said definitely encourage you to think about letting some of the owners that were proactive about this to get in on whatever benefit you guys come up with if that happens the reason being and you know in light what you said about financially maybe not being the right time for that i don't think there will be that many cases anyways so i don't think the total song is going to be marginal and maybe to you know to make it just find a cut off year and say ok if you did it after two thousand and ten but before the ordinance you can get the same benefit as the people who did it after the ordinance or two thousand and eleven or something because there's a few folks that d now knowing that there might have been some benefit had they waited but they wanted to do it now because their personal reasons or whatever so i wouldn't want to see them negatively affected reason is just simply in the spirit of cooperation with these owners and i think over the course of time there's just a lot of there's a lot of head butting in general as these ordinances come down the pipe and start to affect people and if it's a relatively low cost to give those folks some of the benefit i think it goes a long way towards future ordinances where we can foster more collaboration and cooperation so there isn't as much contentiousness does that mean i have to stop listen to follow the not be objection as to the rules and just kind of maybe foster a better relationship for years and years to come so it's not that many folks but i think it would do a little bit of of vacancy decontrol i found it very troublesome to hear a commissioner say the unfortunate synergies of layered responsibilities such as the fire alarm requirement that was in ninety six and also the  compliance in one thousand nine hundred two if the owners haven't done anything yet they needed to have done it like yesterday so to have them do it now i think it's actually way delayed so sad to hear that from someone and black's law dictionary defines profit as exploitation and i'm not in the i don't like exploitation or anything like that so with a vacancy control in my understanding of what profit is it's hard for me to say oh let's wait for the fire requirement or let's wave that requirement to me that's not good government with parking spaces i don't know how many times i've heard someone say oh you know  my landlord said that gave me a second a subsequent contract from their rental agreement about a parking space you know their charge me one hundred dollars last year and now they're saying one fifty so i think the parking space is an issue but it's not that big of an issue there's a lot of public transportation we should encourage it so let's get rid of all parking and mr rowe shall head indicated that the citation face under that section you know fifty if we add if i made a motion to add five hundred dollars a day that directly so i recommend having  worked in the city i know that sometimes a staff member won't assess a five hundred dollar fine or they'll just do two hundred if it's case by case and if we added a five hundred mandatory under that section five or section f that theoretically could be a thousand dollars but usually it won't be so what i'd like to see is a mandatory shall be five hundred dollars day at this secondary for citation phase of the citation process you get what i'm saying that if the municipal code says that there's a citation process we're up to five hundred dollars and that's discretionary why would we ad another discretionary citation element in a subsequent ordinance and i think if it gets to that secondary element it should be shall be five hundred dollars a day so that would be my recommendation to this  body as the for that to counsel i understand commissioner blake doesn't want to move on stuff just yet and possibly vet it next meeting or during the process of those the this meeting next meetings into the council and we can establish clear language code already says that if there's a violation yet the other part of the code says the out the code enforcement can issue up to five hundred dollars i'm saying if this is going to stain here we should say shall be five hundred dollars in addition to that  that five hundred potential five hundred dollars right now it's correct this is reasonable fees and if the staff as i've seen spent numerous hours even to get to one citation we've got to pay our staffers for having to deal with someone who does that to our city and our residents so maybe we should table that were not table of but talk to us a little bit no more than force a no brown eyed violations th another question is how many owners have a controlling interest in the sixteen one hundred sixty one buildings that have yet to be retrofitted like is it eighty is it one hundred sixty one do we know that number because if it's like eighty then it's a very small pool of people we're dealing with more than eighty we don't have that number but a lot of our own and by you know couples are l l c's that are you know owned of next year a couple things i've been hearing i mean just the sentiment of the commission fellow commissioners i think probably all in their goal is to make the property safe and how we get there path and more to do the retrofits where we have all these other other work that is required i don't want to see us wave though that work being done however depending formula that all of you would have to look at or this but reducing or waiving fees i think it would be appropriate on a case by case hardship but i really don't think that t and then i was thinking about the carrot stick that we keep talking about one thing that is i think it's worked very effectively at the rent board is  use and sometimes completely eliminate that but it's what i think is great about that tool that stick is that if it's used for compliance and not to penalize it seems like we may have finally come to the side of christer show you haven't spoken do you have anything to add now to the extent i still feel if there are triggers that are involved i mean there are there are certain there's some of these things are triggers not whether the triggers are trigger it to the extent that our work what makes involves thresholds that trigger things like you're talking about i wish we'd try to find some way to not make that because it's not like they're going i'm going to make a hundred thousand dollar investment on my property think about developing an attractive black with the city of this property has been seismically retrofitted that they can hang in their building and that we find a way to celebrate the owners who have done the right thing all right well thank you very much for coming and for staying up late and seeing the support of the demonstration in favor of the former camp that is now gone in yosemite presentation also requires a power point i think that we should take a five minute break to switch all our technology ok five minutes are right we're back in session with them seven on the agenda a legal step presentation on a new move in addictions that's perfectly municipal code section thirteen point seventy six one thirty point nine i wanted to point out that we h so i'm going to give a fairly brief explanation of the high points of the order movement of action law and berkeley and before i start i want to say that the there are eleven good causes mentioned in the ordinance and they take up about eight single spaced pages and fully five of those pages are on or move in if action so it is the most vironment of the law protections relocation payments compare berkeley with other jurisdictions remedies in reporting unfortunately that slide got i was just reviewing this and that slide  o little bit of history as you can well imagine after costa hawkins units became more valuable because there was de control so there were many more  rid buildings of long term tenants and to fairly significantly increase the the rent that were generated in those buildings because there was no restrictions right at market rate as whatever the market will bear and at that time there were some fairly high rising rents so we saw a lot of what the board saw it was abuse of the owner move in provisions of the ordinance initially because the rule that the returns to the victor tenants rent ceiling regardless of the date of new tenants in other words if a landlord if vick's a tenant for owner move in and the rent is seven hundred dollars for that unit the moment that the landlord ceases to occupy that unit and re rents it regulation ten sixteen passed by the board provides that that right goes back to there to seven hundred dollars for the next tenancy so there any i forgot to add i really i do appreciate an interactive presentation but it probably be better for if i just got through this and then you can jot down the questions and i by promise to answer all of them so who may have daughter or son but not your cousin not your uncle not your grandmother and not your grand grand son that there has to be it has to be just one step one separation other requirements the owner must move in within three months and live in the property for at least thirty six consecutive months otherwise there is a presumption of bad faith which exists if those requirements are not that here too by the owner the owner adjusted based on how based on the person's rent ceiling in other words if the if the if take that that is seven hundred dollars ample again if the owner if the tenant is paying seven hundred dollars for a unit that's two bedrooms and moves into a unit that's one bedroom the rent would be lowered based on that seven hundred dollars figure and the rent board can and would have a hearing to decide what that rent would be if there is relocation assistance  forty five hundred dollars to qualify in low income households and i'll discuss this morning other slide and there's only one unit per property for occupancy for the life of the building in other words if an owner moves into if there's a four plex let's say and they're the they're numbered one two three and four and the owner is vic's a tenant from unit one in that building then the then measure weiss says that that is  occupancy in that building for any unit except for now you can have multiple evictions for qualifying relatives that doesn't necessarily apply the protections are a little bit of a little bit tricky to understand but there are ten of protections when landlord has ownership of interests of basically ten percent in four more residential units and  if an owner own three or fewer units in the city of berkeley and these protections do not apply ok i'll give an example at the end of the slide so the following ten residential units and the tenant has been living in that unit for five year so for example if there is a three unit building that the tenant that the that the owner owns or a duplex and a single family these protections do not apply in other words if in the try plax their lives a person who is older than sixty years or disabled then the owner can evict those tenants without without worry about these protect because these protections top relocation payments as you can see berkeley has a forty five hundred dollars relocation payment only for qualifying low income tenant households the other jurisdictions have significantly more in santa monica at seventy nine hundred dollars to nine hundred thousand than there are escalators built into that number based on unit size and further escalators for disabled elder elderly or families with minors in west hollywood the numbers go from fifty one hundred to seventeen thousand again the escalators are for a unit size in other words there's a different amount for studios one bedrooms two bedrooms or thor or three or more bucks and then there's other escalators for this in west hollywood is a little bit different there's escalators for disabled elderly terminally ill or moderate income or a family with minor so there's more escalators and west hollywood  costs are are fairly comparable maybe a little bit more than than berkeley but certainly not in another universe finally san francisco passed a law several years ago for having owner mov many there were cause i know very few of the last the current what we're what we're looking at right now for about i think sixteen months or eighteen months is of eighteen  far as whether that's a good idea or not that something will discuss more in depth next month and i want to make sure that everybody's sort of understood where things stand now as as a beginning step townley and then sort of  cost of living increases yet thank you if there's a is that would have attached to that rent would automatically attach for the new new tenant so for example if the the owner lived there for five years or if the place wasn't running for five years and then the owner rerented to someone they would be seven hundred dollars in that example i gave would be seven hundred dollars with five years of age is on top of that has a provision in it that says that the only time that you can raise the rent is for voluntary vacancies more when there's not fault of action in other  words when there is a non voluntary vacancy you know substantial repairs or owner of the owner move in something something where the tenant basically didn't do anything wrong but the landlord needed to it's low income families are being gentrified and this is a thought that we thought about hey how can we protect families from being evicted particularly in the school year and so this is something we really want to think about moving forward but my question to staff is in the san francisco model is the trigger for these for low income families or just families with kids and that school age is that triggered at five years like ours or is that a media protection that sam cisco affords their residents the relocation payments that we're talking about are you talking about the restriction the restrictions of you during you know it's just it's there's there's no time attached to the tenancy in other words that the as long as a family qualifies where i read the ordinance as long as the family or qualifies as  having a minor child then the owner would be prohibited from a victim unless the owner herself has a child and needs to move in or the owner only has one unit in the city of  sam's addicting during the school year or not after that's correct yes yes so i mean the one when school is out of session obvious i guess that would just be the summer months then then that restriction would be lifted  as i had a question which is in order for a title to live in addicted to be able to get off the human back because that's part of the rule too late that they get offered they have the right of first refusal that the owner move in fiction they're given a form to give to the landlord that says i would like to move back in the event that you re rent and this is my forwarding address so they know to they proactively notified that the owner but you could imagine that if a place changes hands once or twice or three times that that information could be loss and you could also amounts and that that second or third or fourth owner would have no idea that this place had an owner of an eviction seven or eight years ago and that there was some sort of requirement and one other question too for the other jurisdictions are some of their payments indexed  of three earth fuel units well i think it goes back to and jay can probably speak to this better than i but it goes back to the fact that there are fewer restrictions on small property owners and that that they are given more flexibility to utilize the building in the way that they see that in other words if i own a duplex or a tri plaques and that's all i own and two units would with an eye to easing restrictions on small property owners who are more likely to share space with te seen the actual visions there was a series of changes they accepted some of the recommendations of the board who is really a hodgepodge of is often times happens when when there's one or two board commented urging them to either adopt the previous language or to carry it over the council chose to carry the item over and they also referred it to the housing advisory commission as well as the planning commission for consideration so it'll be going for the housing advisory commission for the first time and twelve thank you the next meeting on the twelfth planning commission discussed at the planning commission on september fourth and that is when the planning commission is going to decide when they might discuss the demolition or you know that i don't have the date but yes that are included in their bills items that were sent to council at their last meeting before the summer update on monitoring inclusionary housing units and a referral to the city manager to changes to the municipal code recording affordable housing requirement implementations and these two items are sort of related so we have inclusionary housing which developers have in the past chosen instead of paying a fee before and well anyway the point is since two thousand and nine of the inclusionary units there's three hundred six inclusionary units and they've only inspected fifty eight of them but they say that by next summer they will inspect all of them now we're talking about modeling the affordable housing mitigation fee exemption to do inclusionary housing instead on this program that isn't necessarily adequately being enforced and so council members are again and how the telly made several suggestions in the second report here living actually having the city verify whether or not talents are eligible for the affordable housing having inflation adjustments included in in the  the housing mitigation feet so that it doesn't remain flat forever but it also talks about exemptions or delays of fees for developers that prove that they really can't afford to pay them and have their project moved forward and discusses some mechanisms for doing that so anyone who's interested in affordable housing in berkeley may want to take a closer look at both of those reports together i also didn't know i was going to charing i don't mean the hog mike but i also put the next item in here pathetic fine for doing so but they were also directed to prioritize home sales to people that will actually live in the homes so that's kind of good news in that article about comments from berkeley side didn't come out very well so you've all received an electronic copy by email it was really the comments that i wanted everyone to read i'm used to take a quick second and i know i really want to  really exciting highlights of these comments one commenter said we have safety and fire codes to make sure dwellings are safe we have health building and penal codes to prevent public nuisances let out of control parties and littering so they were centrally saying that there no need to make special laws about these many dorms because we have laws but then some other commenters said that we have tons of code and a city that refuses to then force them if they're not being sued i've lived in a lot of unsafe buildings nothing ever gets fixed even when i've called and then one other person says the same thing essentially the codes are not enforced the daily calorie is even more alarming and then there was a direct quote from a tenant who lives in one of these many dorms where she said we don't feel safe because we're in an attic that has no fire escape or a lot of people living on top of each other with no fire escape or anything with no smoke detectors either so in that sense we feel really unsafe i really hope that tenants in situations like that will call cohen for smit i know that sometimes they have a reputation for not always acting quickly or officially but if you don't have a fire escape they're going to fix  t let's see what's next  homes basically the threatening this so portion of the current democratic government is threatening the city of richmond not giving them help that's not related to these particular properties because they're following through with this eminent domain that is attempt through eminent domain to deal with the foreclosure crisis in their community so it is a fascinating situation  people like it and that federal impingement aside i think this is something that the city of berkeley if we had the wherewithal and the  progressive alliance when it started and this is so powerful and influential to the whole country i just want to say on record r p i love you thanks for all the work that you're doing and leading the charge and fighting against the big banks like you ought to thank you gayle and juan and on the rest and everybody else the next item is about kaiser's rising premiums which was put in here by chair stevens did she put somebody else up to and contract negotiations and i think i'll be coming back next month related to the contract negotiations and in some of the discussions we had no budget about not increasing staff while employees are not getting additional benefits the cost continued as i recall from being on the budget and personnel committee the reason that we eliminated several vacant positions this year was because of the rising healthcare costs like to know yes that's that's a lot of that just one is going back to the budget one one example of the impact of again not just this but there's several other costs associated with benefits and again i want to point out that you actually ploys or not you see we're not adding on additional benefits to increased costs related to it if you compare your two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and fourteen budgets adopted budgets we the budget you just recently adopted two months ago you're spending sixty thousand dollars less for monthly employees this year the new budget last year but the fringe cost of increased by fifty thousand dollars remaining articles that are pretty self explanatory and i've already referenced about seismic retrofit and there's also this article from the l a times when it's not easy to spite the rise in rates owners are benefiting did you want to say anything about that or should i simply quote stevens and say that rents are still going  up that would bring us to committee reports so people think that maybe we should put these off and delay them until the next morning i know i'm usually the one that really wants to do them but i think we have a closed session coming up  and the second reason bring it up right in your presentation on the outcome of the building energy efficiency solutions project and discussion it's question of incentives available for multifamily buildings to invest in energy  pursuant to government code five four nine five six point eight we'll property negotiation the negotiation negotiators our executive director j collectin assistan we've returned from we've returned from closed session the board had a closed session to discuss office space at least negotiations and the board to continue to lease the current space by approving resolution thirteen thirteen