City of Mountain View, CA Rent Stabilization Program Community Workshops, 20 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: July 20, 2022 - Rent, Rent Increases and Rent Decrease Petitions

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Okay again, thank you for coming. This is our rent stabilization program on rent rent increases and rent decreased petitions. It is wednesday july 20th. This is a tenant, focused webinar and we are going to be specifically talking about rent stabilized apartments tonight, we're not going to be talking about mobile homes or mobile home spaces.

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So I don't think we have any mobile home tenants here, but if you are, we are planning a separate special webinar to talk about rent and rent increases for mobile homes. So, let's get started.

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All right as a reminder, city staff cannot give any legal advice, but we do offer tips and best practices about the city programs and how they affect your rental units.

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All right so for introductions, my name is andrea kennedy. I work for the city of mountain views, rent stabilization program. We also have anna jimenez on the line in case. We need spanish interpretation later on in the evening.

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A quick overview of how the webinar is going to work I'll, be giving the presentation, and then you, as members of the public, can use the q a icon to ask your questions or if you prefer, you can just raise your hand and we can have you speak that way.

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So we'll be splitting the webinar up into a couple of chunks. We'll ask questions and open it up for q, a at the end of each section and then again at the end of the webinar.

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So we're going to cover tonight uh first we're going to look at which units are covered by the csfra and then we'll look at what rent increases are allowed and what type of notices are required and then we're going to look at tenant, hardship, petitions and we're going to finish up with resources.

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So, first, let's talk about covered units, so, as some of you know, the actually stands for the community stabilization and fair rent act, and that was a voter approved measure by the residents in the city of mountain view, and it's meant to stabilize the community by reducing housing turnover in certain rental units, and it does that in three main ways: first, by stabilizing rents, which is what we're focusing on tonight so every year there is a rent percentage, a rent cap that is announced.

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The second way it stabilizes. The community is by providing eviction protection and then the third way is by ensuring that landlords still have a fair rate of return on their property.

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For background, let's look at which units are actually covered, so most buildings in mountain view actually are covered by our local rent stabilization law because they were built before the law went into effect, which was on december 23 2016..

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However, there are two different types of covered units in the city. We have fully covered units and we have partially covered units. Our fully covered units have to abide by both the rent, stabilization parts of the rent increase limits and the eviction protections, whereas our partially covered units only have to follow the rules for the eviction protections, and the difference is that our fully covered units were built before 1995 and our partially covered units are built between 1995 and 2017..

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All right, so, let's take a quick stop. There are there any questions about who's covered, I'm pretty sure our caller knows that she is covered, so we will continue but again feel free. If you have any questions, just type them in right when you think of them or raise your hand and we'll stop at the next section break.

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All right so now, let's take a look at rent and rent increases that are allowed.

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So, first we want to talk about what is included in rent, so the local csfra law has a specific definition of what rent includes. So we want to look at what is your initial rental rate when you move in?

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We also want to take into account any fees that are also included when you're moving in so something like a parking fee that you pay a pet fee, any utilities that your landlord has said that they're going to pay anything, maybe like a storage fee and any other housing services that are provided as part of your rental agreement.

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That is all going to be included in rent and how we define rent and then once we know what our base rent is, that initial rent there we can look at what are allowed rent increases so allowed rent increases would be what we call the aga, which is a fancier way of saying um the allowed rent increases for the year. So it stands for annual general adjustment, but when we say that we're just talking about the rent increase that is allowed for that year, so that's allowed.

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We also have landlord petitions where they can petition the city to get a higher rent increase for the rental unit above what's allowed for that year, and then there's also something that's more common. It's called a banked rent increase and we're going to talk more about that in just a second.

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So the other thing I want to um point out are deposits. So let's talk a little bit about deposits, so deposits are not going to be included in the definition of your rent. They cannot be increased during your tenancy.

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So anything like a security deposit that you pay before you move in, or maybe you have a pet and you were required to pay a pet deposit for your pet before you moved in those things cannot be increased during your tenancy, so it's just a one-time deposit and then that's it.

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So now, let's look at the aga or the annual rent increase. That's going to be allowed coming up for the fiscal year, 2022 2023.

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Okay, so our agas or our our annual allowed rent increases they're the allowed percentage of rent increase that is allowed to be applied to csfra covered units for a specific year, and we announced these rent increase percentages in june, but they cannot take effect until september 1st. So this next threat increase that we're going to be talking about.

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Here it is, is five percent, however, it cannot start being implemented until september 1st 2021 and it runs through august 31st of 2023 and then of course, in september, 1 2023 we'll have the next rent increase that's allowed for the year.

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So the other thing we want to remember about rent increases is that they can only be increased every once every 12 month period.

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So if your landlord is going to give you this upcoming rent increase starting september, 1 they'll give you the 5 starting september 1 and then they're going to have to wait a whole 12 month period until they can give you the next rent increase.

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So that's always important to remember if you're receiving more than one rent increase in a year or in a 12 month period, you definitely want to come and talk to us. So we can take a deeper look into what's going on. There.

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Okay, so now that we know what the upcoming rent increase amount's going to be, we want to ask the question: are there any other allowed rent increases that I might be seeing coming up in the future? So this is when our banked rent increases come into play so banked. Rent increases are rent increases that were not previously charged by your landlord, and I want to talk about this because I've been seeing recently that a handful of our landlord, the mountain view, didn't give many rent increases during cobin.

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So maybe you didn't see a rent increase in 2020 or 2021, and so that is what we call a banked rent increase. They didn't use it, so they can save it for later. So you might see the upcoming rent increase along with one of those unused rent increases combined and that's a banked increase. However, it is important to note that the total rent increase cannot exceed 10 percent.

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And I'll have a list here of just what the other rat increases in previous years were in case um we're not sure so. Last year, the 2022 period, it was 2 before that 2.9 and then you'll see it hovered a little bit there around 3.5 percent and we'll be giving this powerpoint out. So you can refer to it in the future. If you're, looking at your past threat, increases.

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All right any questions, let's stop here again any questions about rent increases or banked rate increases, in particular.

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Let me just go ahead and take a second to check the q and a.

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Okay, perfect see, none we'll go ahead and continue.

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All right so now that we talked about the actual rent increase. Let's talk about how the landlord's going to notify you about this coming rent increase, so there are a couple of things that the landlord is required to do.

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The first thing I'll talk about is a required information sheet, and this is a one-pager front and back or a two-pager. I guess running back. um That gives a summary of your protections under the csf array, and so this notice is to be provided anytime.

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You have a new lease or if there is a rent increase for any unit, that's covered by the law.

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The next thing we're going to look at is the time period in which the landlord should give you notice of your rent increase, so under state law. They have to give you at least a 30-day notice before they implement the next rent increase or before the next rent increase is due. So, for example, if they're going to use the five percent rent increase starting september first, they should give you the notice, 30 days before that it's going to start. So you might be seeing something coming in around august 1 about the upcoming rent increase.

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Right and again, we want to remember that we only get that one rent increase per 12 months now, let's look at banked, rent increase notices, so it's similar in that you still will get noticed 30 days before the rent increase kicks in, but the landlord also has to send a copy of that notice to the rental, housing committee or the city so that we're aware of it- and it also has to have some extra text in it.

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So let's look at that now. Here is an example of a banged red increase form.

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So, let's see, if I get my cursor here so you'll see here, the current rent increase amount, which is five percent, and then there's a section in here where they can list out which of the banked rent increases they're going to apply to your rental unit, and so once they fill that out, we'll have a total rent increase amount, but it can't be above 10 percent and then on the back side of the page.

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Here we have our required text and it's going to give you some information about rent increases and what bank drive increases are, and then it also gives you information about a tenant hardship petition which we're going to talk about just now.

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Oh, but I do also want to mention before I forget that the this is a picture here of the required information sheet, so you'll see it covered many of the things we talked about today about who's covered, what the protections are and rent increases, but it also goes into some information about addiction protections as well.

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All right before I get into the tenant hardship petitions is there any any questions. Are there any questions about that? You can type it in the q a or raise your hand.

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Of course we do have a small group today, so any questions about any of the topics or if you want us to cover something again, we're more than happy to do that.

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Okay, so let's jump right into hardship. Petitions.

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All right, so we do have a petition process in the city of mountain view and for our tenants there are a couple of different petitions: we're going to focus today on a hardship petition, but in general petitions are a way to initiate a request for an adjustment in your rent and it basically explains and documents the basis for the rent adjustment.

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So as an example, we're going to be talking about a hardship today, so you'll have a hardship and then you use documentation and you fill out the form to explain what that hardship is, and this process establishes a fair and transparent procedure for our tenants and our landlords and in the process it notifies all the parties of the pending petition and allows every side to participate in the process.

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All right again, I mentioned there are a few tenant types of petitions. There is an unlawful rent petition, so if you feel like you're, paying um more rent than you should be under the law, there's a petition for that. There's also a petition for maintaining the habit of profitability in your rental unit, and then there's also a petition for maintaining the services and maintenance that um you had when you first got into our lease and then we have the hardship petition, which is what we're going to talk about, and the reason we're talking about.

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A hardship petition is because this is the petition that you can file if you've received a banked rent increase. That is going to cause a financial burden or a hardship on your ability to maintain um a lifestyle that you can actually live with right. So we don't want people to be unable to maintain a life and pay for groceries or those really essential things in their life, because they're receiving these banked rent increases all right. So let's talk about when a person can actually claim a hardship on a banked rent increase.

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So this one I want to be really clear about this- can be claimed when the rent increase is greater than the aga or the rent increase that's allowed for the year. So you'll see that we have the five percent rent increase starting september one. So if you get a notice for the five percent rent increase plus some rent increases from the past years, then you can claim a hardship petition.

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But if you're only receiving an increase for the current year, the five percent, then it wouldn't be a time to claim a hardship petition on that rent increase, and so I hope that that's clear if there's any question about that, please type it in the chat all right. So if you receive a rent increase higher than the allowed aga for the year, it will be because either a landlord had filed a petition to increase the rent or they used one of those banked rent increases.

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The other thing that comes into play when we're talking about hardship petition is income eligibility limits. So if you meet all of those criteria, then you would be able to file a hardship petition.

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So, let's look at what the eligibility criteria are so you'll see over in the right in these colorful boxes. Here there are five different reasons that you can claim a hardship and there then are different income limits for those reasons, so the first one we'll talk about is that there's inadequate household income or the household has a severe rent burden placed on them by these additional rent increases so to qualify.

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For this reason, the household the total household has to make a hundred percent of the area, immediate income or less, or they have to pay 50 of their household income towards the rent. So it can be either or of those income limits, and then you would qualify for this first reason up here and while we go through this, you can sort of check your income against the chart at the bottom.

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So you'll see a hundred percent of the area median income is this top line. 120 is this bottom line and then you'll look as to the number of people in the household and find your information that way so for the next three reasons, there is this 120 area, median income limit or again the 50 of the income paid towards rent, and these reasons is that one of the primary residents is a person that is 18 or younger or a person 62 years or older, or a person with a disability, or that is terminally ill.

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So, if one of these reasons applies to you and you fall into one of these income categories, you can apply for a hardship petition and then finally, there is a category for other extenuating circumstances.

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So if you have something else going on in your life or in someone's life, that's in your household that contributes to the rent um and it is causing a financial burden to have these additional rent increases placed on you at this time. You can file a petition. However, you do want to make sure that you fill out the documentation, put your reasoning and then have any supporting documents attached to your petition.

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That can explain your circumstance and why this rent increase would be causing a hardship and for this one there's no income requirement, but you want to be sure to have your supporting documents with you all right. I know that's a lot of information, but if something sounds like you might qualify for that, definitely sit down with our team and we can take a deeper dive with you into the petition process.

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Any questions about hardship, petitions.

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I'll pause for just a minute in case anyone's typing I'll, take a little sip of water.

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Alrighty, I don't see anything there, so we're pretty much wrapped up, but I will go over our resources.

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Here we go so the first thing that we always like to point out when we start is our website, because we do keep our website up to date. So if you have any questions, you can sort of scroll through the website if you'll notice- here, I guess at the bottom here- is the actual website address. So it's mountainview.gov, slash, rent stabilization and once you click on that page over, on the left hand, side there will be a list of categories and you can click on whichever category you're interested in.

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So if you want to look at tenant information or if you actually want to look at forms and notices or resources, it will all be there for you.

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We do have different language options if you scroll down to the very bottom of the webpage to the left you can choose which language you want the page to translate in.

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All right- and we do also have another web page with some different information, so this web address is mountainview.gov coven19 housing relief and we made this webpage to talk about different resources to help people during coben and now we're just sort of transitioning. This page to housing. Resources in general, so you'll see different things on here about the housing and eviction help center, which I'll go over in just a second.

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There are eviction, protections and tenant relocation, information, our wonderful mediation program. We have a link to that program here as well: affordable housing, homelessness, prevention services. You can find all that information on this page, and this page also can be translated in all the languages as well.

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Okay, so this is exciting here. Our housing and eviction help center, which we actually have one tomorrow. If you need help with anything, please join us we'll be at the mountain view, public library, we're on the first floor program room. So you walk right in the doors off to your right past.

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The elevator we're in that conference room there, every first and third thursday, we're there from 1 to 5 p.m, and you can just walk in and we'll have a staff person that can help you with whatever issue it is that you came in to see us about if you're not able to come in person.

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We also have um zoom capabilities, so you can join us at mountainview.gov, slash housing, help clinics and we can help you on zoom all right, so things that we help with at the help center. If you have any questions about the rent, stabilization law or your rent increases, you can come to see us in person and we recommend that you bring any notice that you received. So we can look it over with you if you have questions about affordable housing, availability in the city of mountain view, rent or utility assistance eviction productions.

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Again, our mediation services are wonderful. So if you're interested in that, you can find that at the help center as well, we have legal referrals for people, who've received termination notices and also connections with different community organizations that do things like food distribution, family services, mental health services.

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So we really encourage you to come in and get some help if you need some help or just to see what we're about and pick up some flyers.

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All right, so next is our contact information for our program. If you need any help or have any questions, you can call us or email us at mvrent, mountainview.gov or our phone number is 650-903.

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All right next we'll talk about some more webinars. If you're looking for additional information, we have at a hybrid webinar tomorrow afternoon, at four o'clock in person.

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It will be at the library at the eviction help center or you can join us on zoom by going to mountainview.gov, slash, rsp webinars, the same link you use to join tonight, so tomorrow, at 4, we'll be going over how to apply for and prepare your application for below market rate and affordable housing that will be bilingual, english and spanish, and then our next webinar this will be only online is going to be august 17 at 6 30 and it will be an interactive webinar, so we'll actually be showing you how to file a hardship petition, we'll be pulling up the screens we'll be filling one out with you and answering your questions, live on the spot and we'll be doing that bilingual as well, and for other questions or one-on-one support that you might need.

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We also have office hours every single tuesday from 10 a.m, to 12 p.m. Now I know for some tenants, they're working during that time. So if that doesn't work for you just go ahead and reach out to us, and we can schedule a time outside of that and make something work where we can do one-on-one support.

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Okay, so this page here is just a little overview of some legal resources, so we have um community legal services that each palo alto they actually are on virtual joining our housing and eviction help center every first and third thursday. So if you need help from them- and you want to do it over zoom, you can join our help centers or you can give them a call at 650-3911.

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There's also the lawn foundation of silicon valley and bay area, legal aid.

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Okay, so I know that was quick, but any questions by the end of the workshop. Any questions about rent increases or hardship, petition.

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So, while you're finishing up, if you're typing any questions or if you want to raise your hand, I will just mention that we will be sending a copy of this powerpoint out to you by email, as well as a copy of the recording and in the email. There will be a little link sort of near the bottom that asks you to fill out a survey. If you have a minute or so, please fill out the survey. Let us know how the workshop was.

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If you found the information helpful and definitely let us know things that we can improve on or tailor to our tenant community better.

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Alrighty, let me check for questions.

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Perfect, no questions but great information. Thank you and I really appreciate you coming and definitely be sure to reach out to us. If you have any questions in the future.

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Okay, perfect, I I think that's the end of the webinar for the night. So thank you very much have a great rest of your evening. Stay cool and stay safe, bye.

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