Redwood City bringing landlords, tenants together

“Landlord-tenant conversations need to be community driven,” Councilmember Chris Sturken said in an email after the meeting. “The city is an excellent coordinator and I think we can leverage our neighborhood associations to facilitate additional conversations to facilitate relationship-building between our landlords and tenants who live in the same neighborhoods. This could promote mutual understanding and alignment on policy.”

Feedback was mixed during the meeting but two themes routinely appeared — the need for more data and an interest in building stronger communication. On data, some argued stronger numbers could help highlight how many residents are actually being evicted unfairly while others argued the city should be seeking more balanced information that could potentially reveal the local housing crisis is more stable than perceived.

Dustin Helmer, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, said the organization oversaw more than 1,300 eviction cases last year, mostly due to nonpayment of rent. That figure doesn’t account for how many people were affected per household. It’s a massive leap though from the year before when fewer than half that number were fielded. In 2021, evictions due to nonpayment were prohibited because of the effects of COVID-19 on the economy. Those protections expired in 2022.

Legal Aid’s 1,300 cases were from across the county and the figure also does not account for renters who may not seek legal support. Alin Lancaster, Redwood City’s Housing Leadership manager, said the city has some estimates for how many evictions have occurred recently and “is interested in tracking data as best as possible.” But, she said, staff are looking to update city ordinances and figure out how new policies will be implemented first.

Helmer and others argued the figures are needed now so they can be used to influence policy.

“It would probably be helpful to have that because in general how would you know how to create anti-displacement strategies if you don’t actually know the numbers of people being displaced and the reason? Not to drag you guys, but I feel like that’s a huge point you should look into,” Helmer said. “It’s cute to create these plans and thoughts, but if there’s no teeth to enforce these things it’s kind of meaningless, in my opinion.”

The city has begun investing in the creation of a housing office including a city-operated outreach team and hiring a housing specialist. And more than a dozen organizations and agencies offer resources for both landlords and renters including the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center, Project Sentinel, Faith in Action, Bay Area Legal Aid San Mateo County, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates and Housing is Key.

But participants noted many are either unaware of what resources are out there or unsure of how to access them. And when support is requested, assistance can often take time to receive. One speaker said through a Spanish translator that she struggled to find support when being unjustly evicted, underscoring the need for an office in the city that can act as a one-stop-shop for housing questions.

Karen Vega, a landlord for nine properties in the city, said she would like to see quicker assistance from agencies. When she’s reached out for support with an urgent matter in the past, she said she was left without a response for weeks.

Vega said she’d also like to see an organization provide more support to landlords, particularly mom-and-pop home providers who often oversee multiple units without the support of a property manager. Those organizations, she said, should also offer educational resources to new property owners who may not know how to be “good landlords.”

“Maybe we need an agency that helps the landlord a bit, a little bit more focused on them,” said Vega, who also advocated for more resources for tenants looking for support with long-term planning and budgeting.

One participant suggested that the solution to the city’s problems would be to simply build more housing. Another who identified himself as Fernando said the city should also be looking to encourage home ownership over renting to enable residents to build generational stability.

A number of housing developments are already in the pipeline with two housing projects gaining approval from the Planning Commission on Tuesday — one proposal seeks to build six for-sale townhomes and the other a duplex with an accessory dwelling unit on site. And commercial developers in recent years have also proposed incorporating residential uses into their commercial projects.

The city was one out of 11 jurisdictions to be recently honored by the state with a prohousing designation. It earned the designation after making changes to its accessory dwelling unit policies that allowed for more ADUs to be built and for directed revenue from its hotel tax and its prepaid wireless utility tax to a housing support fund.

A total of 22 jurisdictions have received the designation which allows them to apply for grant funding under the Prohousing Incentive Pilot Program and priority processing or funding points when applying for other grant programs.

Accessing more outside funding will be key for the city which faces concerning economic forecasts in the years to come. Despite funding woes though, city leadership has continued to underscore housing initiatives as a top priority. In addition to amending two policies — the city’s relocation assistance ordinance and minimum lease terms ordinance — to be more renter-friendly, officials also hope to establish a dedicated housing preservation fund while supporting other similar efforts by other organizations.

Four more meetings — two in Spanish and two in English — will be held in the coming months. One English and one Spanish meeting will be open to renters while the other English and Spanish meetings will be for landlords and property managers. Residents are asked to attend just one of the four meetings.

“The city culture is one that is so inclusive. We want to hear from all sides and there’s no requirement for what ideas we will hear and we won’t hear,” Councilmember Elmer Martinez Saballos said after the meeting. “The city is poised and in a good position to take action on it but [it’s about] how we give these policies teeth.”

Visit redwoodcity.org/ADS, email vgaitan@redwoodcity.org or call (650) 780-7303 for more information.

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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