Good morning.

It's nine o'clock, and we are beginning our Wednesday, March 26th, 2025, Rules Committee meeting.

Madam Kirk, would you please take roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Simon.

Vice Mayor Bowen.

Mayor Gonzalez.

Present.

Please note all members are here.

If you would make your announcement, please.

After each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for committee member comments and then take public comment.

You will have two minutes for your comment.

A countdown timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and attendees.

Thank you.

Okay, so our first item today is the discussion on rent control.

Tom.

Director Liao.

If you would come forward and lead us in this discussion.

Good morning, uh rules committee.

Let me um get this up and running.

Is it all good to go?

All right, perfect.

Well, good morning.

Um, wanted to give you a brief overview.

So today we'll provide you a quick update on where we stand, go over some policy considerations.

So this is really hopefully gonna bring forth some concepts that are typically in a rent stabilization or rent control ordinance and certainly be available for questions for you all, and then talk about some uh next steps.

So um this this month, uh this past council meeting, uh, the council directed us as staff to prioritize and move forward with developing a rent stabilization ordinance.

Wanted to highlight here.

I know we've been kind of using the terms rent control, rent stabilization interchangeably, because that typically has been the case in a lot of situations.

Um so it really just reflects uh limiting um a landlord's ability to raise rent on an annual basis.

But I think going forward, uh given what we've heard from the community and some of the council members, we'll probably start using the term rent stabilization more.

Wanted to just share with you in our very own county um some of the cities that already have a rent stabilization ordinance and their their parameters.

Um most of them, except for Hayward, tend to use a percentage of a consumer price index or or compare it to the a cap and usually take the lower of.

So I wanted to highlight a couple state pieces of legislation that really do impact as we move forward rent stabilization or how they impact it.

So one, as you all probably are quite familiar with at this point, is the Costa Hawkins Rental Housing Act from 1995.

And what that did in the mid-90s was it basically limited cities and counties from regulating rents on units built after February 1st of 1995, and then units that could be sold separately.

So that usually entails single family homes, condominiums, and town homes.

So these are exempted under Costa Hawkins from rent stabilization rent control.

The other thing Costa Hawkins also did was to allow housing providers to have vacancy decontrol.

Um so when, and so um it prohibits basically event vacancy control.

So there are kind of a yin-yang here.

Uh the uh concept behind that is that um a landlord, if a tenant voluntarily moves out, is not forced out or illegally removed, can then reset the base rent to whatever the market rate is.

So that's actually the concept of vacancy decontrol.

Um so that and I think part of the impetus in the 90s was to ensure similar to now that uh new housing construction could take place.

Uh a newer law that came into effect, uh it was AB 1482, the Tenant Protection Act of 2019.

And what that has done is actually set a statewide rent control cap uh over a one one one year period.

And that cap is uh at this point you're familiar, 5% plus consum CPI or consumer price index cannot exceed 10%.

This this actually measure has a sunset date, so it does end in January of 2031.

It has a very similar exempted exemptions to Costa Hawkins, but it also exempts permanent long-term affordable housing.

So like Mare Alta and La Vareda and Laurel Landing that we have.

Uh it also exempts owner-occupied duplexes where the owner lives in one of the units, uh, exempts accessory dwelling units, which has been a big effort from the state and ourselves to promote.

And it exempts single family homes that are owned by corporation, uh limited liability company, LLC, or real estate trust.

Uh last year too, we in providing some data to the rules committee, we had kind of just estimated based on some of our parcel data what we think would be eligible under our rent stabilization ordinance.

So you know, we've taken out the mobile home spaces because they have their own rent stabilization ordinance.

And so again, this is an estimate of about over 7600 units would be uh impacted uh by rent stabilization.

So kind of moving on to typical components or concepts in the rent stabilization ordinance.

One is the purpose, and this can be very broad, and for the most part, I think we in the Bay Area cities have the same uh typical purposes.

So one is uh providing rent stability for renters impacted by the affordable rental housing situation throughout the state and the Bay Area, certainly preventing arbitrary displacement of renters, uh providing a fair return to providers and landlords, and certainly over this session and at the next rules committee when we come back.

Uh, your input uh on what you might think of as an important purpose, having this ordinance would be more than welcome from staff.

Um, and uh the other critical component is the rent limit threshold level, obviously in uh rent stabilization, that is the cap itself.