Flagstaff Council Leans Toward Source-of-Income Housing Protections, Defers on Legal Preemption and Staff Costs

You would be. Is it this? No, it's not you. It would be city of. Okay, I will go get that. Thank you. Do you want? Yeah. Okay, you can open it. All right, we are ready to get started today as Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. This is the city council's work session.

I'm calling this meeting to order and giving notice to the public that the city council may vote to go into executive session, which will not be open to the public for discussion consultation with the city's attorneys for legal advice on any item listed on the following agenda. Can we have roll call? Mayor Daggett. Here. Vice Mayor Sweet. Here. Councilmember Aslan. Here. Councilmember Garcia. Here. Councilmember House. Present. Councilmember Matthews. Here. Councilmember Spence. Here. All right.

Councilmember Aslan, would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance? I pleasure. At least stand as you're able. And councilmember Matthews, would you read our mission statement? My pleasure. The mission of the city of Flagstaff is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all. Councilmember Garcia, could you read our land acknowledgement? That would be an honor of mine. Thank you so much, Mayor.

The Flagstaff City Council humbly acknowledges the ancestral homelands of this in areas indigenous nations and original stewards. These lands still inhabited by native descendants border mountain sacred to indigenous peoples. We honor them, their legacy, their traditions and their continued contributions. We celebrate their past present and future generations who will forever know this place as home. Thank you. Next up is open call to the public, but I do not see anyone here for that.

So we will move on to June work anniversaries. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, council. Shannon Anderson, your assistant city manager. We've got our June work anniversaries to walk through with you here today. We'll start with our first year anniversaries. Looking at this list, it looks like we've got some folks from pros, our Flagstaff police department, economic vitality, as well as public works divisions, celebrating their first year. So congratulations to these employees.

Starting with our five year anniversaries, we have a handful of them. We'll start with Brandon. He's one of our library specialists. One is one of our equipment operators within public works. Elise is one of our recreation leaders part of our prose division. Gregory Jay is out at our airport as one of our airport operations and our employees. He's a lead worker there. He's a GIS analyst. She actually started in prose but has moved over to information technology.

Jacob is part of our fire department as one of our firefighter paramedics. Marcella is also part of our economic vitality division in the library as one of our pages. Next is one of our fire engineers. We have Patrick who's a mechanic also in public works part of fleet services. We've got Sammy who's a parks maintenance worker part of our prose division. We have Charlene, one of our police officers. We've moved on to our 10 years. We've got Sarah Casey who is also a library clerk.

So a few library employees this month. And then 25 year anniversary. We have Sally Paige who is a library associate temporary employee. She's worked at the Flagstaff Public Library for 25 years. She's helped countless patrons with a variety of needs. She's a tutor tutoring class and promoting our electronic resources. I'm not going to know how to spell or to say that word, but a car manual is one of her favorites.

She's assisting architectural students with research projects and teaching others how to read the Arizona Daily Sun online and enjoys every piece of that. And asked about the most common and most unusual questions. She's been asked in her 25 years with the city. The first was easy. Where's the restroom? The second took a little more thought until she remembered a patron asking about the history of a specific civil war battle in Southeast Asia.

And then the question required more effort to answer them the first can her downtime. Sally is part of a two car club. Oh, excuse me, part of two car clubs and likes to drive her vintage cars and local parades. She's a 25 year employee celebrating in housing.

Part of our new housing division Harold started his career in housing authority as an entry level maintenance worker one and for the last three to four years serving as an inspector for public housing in Clark Holmes and section H H CV program. 164 residential units in the public housing program 80 residential units and Clark Holmes and over 500 vouchers in the H CV section eight program.

The world has spent the majority of his tenure working with families and siler Brennan Clark Holmes and the housing authorities off site units scattered throughout the east and West Flagstaff making various repairs to just about anything that needs fixing in our communities. 25 years of experience with the housing authority is proving to be a valuable asset to his current role as inspector and is a vital piece to the successful preventative maintenance program.

Harold is a dedicated father and enjoy spending time with his family when he's not serving our community way to go Harold. I've got one more to share with you today. It's a 30 year anniversary and it's Earl Gutierrez. He's one of our firefighters and has been with us since 1996. He served our community with unwavering commitment professionalism and compassion.

In his career, he's not only responded to emergencies and protected our residents but is also invested countless hours in educating and inspiring others. His work with the fire department's clown program helped teach fire safety to hundreds of local children and earned him both a letter of accommodation and the prestigious city managers employee excellence award. His impact extends far beyond the fire station for years.

He's volunteered his own time to mentor young people participate in career days and share his story to encourage others to pursue their goals. His dedication to services so deeply ingrained that on multiple occasions well off duty and near emergency incidents. He has stopped to assist crews working on active fires within the department. He's known as a mentor role model a source of wisdom whose dedication to fitness service and integrity has influenced generations of firefighters.

Our firefighter Gutierrez embodies the values of integrity honesty respect and trust and his legacy will continue to shape both our fire service and our community for years to come. Congratulations to Earl and his 30 years. That's what we have for you today and I look forward to being in front of you again will be at the end of August. We only have one meeting in July will do July and August that first meeting back.

But if you would mind if you wouldn't mind joining me for just one moment to congratulate these folks with a round of applause. And Shannon do I see correctly that we have Earl here in the audience. I'm sorry that I missed that. Congratulations and thank you. I am people call me Earl, but really my name is William. I was born and raised here in fact, I'm talking about public housing.

I grew up in housing and my as a child, I always dreamt about being a firefighter and was pleasantly surprised when it did happen. It was a reserve for two and a half years. So actually it's been involved with the fire department for 32 and a half years. It's honestly gone by so fast. It's been such a pleasure. And you know, I joke with these guys, but I am going to miss them a lot. In reality, we don't do this job without all the support of all the people that hear and the citizens.

And we appreciate all the support that I just want you guys to know you have an extraordinary fire department with very genuine people. My first year was probably the most challenging year of ever in my life, but through the support of the guys that I was working with. They are definitely my second family. And I just appreciate the recognition and all that you do for us.

And my administration, chiefs, I can't speak more highly of them or there's no words to really express how genuine and good they are. So I'll really miss it. I know I will, but I appreciate you all. Thank you very much. Congratulations again, Earl. Thanks, council. Thank you. And congratulations to all of our employees. Next up, we have annual report for moon shot at the Flagstaff campus. Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, council members. Quarrings and echo.

I am your economic development administrator and moonshot will be presenting their annual reports on activities conducted under its contract with the city. This partnership is an important component of our economic development strategy helps support entrepreneurship, business growth, job creation and innovation throughout our community through a master lease and a service agreement. The service agreement is part of your packet along with the service plan.

Moonshot manages the city owned Flagstaff campus, including the business incubator and accelerator, while also providing business development services to entrepreneurs and growing companies. These services support businesses operating in targeted industries such as technology, bioscience, manufacturing, clean energy, healthcare, tourism and emerging technologies. Contract also provides measurable value to the community.

Over the years, moonshot has assisted hundreds of businesses supported job creation, attracted private investment, maintained continuous occupancy within the campus and generated revenue that helps offset offset some of the operating costs. This partnership, moonshot partners with the city on programs, I mean, dynamic economic development week. We've had some international business outreach coming. We have some coming next week as well and other programs that strengthen our local economy.

And this partnership has remained stable since its inception with the current agreement extending through 2028. The implementation provides council and the public with an opportunity to review moonshots accomplishments over the past year and better understand the return on the city's investment in entrepreneurial and economic development services. So with that, I would like to invite moonshot CEO and president Scott Hathcock to come and present. Good afternoon mayor vice mayor and council.

Thank you so much for having us. My name is Scott Hathcock. I'm president CEO of moonshot. It has been my privilege to serve as the leader of this nonprofit for the last nine and a half years. And like Craig expressed, we are contracted to not only act as property manager for the facility on innovation mesa, but also to assist entrepreneurs in resources to help them grow and scale companies that create jobs here in Flagstaff.

I thought it would be fun to start the presentation by showing you our moonshot Flagstaff sizzle reel that is was recently created. As always pointed skyward every Apollo astronaut trained here Mars explorers trained here today Pluto was discovered from this very sky. For 25 years moonshot has believed that the boldest ideas don't come from the center. They come from people willing to dream bigger than their circumstances.

That's moonshot thinking and it changes lives moonshot your launch starts here. So you heard that correctly. We are celebrating our 25th year and obviously that has a lot to do with you folks the city of council city council and the city of Flagstaff as our co founders I guess in this foundation that was created 25 years ago so we appreciate and thank you all very much for that. This has been one that you took a risk on with investment.

It's one that has paid for though through founders being able to create jobs, create companies that create jobs and help the economic development here. This year we are also pleased to receive from the I and BIA, which is the international always gets as much of the international business innovation association.

So we believe that 2026 rule incubator support organization of the year so we're very pleased with that award and once again I think this it speaks highly to the city of Flagstaff and what you've helped us create so thank you. Just a quick snapshot as far as what our current Flagstaff clientele looks like you heard Craig mentioned some of the sectors that we adhere to based on the EDA requirements.

And just express the variety of who we have occupying our space today goes from rocket science to bio met to wildlife mitigation education and and beyond so we're very thrilled right now we host our housing currently roughly 30 companies on our campus. Although you receive this year in report first quarter of every year I want to go back and talk about these numbers of impact.

If you did not receive this report the QR code on the screen will directly guide you to that report and again we put this out every first quarter of the annual year. The two main numbers that I think are always the most fascinating here are the jobs created from the companies that we host and work with 86 jobs were created in 2025. And jobs retained 187 so we're very thrilled that we have those numbers to share.

Currently as of the end of May we're sitting at an 85% occupancy that's a combination of both facilities the 12,000 square foot incubator facility and the 28,000 square foot accelerator building. When Craig was speaking to the programs or services we offer here's just a quick list of our education and mentorship that we provide our founders.

We have a one on one mentorship we also offer what is called the moonshot academy which officially launched about a year and a half ago, which includes not only connections to angel investors and funding statewide but also nationwide. And we will soon be licensed by the state of Arizona as a accredited certification. We have on campus hours as well with consultation from AWD law and specifically we benefit greatly from the the mind of David john city folks know him.

Quarterly we offer a rocket fuel educational meet ups these are provided for community outreach to come in to see what we're doing. We have various themes around entrepreneurship and so forth so we're very pleased to continue doing those as well as we house periodically special educational events like this year's very first easy tech week as well as we do annual campus office events like our open house.

Again, the recent easy tech week we were thrilled to be able to put Flagstaff on the main stage from the statewide initiative. We were one of the first contributors to this initiative our event took place on April 7th. We took the we had low observatory and their new facility house this event. It was a half day event including guest speakers and entrepreneurs really just showcasing the work we're doing in Flagstaff in northern Arizona.

And I would like to show you a quick video of that event if you are unable to attend. All right good afternoon everyone welcome. Let me start with a very simple truth and altitude everything changes we turn data that's already being collected into actionable insights we have a solution to climate change that works in years not decades. Powered by AI agents, first part of receiving data in a marketplace of reviews. Mary Solman is right in the center of the answer.

With this we can isolate and include a specific segment within the lung. So cryptographic keys define security for digital transactions. Technology we have today cannot support the private market stick operates by putting a small electrical pulse across the tissue and measuring the electrical conductivity of that tissue. These assessments act like AI driven workshops that stress test of business across eight core parameters. Tech is advancing way faster than the brakes can handle.

The future of technology isn't about replacing people. It's about expanding what people are capable of. And if we get this right, we won't enter an error of automation. Instead we'll enter a renaissance that will become a prelude to one of the greatest chapters in human history. So again, that was a lot of fun. That was our first event to contribute to this very first inaugural event for the state of Arizona. We are planning on. Even if easy tech, we should not go forward.

We're planning on doing the similar event in years to come. We thought it was very. It was a lot of fun. We, we, we, we compared it to a TEDx around the idea of founders sharing ideas and ways to help change the world we live in. So a couple of other recent events. We helped host our assistant. We were part of hosting the global ties young leaders of America's initiative. They did a pitch workshop with us on the campus.

They were roughly 12 founders from around Latin America who came to Arizona for the month and toward various facilities shadowed founders so forth and then went on to Washington DC. We also obviously competed or not competed. We were involved with economic development week this past year. We hosted the tie delegation and we periodically do work with the high schools, including this past year.

We did coconut high school pitch workshop to help students understand what it would be like to pitch their startup ideas. Last year, we also had our annual, I should say by annual because we're doing these every other year, our by annual shoemaker awards. This year, we honored a mountain mojo. We honored catalyst space technologies and we honored Paul Shume. But we also honored someone we all have speaking with us later, Dr.

Megan in bring from our first annual moon shot campus community builder award. I see several of your faces in these photos. So thank you again for coming to that event that evening and contributing. It's also a lot of fun. And if you were there with me, very emotional. I'm a cryer. So you got to witness that again. So in future upcoming events, I'm pleased to share on July 8th, we'll host our first female founders and funders.

This is actually an open call to any female founder and or person who is interested in funding, being an investor. This is an partnership with Arizona Commerce Authority, Golden Seeds, venture cafe, Phoenix and elemental business. We also are very pleased to bring back to the city, our annual pitch tour stop. This will be our seventh pitch tour year, moon shots rule, rule, rule Arizona pitch competition and tour. This will be held on September 8th at our campus this year.

And so please, if you have not attended this event with us, I invite you to join us typically the finals will start in the afternoon. Come and see some of the brightest founders in the in the Flagstaff area pitch, their startups in five minutes. The winner of this special tour stop will then move on to the Phoenix finals, which will be on October 24th.

I am also pleased to say that given that it's our 25th anniversary and given that it's been four years since Flagstaff has hosted the finals, we will be bringing the finals back to Flagstaff in 2027. So I hope you guys will again join us for that. It's a big it's a big celebration. 20 communities from around the state will come to Flagstaff include hotel rooms, eating foods, all the good stuff contribute to our economy and pitch for the chance to win $10,000 and first place prize money.

So rather than hearing about me talk about me and what we're doing, I thought it'd be more fun to actually have you guys experience stories from our from some of our founders. And unfortunately, as I came to the table, I received one of the founders emails and he would not be with us tonight, but he was having me read this email so if I couldn't read this email very quickly. He said his name is Kalma Gummary. He's the founder of generous. He said, my deep apologies.

I won't be able to make it in the end. Please read this to the council. He goes, I started generous as a one year old tech startup in Flagstaff, founded by an NAU alumni and longtime Flagstaff residents. We would not be where we are today without moonshot support from guidance on how to form our company to being introduced the Arizona Commerce Authority team and their venture start program where we won $10,000 award to continue our beta.

Moonshot has been huge for us and we hope to grow with them along with the entrepreneurial footprint in northern Arizona. Again, that's Kyle Montgomery CEO and founder of generous generous. Sorry. I am however pleased to bring an actual founder to the front. If I may, please welcome Dr. Megan in bring to talk about her founder story with Flagstaff optimal health, weight and management. Dr. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for this opportunity and for having moonshot as a campus available for us.

My name is Dr. Megan Ingbrang. I'm a nurse practitioner. I've been serving our community in the cardiology space for about 13 years. And speaking to having a vision bigger than circumstances, one of the things that I was seeing over and over again was people just not getting better, you know, really improving their cardiovascular disease. And so I did have a vision. I thought, you know, I think we can do this better.

I think so much of this is metabolic disease that if we can improve a person's body composition. Sometimes a lot of these health factors can improve on their own. And so that led to the idea of Flagstaff optimal health and weight management. And so what we're doing at moonshot is providing full spectrum lifestyle medicine, really making lifestyle prescriptions more than medication prescriptions monitoring body composition.

And we know that having healthy muscle is such an important part of our overall metabolic health and really helping to harness the power of these GLP one medications that are being used by so many. But oftentimes with adverse effects or loss of muscle. And so through one of the city of Flagstaff grant opportunities, I was able to purchase an in body scanner for our office.

And that helps us to make sure that we are seeing optimal results for our patients and really having targeted reduction of body fat and visceral fat while maintaining as much skeletal muscle mass as we can and teaching these healthy lifestyle habits along the way. So we've got some very wonderful lifestyle programs that we plug our patients into. I just brought on a new hire Northern Arizona University new graduate of their nutrition program for Nanda. She is our nutrition coach now.

And I in the last year I've also had another nurse practitioner helping build those lifestyle modules while I've been busy seeing patients in clinic. And even brought on a office manager recently this year. So we've been expanding. We've been seeing excellent results in our patients in the community. We are told over and over again that this is something that the community really needs and people are so grateful to have the resource there.

And the space that moonshot provides and the resources and learning opportunities as someone that is well trained as a nurse but never went to business school. These things have been so incredibly helpful for me in taking this vision and really bringing it and making it a reality. So so grateful for moonshot and these opportunities and look forward to continuing to serve this community and its health needs for years and decades to come. Thank you. Thank you.

She actually had to move some patients around to be with us today. So thank you so much for volunteering and share this your story. I believe councilmember House has a question for doctor. Thank you so much for making the time to be here with us today. I just I was looking at your website and was seeing the nutrition program.

I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more detail on that for the community because it looks really cool, especially with some of the integrations that are built into it. So could you just share a little bit more about what Fernanda is doing? Absolutely. Thank you for asking. We're really proud of the nutrition program that we're bringing forward because it is so evidence based because we have the in body body composition scanner.

It's really important for nutrition recommendations to be individualized, right? We all have different needs depending on our goals and our body composition. So we're able to take the results from the body composition, specifically the basal metabolic rate and a person's lean mass and we use that along with their activity level to create some very individualized nutrition targets for the day. As far as proteins, fats, carbs, and fiber go.

We've got an incredible app based platform that all of our lifestyle programs run through and also our nutrition programs. So we've got some very simple tracking tools for people to use and then we can review those both independently and when we're meeting one on one to help guide nutrition. And we've also integrated a program called that clean life and it has thousands of recipes that we can provide based on a person's specific nutrition needs.

In fact, we can simplify it so much that we can even say, okay, based on this person's needs, we can make a full week meal plan of breakfast lunch dinner and two snacks that will exactly target their nutrition needs for the day. So they don't even have to think about it. We can take those recipes and even place an order for Instacart, they can pick it up on their way home. So we know that busy lifestyles and the high stress lifestyles that we all lead, they have a big impact on our health.

And so we're really passionate about meeting people where they are coming up with plans that will actually fit into their lifestyle and making sure that with all those recipes, we can even take out foods that they don't like or foods that they want to eat more of and really individualized nutrition plans.

So we have that as a standalone service, even if they don't need specific medication management or more in depth cardio metabolic management from me, we can arrange nutrition consultations and meal planning services with that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, any other questions. Thank you. Thank you again. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the recent article. I hope many of you just received.

If you haven't seen it already about one of our founders, Whitney Slighdom without a leave. She could not also be with us today. However, she's got a fantastic story that was recently featured in FBN. And again, you should have a copy of that article before you. And with that, I thank you all again for allowing me to serve as much as CEO these last nine half years. And I look forward to seeing you all celebrate with us our 25th year anniversary this year. Thank you. Thank you Scott.

Council, do you have any questions for Scott or for staff. All right. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have discussion and possible direction regarding privating discrimination and housing based on source of income. The last presentation wrapped up a little faster than. And we get those doors closed. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor vice mayor and council. My name is Sarah Darry serve as your housing division director. And today I am joined by Sherees.

This is the woman that I often talk about and give full credit to everything that works with our voucher section 8 program. She is phenomenal. I very rarely get the chance to make her blush in public. I'm going to do it today. This program would not work without the woman standing beside me. We're going to go over the citizens petition request. Talk for a moment about what is source of income discrimination. Talk about the fair housing protections that already exist.

Go over fair how fair go over housing choice vouchers how they work. I'll come back and cover the policy landscape. And then we will seek your direction. I'll come back here in direct response to council moving citizens petition 2026 five forward for discussion at the April 7 meeting, which was titled prohibiting discrimination and housing based on source of income action requested.

I'm sorry, the Flagstaff City Council consider adopting amendment to the 2013 civil rights ordinance to prohibit discrimination and housing based on source of income, which currently state and federal law allow. So what a source of income discrimination. It occurs when a housing provider refuses to rent to negotiate with or other treat otherwise treat treats perspective tenant differently because of a lawful source of income. What is a lawful source of income. It could be many things.

It could be housing choice voucher. It could be a child support payment. It could be veterans benefits. It could be tannif money. It could be. It could be a social security income or social security disability income any source of any any income coming into the house on a regular basis. That is lawful.

Common forms would be refusing to accept a housing choice voucher or declining applicants who receive a different source of legal income or applying stricter screening criteria based on payment source, which is not allowed. So, I'm not sure if it's a lawful source of income protection is not required is for landlords to accept all applicants.

Standard screening supplies landlords are still responsible to screen all applicants the same way that's part of their housing protections everyone treated equally. It does not require units to pass inspections that would otherwise fail. And a source of income protection does not require participation by landlords who do not otherwise meet program requirements. That means. Shrees is going to tell you in just a minute.

For a quick background, there is a strategy in the tenure housing plan that talks about exploring expanding state and local fair housing protected classes to include items such as agents source of income. Mark this complete as staff in fiscal year 2425 based on legal guidance that cities are primted in Arizona by the state from adopting local fair housing ordinances. We did the exploring, we found out we were preempted, we marked it complete.

Because we're talking about fair housing protections or adding a source of income to protections, we wanted to give an overview of background of the protected classes. You see them here, race, national origin, sex, disability, color, religion, and familial status. This is from the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and is within federal law.

You'll notice that source of income is not a federal protected class and I think it's important to point out that sex includes sexual orientation and also gender identity. We currently have just over 557 vouchers. Why don't I know the exact number I do but that's right now, bless you. The bottom line is foster youth to independence vouchers and that number changes. It's not a voucher allocated to us.

It is a voucher allocated to us when there is a young person exiting foster care or who has exited foster care and is experiencing homelessness. So it's not a voucher we hold. Is it not DCS anymore? What is the thing? Child protective services, it is DCS, Department of Child Safety, refers a kiddo to us, we then ask HUD for a voucher. So that's why you see the plus sign is because that number varies, depending on kiddos rolling on and off of that program.

So in the meantime, public housing authorities are allocated a certain number of number and type of vouchers that are managed within a specific budget. This is really important. Shreeze is going to hit it with a little more detail in a few minutes. But we are given, let's say 557 vouchers and we're given a budget to pay rent on behalf of households and it's not a magical calculation. We have to make our 557 vouchers fit in this budget allocation.

And so sometimes, for example, real life now, HUD told us last March to stop issuing vouchers. They were worried the federal government did not have enough money to pay the HAP expenses, the housing assistance payment expenses, and they said don't issue vouchers. So we have not issued vouchers per HUD's guidance since last March. We think that we're out of the woods on that and we're waiting for final notification, but we have not yet received it.

So you see the number of vouchers that we receive. Some of these are specialized, such as the vouchers for veterans named Vash. Mainstream, which I usually joke about because Mainstream sounds like it would be for everybody, but it's really households with a non-elderly disabled member. So it's actually pretty specific with Mainstream.

Housing stabilization vouchers, we partner with the guidance center on some SRO units for seriously mentally ill, and then I mentioned the foster youth independence. Council, once you notice, is not on this list is the emergency, thank you, UHV, emergency housing vouchers, where HUD discontinued the funding early. And we came to you and said, can we shift these households to regular vouchers?

Even though we were not able to issue vouchers, we were allowed by HUD to shift those households because of Shreese and her team's work, all of those households were shifted in a timely manner and will remain securely housed. They're no longer in danger of losing their housing subsidy because of HUD discontinuing the program. With that, I'm going to turn it over to the person who knows really how all of this works. Shreese, thank you.

Mayor Rice, Mayor and Council, thanks for having us here today. This is going to be a quick overview. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. The housing choice voucher program is pretty simple. It starts from eligibility interview, it starts from getting money from HUD, finding clients that are in our community that need the assistance. Normally, those are eligible low-income households.

They're interviewed, they're screened, they're given a voucher, they're sent out into our wonderful public to fight for their right to get housing. They select a unit, the unit's inspected, and then we assist with subsidy. They are, most clients are responsible for 30% of their monthly adjusted income. They are not allowed to pay more than 40%, that's a HUD regulation because then after that, it's really not affordable.

Then the landlord receives a reliable government issue payment and then they collect the tenant's portion from that household. So that's kind of the quick overview of that. These are HCV, which is housing choice voucher landlord requirements, unit standards and contracts and how in a small view of how this works. Units must pass inspection in order for them to qualify for a client to move into that unit. This is a directive from HUD.

Most of the times you may have clients that already live in that unit, and we have to go into that unit to make sure that that unit is under quality standards. And again, even if it's not, we are not allowed to assist until that unit is at quality standards. So our goal is to make sure that they have safe, sanitary and stable housing. So that's our goal with the HQS. Again, failed items must be corrected. And this is after tenancy. So after about a year, we go back and we do inspections again.

So we do, we are required annually or by annually per HUD. We prefer to do it annually. But if units aren't up to date or up to standards, we can actually hold payment back. So we try to make sure to work with landlords to make sure, hey, you know, this light bulb is broken or this is doors broken. We got to make sure that gets fixed. The housing authority in landlord, we execute a half contract. So that contract is very specific.

They do get a tenancy addendum that says these are the rules and these are non-negotiable. So this comes from HUD. This says this are you are now a housing choice voucher in landlord. This are the policies and requirements that you are required to follow. If they sign that half contract, that says that they have read that, hopefully, and that they have agreed to those terms. For most of our housing choice voucher program, we do require an initial one-year tenancy.

And then during that time, the landlord is not allowed to make any changes. That is also part of our landlord tenant act. So during that first year, you're not allowed to change that rental amount or any terms to that lease. We are required to make sure that the units are rent reasonable. So that means if I have a unit and I'm saying it's $2,100 and that's what I'm charging, but every unit that's similar in that area is $1,600, we want to know why. And we can deny that.

We can say you're charging $2,100, but the other units that are similar within that area, and it's usually within a one-to-five mile radius. So it's a pretty big area. And if it doesn't fall within that, then we can say, hey, we need to bring that down a little bit or and they can decide not to rent. And that's completely a choice of the landlord. Sherry's, excuse me, council member Matthews has a question. Yes. Sherry's, thank you.

Just for clarification, the landlord executes the HAP contract with Housing Authority. So can you just recede a clarify, if I have a housing voucher and I'm a renter, and I just go to the market, I can't just go to that landlord and said, would you take this and go apply? Can you just clarify that a little bit? Yes. So the lease is different from the HAP contract. So if I'm a renter and I go to a landlord and I say, hey, I have a housing choice voucher, do you take this?

They say, yes, I qualify. They rent all basic checks. Then that lease is then executed. The HAP contract is the housing assistance payment. That is the contract between the housing authority and that landlord. So that is what's executed saying that they agree to the terms of the housing authority. Do they do that first? No. The lease is always executed first. Thank you. Yeah. Rent increases require housing authority approval and must continue to meet the reasonable standard.

So every year they are asked if they would like to raise the rent. If they do, we do a lot of negotiating. I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd have to ask people to, can you lower your rent? But it is very real. I'd probably say about 80% of the landlords that we work with are super wonderful. And they will say, yes, let's do this. Let's go over the rent for you. Or let's include the utility so that we can get these people housed. So we appreciate every landlord that does that.

However, they made a client. So if we're saying, hey, this is what our payment standard is and they say, why can't do that? That's too much. Then that's absolutely their choice to do that. I'm going to attend the obligations. So the landlord and the tenant are both required to make sure that they notify us of any changes. If they're being evicted, if there's lease violations, they have to follow anything that's related, especially for federal fair housing requirements.

Inspections, it's really not a lot that the landlords have to do, except just be that good landlord. And the tenant, of course, has to be a good tenant. What landlords are not required to do is accept every voucher holder who applies. Like, they don't have to do that. We've had people put their selves out there and say, hey, I'm a good renter. Would you like to be part of the housing choice voucher program? And you'd be amazed how many landlords, if you just ask and explain the process.

And we're very open to be like, hey, if they don't know what it's about, have them call us because we'd love to talk to them about it. They do not have to rent below market. They can decline and say, we can't. We can't make that adjustment for you. They are not required to waive any part of the lease terms. So if a garage is included and they're charging for it for every other tenant, just because they're a housing choice voucher holder, they can't say, oh, we'll waive that for you.

Because we want every household to be, every renter to be fair, whether it's subsidizer unsubsidized and participate beyond the current half contract terms. So they can't be go outside of the half contract and charge other things that they're that's not already in the lease. No on standard screening, anything, Sarah, touch base to this, but landlords retain the right to screen applicants as the same criteria apply to all applicants.

So we, when we do eligibility interviews, we're not looking at rental history credit checks. We're not doing any of that. We are looking at criminal activity sex offenders. So we are looking at those basic screenings, but other than that, every landlord is required or should do every subsidize and un-subsidize criteria when someone applies the same. Pay my standards.

So every, every year around September, HUD comes out with these magical numbers and says, hey, this is what your fair market rents are. And then we say, okay, well, they give us the opportunity to go 90 to 110% over that. There was a period of time where we were able to go 120% over that. And we were just, we were paying a lot because we wanted to keep up with the market.

And then as of recently, they, this past year, the last two years, they said you can't do that anymore, but you can do the max at 110. So we take advantage and we're like, we're doing 100 and 10%. So we want to make sure that, because if you see, the two-bedroom is what they usually use as a standard. And so they're saying that the fair market rent within Cokinino County is 1921. And so, correct me if I'm wrong, they're using Cokinino County. Yeah, it's all of Cokinino County.

So if you know Cokinino County and the cities that reside in Cokinino County, that's like not fair, because then you're using like a city is the biggest municipality. And then you have all these other small cities like Williams and for Domea, you know, all these really small towns. So we do take advantage and go 110% over that. And if you're, if you want to know what a payment center it is, that's just the maximum monthly amount that we can pay towards someone's unit.

So if it's a two-bedroom household, then they qualify for the two-bedroom voucher. And that payment center would be 21-13. That for us, it includes utilities. So when we are out there, we're asking people to make sure that when you're out there searching, if it's utilities are not included, we kind of have to bump it down and say, that means you're looking at a unit that's about anywhere between 1700 and 1850, depending on what those utilities are.

So if that's what we're looking at, and if they're telling us that the fair market rent is 1921, that's over what we are projecting that most of our clients can look for. And local impacts. So like Sarah said, we have about 557 plus or minus vouchers. We have about 121 participating landlords. And then in 2024, we were averaging about $600,000 paid monthly to local landlords on behalf of our participants. What is usuallyization, so Sarah Touchbase, it is a balancing act.

Because they say you have 557 vouchers, we're giving you so much money, and you have to figure out how you're going to do that. And so as a cost saving measure, and I just want to throw this out there, because what we've had to do as of late is we were doing mid-month moveouts, and we were paying two months rent. We would pay 10, the last 10 days in one unit, and then the full month in the other unit. Well, we paid the full month in one unit that this one person or client was in.

So we had to change that so that we could save a little money, because we knew that HUD was saying you need to figure out how to save money. And so we had to move to only leasing up at the first of the month. Which for us is kind of good, because the money that we get from HUD is as if you can lease up at the first of the month, you're going to get money for that month. If we lease up at the 15th or the 20th, you're not going to get money for that. Or you won't get the admin fee for that.

And the admin fee is what pays like our salaries, so that's important. But it isn't ever changing market. And so they are using two-year-old data. If they could just catch up, I think it would be great. But side note, though, the fair market rents and what HUD has projected, it's kind of, it's coming to very close. Because I know that housing solutions of Northern Arizona does a study.

I think it's every year, every year, and the past few years, you can see, it's still costly, but it doesn't cost as much to be able to rent a unit. You still need a two-parent home or two-family unit, or two working families, or however you want to say that, to be able to afford a decent unit and flex stuff. And federal budgets are decided months into the funding year. This is our utilization, so for over the past 15 years, we have been at 98 percent or more for utilization.

Our issuance to move in, this is just kind of varies on the year and the times of the year and how we're leasing up. When we were issuing vouchers, it averaged about from zero to 60 days. It was about 60 percent issuance to move in, so that was pretty good for us. And then 10 to 15 percent of vouchers issuance lease in place. Not just means they've already lived there. Like say you may have clients at Sandstone, they already lived there, they got the voucher, now they're being assisted.

Our wait list is open. We do currently have about almost close to 3,000 on our wait list. We do have a preference, so that means that 950 of those clients would be service first, because they have that preference, because they live or work in flex stuff. Average wait times depend. We do have local preference, except for those mainstream vouchers. And then our wait list is about right now about 18 to 36 months. Can you say again what the mainstream vouchers are?

Yeah, mainstream vouchers are designed to aid families that have an individual that is disabled between the ages of 18 and under 62. And they just have to qualify under that. Any questions? That was a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Shreece. I want to go back and hit on one thing. If I can, you see how long the waiting list is, even with the 950 residents. And our annual turnover is about 11%, which means annually we only issue about 61 vouchers a year.

That number can vary, but it's been right in that neighborhood of 11% for quite a while. And so we really only issue about 61 vouchers per year. And the other piece is the housing assistant budget utilization. You see that it goes to 104%. How do we do that? Why? Why do we do that? Because it is a terrifying balancing act. What how does somebody give up a voucher? Sometimes folks pass away. Sometimes they move out of our community and leave the voucher behind.

Sometimes they go into default with their lease and they lose their voucher. It's completely unpredictable. We don't know from month to month how many vouchers are going to be surrendered that we may be able to then issue back out. So it is this balancing act where HUD scores us on this utilization. And we must be at 98% and above to remain a high performer. But we don't know from month to month who's going to or how many we're going to have to do. So it truly is this.

So sometimes we do what's called over issue because we're anticipating that folks will roll off the program and then they don't. So when we're over issued, we wait until we have some folks roll off the program. So then we're down to the number where we're supposed to be. So don't worry about that 104%. We do manage within it and we are not overspent or insurable. Okay. Let's talk about the policy landscape for source of income protection.

So federal law, source of income is not a federally protected class. HUD encourages but does not mandate that localities adopt source of income protections. And complaints can be filed with the HUD Fair Housing Office or referred to the State Fair Housing Agency. In Arizona, we do not have statewide source of income protections. However, 23 states plus DC have enacted statewide source of income protections as of January 2025. So that's about six months old could be higher.

In Arizona, the source of income protections where they are enacted are established by local ordinance, not by state law. So local adoption Arizona law premiums all municipalities accept Phoenix and Tucson from adopting local fair housing ordinances. Three years on a city's have enacted these protections by ordinance. Those cities are Phoenix Tucson and Tempe.

Some cities have adopted supplementary ordinances that prohibit housing discrimination, not source of income, but these only impose small penalties for violations. The Fair Housing Act, excuse me, filing a claim with the State Attorney General or the Federal Department of Justice is the most powerful tool for prohibiting discrimination and providing relief. When someone calls our office with a fair housing complaint, we refer them to agencies within the state that specialize in these complaints.

So for the localities that have adopted such ordinances, the scope, enforcement mechanisms and exemptions vary by jurisdiction. They are almost as unique as they are numerous. For example, we're not going to discuss this.

However, Council, if you do suggest that we come back to with an ordinance drafted, these are the types of things that we're going to be seeking answers on in order to craft something, which landlords are subject to the ordinance, which income types are protected while enforcement mechanisms would we use types of penalties, education and outreach exemptions. It is not as simple as you can't do this. We would have to go through a process in order to determine these types of things.

Options for Council consideration. So factors to consider in making a decision. Our voucher holders currently able to obtain housing. Our Flagstaff residents experiencing source of income discrimination. Are their concerns from landlords? Will a source of income ordinance cause an increase in some rents? Why would that be on here? Shreece mentioned our payment standard. That is how much a voucher is worth. We can't go above that except in very, very limited circumstances.

If a landlord does not want to accept a voucher, they can establish their rents above with that voucher is worth and then say it's not that we don't accept the voucher. It's that your voucher doesn't meet our rents. And so, therefore, they're not turning down because of the source of income. They're turning it down because of voucher isn't worth enough to meet the rent for that unit. City time and expense to implement a new program, including education outreach and enforcement.

Any risks related to the adoption of an ordinance and anything else. Options for a council consideration. You can direct staff to not draft an ordinance or to not draft an ordinance, but provide educational outreach to landlords in the community about source of income discrimination. We could draft a source of income supplementary housing discrimination ordinance and provide an estimate of anticipated cost of implementation, or you could provide us with other direction.

Staff is not making a recommendation for your consideration under this matter. And I'd be happy to answer any questions or punt to sharies if they're technical and not for me. Councilmember Garcia. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Sarah, for coming up here and responding to the citizens petition. Nice work. Can you go back two slides? Appreciate that. So you said, I heard something in between your words and I want to see if I was correct in that how do I phrase this?

So even if we did a source of income amendment, there's other ways that landlords could opt to stay kind of stay away from the program. Is there a fear? Not a fear, but is there an understanding that this is the type of stuff that happens to combat these type of amendments that we could make for source of income? Mayor Vice Mayor Councilmember Garcia, there are programs across the nation that we can point to where this has been the results.

First source of income protection started in California in the 70s. And that was the type of behavior that happened immediately was rents went up and then they don't qualify. If someone does not want to rent to a voucher holder, there are lots of ways around it. You create criteria that does not violate fair housing discrimination pieces. Your rents are higher than what the voucher is worth.

You set your so quite often apartment complexes will have a ratio of you must make three times the rent in order to qualify to live in the unit. And even if they don't, if they take the voucher into consideration, that voucher is premised on a 30% rent income proportion. So they change their criteria to be 3.5%. You have to make 3.5% of the income which would wash out voucher holders. There's a number of ways that it could happen.

I don't want to catastrophize or say this is what's going to happen. I want to help people be aware that if a landlord does not want to participate, there are other ways around just saying I'm not going to accept vouchers on their other mechanisms that they will apply equally across the board to all tenants that they lease to that then exclude voucher holders. We're not seeing that in our community now. It's not something that we're seeing.

It is something that we have seen happen in other communities in bigger cities where you can drive to qualify or you have suburbs where you have Phoenix, but you can then go Renton Chandler. Those things are different. Up here, there's not another option. Yeah, thank you for answering that question. So candidly, and I wasn't asking you that question to shine the light on you to answer it.

It was mainly because during doing my research, I found that that was one of the larger downsides as ways for voucher holders to kind of get priced out of the process and to actually lose ground in voucher holders in certain places historically that has that they have evidence of. So I appreciate that. So, do we participate in the Fair Housing Act under the voucher system that we use now? Absolutely. We're federally required to do so. April wasn't too long ago.

We had a number of events including education, etc. We host landlord events and all of our everything we put out has the Fair Housing logo on it as reminders, etc. And I heard it laced in the presentation, but I'm not sure if it is a direct correlation to the Fair Housing Act, but you said that the source of income protections can be filed through HUD. Is that part of the Fair Housing Act? Source of income protection is not part of Fair Housing Act.

However, anybody can bring a discrimination complaint for really any purpose to be investigated. However, it is not one of the seven protected classes. Okay, so that's why we have it here today in front of us, I think. Okay, so let's see here. Has your department experienced issues with source of income discrimination to date through people complaining? If so, how did you deal with it with your department? Thank you for the question. We went back and looked at logs back to 2022.

We discovered that we had two phone calls discussing possible source of income protection discrimination. One was not when we got into the details and the other was possible, but the the caller declined to share enough information with us for us to determine if it was or not and requested no follow-up. Okay, I just have two more questions, so hang tight. Shreece anecdotally. Shreece, do we have folks coming in regularly unable to use their vouchers based on not being able to find a place?

She shook her head and said no for those that can't see her. Okay, and I went outside the departments to do investigative work and met with folks that are also in the field in our region, and they told a similar story where there was a couple of occasions that may or may not have risen to a source of income complaint that could actually be either verified or justified or followed through with to the point of making a difference up till now, which is neither here nor there.

It's just part of the context. All right, this is tied to the previous question. No, it's not. If council decides to move forward with the amendment to the 2013 civil rights ordinance to include source of income, how do you envision this amendment for you to be like to be tasked to write it and what and what do we currently have on the books that is addressing the issues that this source of income petition is asking us to look into? I'm I'm I'm I'm picking through your I'm finding the question.

So I so I noticed that you that you said that we're going to have so maybe you can just walk us through kind of what you envision as the process of if we move this forward. Are we going to have another work session where it counsel battles out some the list of questions that you had up? Is that the next step in the process to where we write this as a community? Do we hand it off simply to the housing department and say since you're the experts figure out what you need to do and bring it back?

Let's just walk us through the next steps if we were to move forward with this. Mayor vice mayor councilmember Garcia that's a fun question. It could go in number of different directions depending on what council directed us to do. If you directed us to create an ordinance we would come back to you with that would be option three where we would come back to you with a draft and also an estimate of the anticipated cost of implementation as well as what that process could look like.

Right now there is not a mechanism within the housing division or within the city itself where this could be plopped easily into an existing enforcement structure. Cool. So you also mentioned budget on the last one to an extent and that was my next question. I guess it was probably more to the city manager's office and that's how it would implement this amendment affect the current makeup of the department.

What would we have to do to expand the department or would we be pushing more responsibilities into the current placeholders of our department or the current workforce of our department to be able to carry this out as far as enforcement and processing and the like.

Mayor council and councilmember Garcia I think we would need to come back you know under number three and provide an estimate of anticipated cost but I do see a cost with enforcing and making sure that we we have staff available to to do the enforcement. I think I would liken it to some of the things that we have in the state's division related to minimum wage compliance but that's something that we would need to discuss internally and bring back. Right.

If I may add with the city of LA put theirs in place they did not create a mechanism to follow up. They put it in place and we're relying on others to bring enforcement action on behalf of folks complaining and found that that didn't work by putting the the onus out on nonprofits and they ended up contracting with someone in order to do the follow-up on their behalf because they were they were sued for their lack of enforcement action because they were depending on others at the time.

So it would be something we would want to approach very carefully and make sure that we have the ability to enforce effectively and meaningfully anything that we put into place. Thank you and I told you two but that spawned another question and that is probably the city manager again. Do we know like would we have to take away from the HUD funds in order to to finance this other person? Would we take it out of the general fund?

How would we get the money to if we needed to increase staff for this project? Mayor and council I can speak to the HUD funds because this is not part of the federal fair housing protections. We would have a hard time justifying using existing HUD funds to enforce a local ordinance. Thank you for that. That's a member of Matthews. Thank you Mayor. Sarah go back to this slide where you showed the 2935 voucher on waiting list. So I was just confused on identified residency preference than 950.

Can you explain that a little bit? Absolutely. Mayor Vice Mayor council member Matthews. Anybody can apply to be on the waiting list. We have a local preference meaning we house local residents first before others from outside our jurisdiction. And so we ask on the base application do you live in and list our zip codes as our service area? So 950 of those almost 3000 households have said they live within our area.

Now this is one of the areas where when we and when you hit the top of the list and we take usually take 25 households at a time and invite them in for further eligibility interviews. We have quite a number that have declared yes we live in your region and when they get to the top of the list they don't. It could be that they did when they applied. It could be that they checked that box hoping to get in faster etc but you have to prove that you live here.

And so we have quite a few people that wash out at that point but if we take it purely on its face 950 of the almost 3000 on the waiting list say that they live in our service area without verification. So I remember a conversation I had with a voucher holder that was coming from Oregon and wanting to relocate here and having an Oregon voucher. Is that kind of the scenario we're talking about to the other 2035? It's not that that is a more complex element of the voucher program.

As a voucher holder you have the ability to do to port and the program is called portability so that folks are not stuck in a community because of that's where their voucher is. Vouchers are attached to people not housing units. So you can take your voucher anywhere in the US that has a housing authority anywhere in the US that has a housing authority. You port to that housing authority.

Your home housing authority continues to pay your rent while you are in the other jurisdiction while the housing authority in that jurisdiction provides the annual recertification, the inspections, etc. And so to make it even more fun housing authorities can absorb that and say okay now that's ours which frees up one of ours.

It's another part of that balancing act that we talk about of and there's kind of a handshake deal around Arizona as far as absorbing vouchers near the end of the year because our funding is based on our utilization on December 30th. And if somebody's if we had ported a bunch of people to Phoenix and then Phoenix absorbed them to make their numbers go up then our numbers would be down.

So we have a handshake piece of no late year absorptions but that what you're talking about the household from Oregon is they could come here. Their housing authority in Oregon would continue to pay their subsidy but we would serve as the voucher. Thank you. And one last question right now.

If if when somebody comes and gets qualified as a voucher you're not betting those future renters on other qualifications credit and you're just our department just issues of voucher based on income eligibility overall for the voucher and then when they go and seek a place to rent they still have that's when they qualify be it credit any other criteria that the landlord may have is that correct.

When they identify a unit to rent done is when the landlord's eligibility criteria would be applied I'm going to let Sheree's answer the question as to whether we check how deep we go on portability or if we accept the income verification from the other agency. That's a little too deep. I just met anybody coming in for a voucher not out of hand was yeah to get a voucher issued like I come in and apply I need assistance in in rent.

All our department is looking at is income based and if they qualify we're not looking at if they have credit if they have other issues that maybe disqualify them when they go out in the market and try to rent a place correct. Yes that is correct outside of criminal activity because we also check for criminal activity and the sex offender right now my question was answered thank you.

Council member house thank you mayor thank you Sarah thank you Sherees I think this question might be for Sherees I know from experience that the our housing authority has done a lot of work to establish strong working relationships with property owners and management companies that work with the housing choice voucher program.

I'm wondering what if any conversations the team has had with property owners and managers about why who are not participating in the program about their rationale for not participating or not accepting vouchers or any conversations about perceived or known impacts of SOI ordinances.

Thank you for the question mayor vice mayor and council member house we do hold landlord briefings every year with the anticipation that current landlords and landlords that are interested or have questions would attend and unfortunately that is the attendance is very very low as far as I've recently had a few conversations with a couple of landlords that own various properties around the city that have become interested in offering their units or housing for our housing choice voucher and in those conversations most of the concerns were well if I ran to this person they're going to damage and who's going to pay for that or unfortunately we don't have the funding to be able to help landlords you know if they have tenants that were just unruly however my answer to those comments are usually or mostly are you screen your tenants so you are responsible for making sure that they are that you know that you have that comfortability with them that they pass your screening and it's equal across the board not a lot of landlords that I have spoken to are aware or have any concerns of SOI so that was very interesting when this topic came up to you know as I was diving in and trying to figure out where is this coming from because it just wasn't anything that I've been seeing we we work with there is a apartment complex that takes our vouchers but again as Sarah had mentioned earlier they kind of cap out on like what the rents are and so we are unable to send our voucher holders there we don't stop them from going because you know some some of our veterans may be able to qualify because their payment centers are a little higher um and so but to answer your question hopefully answered it correctly is that no I have not heard or have had any deep conversations with landlords about SOI and then main concerns are just you know what if I have an unruly tenant what am I going to do with that so yeah thank you very much yeah okay before I take public comment um I have a question so we've received some emails that have this um statistic and it says every year SOI discrimination contributes to 30% of Flagstaff section 8 housing vouchers expiring and that's the equivalent of 176 voucher holders losing their vouchers each year um where does that number come from I can only guess based on math is that there was 30% of our total number of vouchers um however we only issue around 60 vouchers a year and I'm guessing it's this I'm pointing at my screen which is not helpful for any of you to see anything I'm doing this success rate of 70% locally um is the rate of issued vouchers that result in a lease versus 60% nationally so I'm guessing based on basic mathing um however what I can tell you is that there are a number of reasons that folks do not lease up um when they when they have a voucher um the first one and the one that where folks wash out the most is that they don't have the money for the deposit that is what we hear back from people the most we do have a modest um deposit assistance program for some households that qualify um but most households that end up not leasing up or because they don't have the funding necessary to pay their deposit other reasons would be that um they weren't we've had some households who don't who have chosen not to make the time to go seek new housing and they call us and say well you haven't found me anything like no we've talked about this this is yours people decide they don't want to deal with all our paperwork because it's not easy to maintain a voucher we're gonna crawl into your finances every single year so they choose to live with a roommate instead of obtain a unit on their own some move out of town I mean the the number the the reasons are vast but the primary reason we see vouchers expire um between being issued and being leased up is a lack of um deposit and if I said down payment earlier that's just my brain but deposit on a rental unit not down payment okay and so that voucher expires for that person but it's not taking the voucher out of the community no okay marijuana voucher expires it means that that household has their time to utilize that voucher for themselves has expired and then we issue it to a different household okay and is there any community assistance for um deposits and down payments and all of that besides you said we have a modest amount are there other agencies that have it uh mayor um coconut county community services has a deposit assistance program um I believe Saint Vincent de Paul has a deposit assistance program ours is a revolving fund for very low-income households um that we were able to establish with some of our um Covid money we were able to set aside and create a small revolving fund for very low-income households Shries is gonna know more than I do on this one or did I cover you were just supporting me all right she's supporting me yes there are community agencies however there's never enough funding and so quite often community services will be out of funding by the second of the month um people waiting for funding on the first that funding's allocated and it's done so it's a it's a tough piece I'm sorry yeah I did want to add that um flag step shelter services um and they partner with the continuum of care and sometimes they have extra funding and they we attend those continuum of care meetings um every Thursday and or when we can every Thursday and they put out their hey we have funding available let your people know and so um it's good to have that continuum of care because then we're able to get out there in the community and say hey you don't qualify for our deposit program but go here because then you may qualify there and when you've talked about the success rate previously um there's been information about and maybe it's not the success rate maybe it's the utilization rate that I'm thinking of uh the 98 percent um it's not and I believe that you said this earlier it's not 100 percent because people are moving in people are moving out people right there are if you were at 100 percent there would be a possibility of going over the amount of money that we have for vouchers is that does that sum it up Mayor that that's close sometimes we're over a hundred percent recently we were at a hundred and we won't say how high um but we we were over leased because we were trying to strike that balance sometimes that number is over 100 that's why HUD's standard for measurement of a high performing agency is that you're over 98 percent the other thing that goes into that utilization um calculation is that you have not overspent your funds so if you're over 98 percent but you've overspent your budget authority then you are not a high performer and so it is at 98 percent or higher and you have not overspent your budget authority now hopping back to the previous question so so contributes to 30 percent of Flagstaff Section 8 housing vouchers expiring and that's the equivalent of 176 voucher holders losing their vouchers each year can you it i understand the math and i understand the um the 70 percent was that on the previous slide or the slide after this um but does 70 percent locally equate to to what this says with 30 percent expiring and a hundred and 76 voucher holders losing their vouchers every year Mayor members of council we don't have a hundred and seventy six households losing vouchers annually i'm going to refer you to our turnover rate where our max numbers are around 11 percent which is 61 issued every year that is that takes into account um surrendered vouchers um so it's it's not i'm having a hard time answering the question because what you're reading me is not actually correct and so i'm trying to figure out how to how to fit it in but the success rate is the rate of vouchers once issued that result in a lease we only issue about 60 vouchers a year and so there can't be a hundred and thirty seven losing their vouchers due to this because we only issue approximately 61 a year now we have an issue to voucher since last March based on HUD guidance and federal budget uncertainty um however these numbers are based on when federal funding is not quite so nebulous okay thank you that's that i think it's finally clicking we can go we can go through it again if you want because i'm not sure that i answered correct did anyone on council have that same question oh you did okay and it was answered okay good thank you um so i'm going to take public comment and then we'll come back to council so thanks very much for that presentation and answering our questions michelle james hello marion council i'm michelle james executive director friends of flagstess future f cube supports the citizen proposal to amend flagstess 2013 civil rights ordinance to include protections for source of income we urge adoption of the superposal to make it illegal for land lawyers to reject prospective tenants or alter lease terms based on how they legally pay their rent federal fair housing protections do not include source of income as we've just learned as a protected class therefore it's up to cities and states to do this and multiple national organizations including the national fair housing alliance national low income housing coalition equal rights center the n double acp actively advocate for legislation banning source of income discrimination the proposal in front of you today provides illegal means for flagstess to address discrimination in housing based on a person's income adoption of an amendment to the city's civil rights ordinance to include so i would prohibit housing discrimination based on how individuals receive their income whether through government assistance such as housing vouchers child support alimony social security disability benefits or any other lawful means preventing S.O.I discrimination is included in the flagstess 10-year housing plan the city of tempi Arizona legally bypassed the Arizona fair housing state statutes by incorporating source of income protection as a recognized protection clap protected class under the city's broader non-discrimination and human relations ordinance this occurred over two years ago and it has not been legally challenged this this seems to me to prove that cities are not preempted by the state from adopting local fair housing ordinances as stated also in a legal opinion by Arizona attorney Chris excuse me Arizona attorney general christmas council has the ability to enact a positive change via a simple amendment to the flagstess 2013 civil rights ordinance we urge you to take this step and join the more than 100 other cities in the country that have chosen to protect and expand housing options for their residents thank you for your consideration thank you michelle kio nitsky good evening mayor daga vice mayor sweet and council my name is kio nitsky i'm here today on behalf of myself i want to speak to a very narrow point of the housing discrimination ordination and it's really what michelle said about the legal stuff i think we regularly get some very conservative legal opinions from our city attorney here and i think that's fine because of our history of the plastic bag band and the state going after us on the minimum wage and there's reasons to listen to that conservative legal opinion that times i think this is one of these issues where we've seen the city of tempi and the attorney general speak out on this i don't think that this should be a reason that you guys don't move forward with the um source of income housing discrimination also i've just learned a ton from housing staff over this these last 20 or 30 minutes so i don't know if this is the right decision going forward but i i had some questions that i kind of raised throughout it one for me the source of income protection issue that we have in the city is is around our students and student housing is there a way we can write a source of income protection to you know protect our students like and i don't know that's whatever i don't know if that makes any sense to all number two was i think where there are not protections or any protections are around sexual orientation and identity had a friend who had a trans flag who i don't know if they lost at least or just getting renewed but i think that's somewhere where we could put some protections in on the city and then my third piece was that the positive assistance program i think looking into expansion for that seems like a way that maybe we can address some of this source of income stuff so i pushed the council to continue looking into that and that's what i've got thanks for your time i have a couple questions for you please what was the third thing that you said uh the that was brought up by the housing staff the um deposit assistance program deposit okay that sound like a cool idea it sounded like the source that was a reason that folks weren't able to use these vouchers because they didn't have deposit money and with our housing bond maybe we can help that out and then you said that you you see a problem with students is that like scholarship money or right like could stuff be written into protect about that because i see you you know when i was looking for rental stuff like no students in certain places and you know i i understand whatever i don't know yeah i don't think about i don't know i haven't thought you know okay thank you thanks ace overman hello mayor and council members today i'm asking you to take a clear and devices stand against discrimination in our community i'm asking you say yes to fairness yes to dignity and yes to housing opportune by directing staff to draft a measure that prohibits source of income discrimination here in flagstaff this is not a symbolic measure it affects real people every year as we went over earlier about 30 percent flagstaff's housing vouchers expire senior family seniors people of disabilities and veterans who lose their chance of stable housing simply because they cannot secure at least in time sourcing income discrimination is a mate is a major contributor as stated by national fair housing alliance it is the most common form of housing discrimination in the country and you'll hear from my friend Rick uh later on case manager that he that he has seen this happen here in flagstaff if we say we want to protect and enhance the equality for all life as in our city mission then we must mean all that means stepping in with discrimination blocks people from something as basic as a home prohibiting source income discrimination would bring real benefits fewer expired vouchers faster access to stable housing better access to jobs and resources more diverse neighborhoods reduce inequality and making affordable housing more accessible this measure is already identifying the city's 10 year housing plan as a way to move barriers and protect residents it also lines of the housing divisions mission mission to address housing needs and expand opportunities for our community flagstaff has a raw has a rare opportunity to support its most vulnerable residents cities like Scottsdale Chandler Glendale Tulson Sedona Winslow and Tempe all of a population under 350,000 have straven had strengthened their non-discrimination ordinances to prohibit LGBTQ plus discrimination housing Tempe has gone fervor by prohibiting source income discrimination specifically none of these cities have faced any legal challenges from the state flagstaff can follow their same clear legal path by mending its 2013 civil rights ordinance across the country 16 states and more than a hundred cities democratic republican have taken a step and it works Tucson reduced unused vouchers from over 300 to under 200 Phoenix dropped from 503 to 171 and Tempe went from a hundred and two to just four when discrimination goes down housing stability goes up I know stat has raised concerns about potential rent increases or administrative burdens but in speaking with other Arizona cities none reported higher rents as a result of these protections and the policy has the cost them little to nothing so I ask you if you have any more questions about inflammation regarding this or legal talk to Tempe city staff talk to attorney attorney general Chris May's office and plainly ask them how can we do this like you did thank you I have a question for you please you you said something about decreasing something in different cities and you listed some percentages yeah so that was there that was their vouchers on the street they're unused vouchers there are cities who have unused vouchers yes it was there like it was there are vouchers that go expired so I referenced that like here in the city flags that you were asking staff about this earlier that 30% become expired that was the cases in these city and now they see that expiration go down quite considerably ever since they've implemented sourcing come protections okay so you're not saying that they go unused yeah I should have raised about their expiration rate lowered so yeah they still get used but their expiration rate lowered okay okay thank you I appreciate that and councilmember Garcia has a question for you thank you Ace for spearheading this project we've been working together for year more now and so so I feel like I can I can be candid and you know vulnerable with you and asking tough questions if it comes across as something that you don't want to ask it's understandable but it's because of our relationship that I feel like I'd ask this question so we got a candor or form email basically by a lot of residents and it's it's a little doom and gloomy when I when I read it and I wonder if you could speak to the author's phrasing of just the first statement could you or do you not know who the author was what's the can you read the first statement potentially yeah just as I urge or I urge you let's speaking of the city council to end source of income discrimination in housing and flag staff and if you could speak to that like what basis do you have to say that it's actually happening well you'll hear from a case manager here shortly who has met with some of you that has seen source income discrimination really take place here in Flagstaff they are a case manager they've worked with people again I don't want to steal all this public comment but um he has seen and he has had called up apartment complexes and they've allowed told him they don't accept section eight vouchers that source of income discrimination right there um it wasn't because of their rent being too high or anything like that it was because they don't want to take those people of that type of income and I also do want to speak that it is a little harder to really determine how much of this is going on in the city other cities have done studies before implementing this type of policy uh really good one happened in New Orleans uh they did a study they called up apartment complex instead of the people coming to them they went to the source of the problem and they called various apartment complexes and just simply say like hey I have a person here who has a section eight voucher holder would you be willing to take that and the apartment complex would say no and so I think it's again telling stories about discrimination because one people don't realize that they're being discriminated against to it technically is a legal form of discrimination so that makes it even harder for people to like what's the point of even speaking about this um so I think uh again they've I'm just going off with the national fair housing lines also says that it's the most common form of housing discrimination we see in across the nation today so I appreciate that yeah so I did I answer your question yeah yeah it really did and it was just um it so I have been doing a lot of research over the past week on this myself and and well this is over the last year but really um going into different places with my research over the last week and um I'm struggling to to see um the way that this email was worded seems a lot more doom and gloom than what I'm actually experiencing myself so that's and there's a lot of people that signed onto that email and I'm wondering if they did any of their own investigating to before they put their name on it um and it's just it was just a point of reference so I uh so I can contextualize the conversation for myself so thank you Ace yeah um I'm getting real quick like yeah I I know Flagstaff is housing staff and the housing housing staff is doing a great job here we have nearly 100% utilization rate with our vouchers and so it is not all doom and gloom here when it comes to housing but I think again source it prohibiting source income discrimination is a it's a small tool but we need all the tools that we that are available to us to address the housing affordable housing crisis here in Flagstaff thank you welcome thank you Ace Tyler Denham hi there my name is Tyler Denham I'm speaking today as a private resident so wearing that hat I support adopting a source of income non-discrimination policy and appreciate the work done by Flagstaff residents to bring this forward beyond that statement of support I would like to hear more about the mechanism by which Tempe was able to pass a source of income non-discrimination policy and how that could potentially work for Flagstaff also to the extent that there are diverging opinions about the legality of source of income non-discrimination could the city add support for clarifying bill language to its list of priorities to support at the state legislator I'm thinking something similar to what it does for short term rental regulations where it passes a list of legislative priorities to the League of Cities and Towns and yeah that's all thank you for your time thank you Tyler Rick Michaels hello council hello mayor my name is Rick Michaels I'm a case manager with Coconino County Health and Human Services and I'm here just to kind of speak on my own experience and what I've seen with my clients and I've seen two specific cases of its source of income discrimination throughout my time as a case manager which has been in the past three years one client had a section 8 voucher their apartment complex decided that they did not want to accept that voucher any longer and so the client was they had to find a new place to live when I was trying to help the client find housing I would call landlords both larger complexes as well as smaller landlords and I would ask if they would be willing to rent to somebody with a section 8 voucher I would explain the process for that how that would work and in many cases I heard excuses such as no we don't accept those types of vouchers and in some cases even folks saying we don't work with those types of people I have another client who received a housing voucher through a nonprofit well not a non-profit through a federally funded program for folks living with HIV that was not made known to the landlord just that they were going to have their housing paid for for at least two years the landlord said that no they did not want to work with anyone receiving government assistance that might sound like not that many to clients I know it doesn't sound like a lot but at the time my case load was about 40 clients so that's about 5% of my case load out of that case load only about 10 of those clients were receiving some form of housing assistance so if you break it down to those numbers two out of 10 that's actually 20% of clients on just one case managers case load such as one case manager one case load I've heard similar stories from other colleagues I think importantly in both of these cases the clients did not feel comfortable filing a complaint because there was no legislation locally that they could point to that made them feel confident and coming forward especially since as has been referred earlier it's not a protected category under HUD and you know it is an area that people can kind of get away with I do get that this would not solve the problem overnight this is one thing but as a case manager and I'm sure other social workers would concur when we're helping our clients try to find housing having something and writing that we can point to would be tremendously helpful the stakes are relatively low for something like this I think that very worst case we could withdraw it if there ever is a complaint but I don't think that's it's a it's a pretty low hanging fruit and I don't think that there's an excuse really to to not pass this given that time he was able to do the same thank you thank you um yes go ahead vice mayor thank you mayor and thank you right and thank you for taking the time to meet with me um I I asked you this during our meeting I just want to clarify your colleagues did do you all talk about your caseload and how many they have have looked into regarding this I know you talked about your two I'm just wondering if you can expand on um it's a good question I mean obviously we're limited in what we can discuss with other case managers in regard to our clients um in terms of like you know numbers from them I haven't heard like but definitely at least in a handful in each case which you know considering the each case manager probably has around anywhere from 30 sometimes if it's really you know a heavy case load like 80 that's still a pretty it's a good chunk of folks um so yeah thank you council member Garcia has a question for you thank you and thank you Eric it's good to see you again I had a learning that we already have some protections through HUD um to where they can reach out to HUD as long as it's you know underneath that umbrella of funding um I think I'm saying that right if it was HUD from not they can correct me um do you know in specifics if these two cases that you spoke about could have been dealt with through the HUD system um so that's a good question so as you're I mean yeah there's a there is a process for a complaint but since it's not a protected category nothing would really come out of that um the clients in both case looked into it and said that they didn't want to because of that um okay so it was gonna be they just didn't want to or there's gonna be too much work for them to have to deal with I mean for the out that's partially it but then the other side of that is you know they don't want to go through all that work just to be told now yeah I think that's a really um important illustration thank you I have a quick question too um you attend the continuum of care meetings I'm I'm guessing okay so you'll see great and um I'm wondering you know have have all of the the housing experts are staff um and and everyone else who serves people in eras in flag staff have you um have you all had a conversation about this particular issue um not within the COC recently it's I mean lately my case load went up quite a bit so I haven't been able to attend the last two that may have been brought out but um at least since I have been now yeah and it's not to say that that's not a topic on folks's mind there but yeah okay and have you ever spoken to our staff about it about source of income yeah and and just problems the problems that you've illustrated here yeah leading up to this I have the chance to meet a couple staff members and was able to explain sort of what I have seen in my line of work um yeah great I'm just looking for all of us who are involved in this issue to be think not just this particular issue but just all of the the housing any obstacle to housing for people in flag staff and so I'm glad to see um people talking to each other so that we make sure that we're all aware of the resources that are available and the problems that are out there right so thank you thank you crystal Diaz mayor and council members thank you for moving this citizen petition forward for discussion tonight ace has done a lot of work over the last ten months in reviewing legal approaches collecting signatures talking with flag staff residents and leadership and even reaching out to the staff of other Arizona cities while source of income is not federally protected protected class for housing like race sex and national origin resident who use vouchers or government assistance also face systemic discrimination a housing case manager has confirmed that such cases do occur and more may likely go unreported due to the currently gallery of source of income discrimination we're not just talking about voucher holders I know that comes up a lot but also people with disability and social security income court mandated payments and so on the council can make this small effort to prevent future cases it has been six years since the city declared a housing emergency and four years since the adoption of our ten year housing plan a plan that we know seeks to expand fair housing protections I'd say it's about time we take this next step toward making flag flag staff a more equitable and affordable place to live for all residents thank you thank you crystal all right so council member Garcia will you had question oh no sorry you got your question answered forgive me council member house you had a comment it's okay thank you mayor thank you mayor I had a couple questions and then I have some comments here I think this might be for Sarah so I know in Tucson I was looking at Tucson and Phoenix specifically on some of you know what went well what were some of the challenges that they faced and in Tucson in particular one concern was that adjustments to rental subsidy amounts increase the ability of property managers to participate in programs but also decrease the eligibility of families and households to participate in programs given how our market rates already have not kept up with market realities and so tend to negotiate or necessitate some of those negotiations have we looked at what that might look like here I think they went from 100% to 110 and we're already at 110 so I don't know if that's actually a challenge for our community or what your thoughts are on that are mayor vice mayor council member house could I ask you to read what you read again and I promised to listen better no it was a it's a long one so basically it's that in Tucson one concern was that adjustments to rental subsidy amounts increase the ability of property managers to participate in programs like housing choice vouchers but it also decrease the eligibility of families and households to participate in the program so there was an article from Tucson dot com that was stating one of their council members said because of the increase from that 100% to 110 they were actually seeing families that were no longer eligible to participate in the program but we're already at 110 so I don't know if that's actually a concern for us or if we we've had any thoughts on if this would impact people's eligibility to participate in the programs mayor vice mayor council member house can I ask if you think it's possible that they're talking about an increase in area median income versus rent or was it clear that it's rent I'm having a hard time following it yeah they said specifically rental subsidy amounts an increase in rental subsidy amount would mean or the 110 means that we really really have to carefully watch what we're spending out of the half money we get the housing assistance payment money that we get because they are assuming that we are abiding by the fair market rents as households lease up and it is only because we have not everybody leases up at the maximum amount that the voucher is worth that we're able that we're able to manage that piece as far as households becoming ineligible my thought process on that is what they could be talking about is that the rents go up the voucher amount does not go up and that means that the household would then be responsible for a greater amount of rent on their own behalf meaning it's not only 30 percent but we can approve a cost burden up to 40 percent per household but only for one year correct who see I sometimes I do pay attention to how it works so that would directly impact a household's ability to participate in the program and perhaps require them to move within 12 months of their lease renewal if that housing cost rent burden became too big please keep in mind that that percentage is based off of gross income within a household not net of households so while 30 percent of gross income as a large commitment 40 percent is a significant it means that that household is choosing to be cost burden which HUD allows them to choose for up to 12 months that's my guess of what that is speaking to you okay thank you for that that's my only question for now I I have a couple other but they're more directed towards council ourselves and in our considerations so you can sit down because I'm gonna go through my comments and I don't want you to have to stand there for the whole thing so one of the things that I I think is important to recognize from what we were seeing in the letters that we were receiving and and some of the comments that we heard there's a little bit of a distinction in what the National Fair Housing Alliance states about what they consider to be the greatest barrier to affordable housing they discuss considering systemic discrimination and exclusionary policies to be the greatest barrier to affordable housing what they do consider though with that is that source of income discrimination is a deeply entrenched systemic barrier to housing access and attainability particularly because it disproportionately impacts people of color women people with disabilities and under other underserved and historically disparately impacted groups they also more broadly defined systemic in equities and discrimination and both financial and housing systems as including exclusionary lending insurance and land use barriers redlining and economic and racial biases which includes income based discrimination that limits renters choices for housing and I raise that because I think that we are faced with doing two things at once as we're having this conversation we're doing a lot of the work now to examine and adjust land use and zoning codes to create better pathways to affordable housing and the work we're doing in this in other areas policy wise have us addressing historically discriminatory systems systemic biases and barriers and place based inequities that have limited access to community opportunities like reliable transit well resource schools and neighborhoods and access to health care resources one thing that's frequently missing is addressing those long standing barriers that may not have been designed as discriminatory but that clearly disparately impact choice in where and how we live and how accessible and attainable those housing choices are I know a lot of people have written about how source of income protections will help create more affordable housing this was part of the conversation that I had with ACE just yesterday in recognizing that that's a statement that needs to be slightly corrected because so I want to slightly correct it but maintain the the hopeful recognition of what this type of ordinance can do because SOI ordinances don't create affordability or necessarily compel communities to create more affordable housing what they do is they work to make housing attainable under current circumstances while simultaneously improving circumstances for future affordability I think that's important because we can't move forward on this and think that we've won the battle against our housing emergency this is a battleground for sure but it's not the battle and that said I would encourage us as a council to take the bold step of moving forward and pursuing this alongside the other grounds that we're gaining to increase supply create more housing options increase both affordability and attainability and work collaboratively to meet our various housing needs a couple questions that I or cautions or caveats that I'd have on this is recognizing that it's never as simple as just passing an ordinance to fix decades of systemic and institutional harm that we're trying to address if we're moving forward with an ordinance we have to be dedicated to full engagement to understand all the implications of what we're doing I'm looking at both the pros and potential drawbacks of what's been passed in Tucson Phoenix and other communities that have put these protections in place and so recognizing some of those drawbacks that those communities have faced I think that we have to account for those unforeseen and unintended consequences of any action even ones like this that are aimed at serving the public good I was grateful for the comments that we received like those from Friends of Flagstaff's future that reiterated the importance of providing education and making outreach to all people impacted by this type of policy adoption including renters property owners and managers real estate professionals in the general public because the last thing that we want to do is try and solve a problem that in in trying to do so we create another challenger barrier to housing for those already facing limited choice and access I think the main question that I'd want to ask of council now is a what does passing something like this look like for us as a community and if we believe that we're not able to pass an ordinance like this at this time are we able and willing to table the conversation rather than letting it die and reach out to legal teams and other communities set of adopted this type of ordinance the Attorney General's office and others for guidance on next legal steps or options because I think it's it's something for us to consider and consider very seriously I know that there may be some hesitation based on what we know of of current legal challenges that our community space but if there are pathways forward I think that they're worth us exploring so if we don't decide tonight to advance direction on drafting and actual ordinance I do think that we can still advance conversations about what would it look like to do this and move that conversation forward thank you Mayor thank you councilmember Garcia thank you Madam Mayor and can I ask council member House with the first question was when you were asking council oh no I think it was just what would passing this ordinance look like for our community so we yeah we've had those conversations about we don't have a fair housing ordinance to amend we do have our non discrimination policy but it doesn't include housing at this point and so doesn't include source of income either and so I think there's just some questions on what it would look like like what's the chicken and what's the egg in making any sort of amendments there I really appreciate that question because it lets us dig into both sides of the issue and so I guess the trevidation that I'd have would be the concerns that housing staff spoke to where it kind of changes the culture of renters because they because maybe of a misunderstanding of what they think this means to our community on a political level or something and and then you know changing rents to accordingly to price people out of the system without necessarily being discriminative but doing it in a way that they could still get the same job done little concerned about that but this isn't a to me this isn't about the the lack of how many folks we see getting discriminated on up till now it's about the future of discrimination and I'll just be pretty simple and say that my recommendation is that the city manager directs the housing staff to draft an amendment to the 2030 or 2013 civil rights ordinance and for council as a group to work on this to see if we could put something together that that doesn't put fear into the the rental industry out there that doesn't you know make people on a political level start raising red flags for no reason like we were in my opinion I want to make it to where we can help those that are getting discriminated against in that that is fairly simple in my opinion I let me see here I wrote something down and while you were speaking I I personally haven't seen substantive evidence although doing plenty of investigation that flag staff is currently having a source of income discrimination problem and I think that that's important to state so in a sense we are potentially solving a problem that is rarely occurring and and I think that this is the perfect time to be proactive in having this amendment on the books so we have an apparatus for investigation and to provide solutions before they become problems in the future so it's as simple as that I am for moving this forward and working together with housing staff to see how we can do something that's different than Tucson and all these other places do things the way flag staff does it in in in a crafty way that isn't excluding people but it's also you know not turning this into some weird political discussion for the sake of politics I want to see people not get discriminated against if we need this apparatus to do so let's do it thanks remember aslan thank you I really like what hearing thank you I like what I'm hearing so far so I'll try to keep this brief for council member Matthew sick you know I didn't fight my tail off to be able to sit here in the seat which is a real privilege in order to protect or make excuses for types of discrimination I am up here however to protect and advance housing opportunities for flag staff residents and denying a section 8 voucher on the basis of the voucher itself let's call it what it is it's a form of an imbiism not in my backyard sort of attitude and it shouldn't be legally protected at least not through my own inaction on the matter so tackling the affordability crisis in flag staff is a task that requires a lot of small victories as we all know that's the only way we can do this is incrementally and giving case manager something and writing to point to in the form of an ordinance when they're trying to help discriminated against clients is actually a not so small victory I think so I am supportive of moving us forward in choosing language that that does the overall job of strengthening residents access to housing and not further not creating endangerments or entrapments in other ways so you use the word crafty I think we do need to be nimble about this and I think and be thinking proactively how to best implement this and additionally I'm all in favor of deposit assistance programs vis-a-vis housing bond a lot of money that we have I heard that idea come up I like it thank you mayor thank you very much I'm sorry Matthews thank you mayor Sarah can you step up to the podium I just have a few questions just because we're learning so much tonight so thank you for the deep dive masterclass and housing vouchers so legally if a landlord like you know I'm thinking it thinks that are at will like an employer can fire somebody at will at least in other states I think in Arizona too so legally can a landlord just without reason just I like my kids went to rent on multiple occasions down at Phoenix and they would pay the but you know to get their credit check and everything only to be told oh you didn't get it because there's you know 20 people in front of you I mean what would I'm just thinking of ways if a landlord really wanted to not rent to a voucher holder I don't know how often that happens up here but I know both of my kids who rent struggled with that and struggled to find a rent for no other reason than they just weren't first in line does that make sense that question the facts make sense I'm struggling to find the question so the question is couldn't that happen up here like we're trying to we're wanting to solve a problem to make sure that there's not income discrimination but how easy is it for landlord who didn't want to accept a voucher to just give a general excuse and you can't prove it otherwise right unless it came out and said I just don't want to take your income because we don't accept vouchers Mayor vice mayor council member Matthews a landlord should be treating all prospective tenants equally across the board and if a tenant doesn't meet a screening criteria they can be turned down the issue brought up as far as how many people might be in front of someone voucher holders would be in that same line we have seen however that many of our local landlords work to not charge an application fee to voucher holders if they know that there's 12 households in front of them so that they're not always out that that's not across the board I think in order to prove source of income discrimination it would have to be a statement of we don't accept housing choice vouchers or there would have to be some piece in that when we talked to the city of 10 p they had a number of complaints come in they had two that were potentially founded one was not the other they were still looking at on but it was from a lack of understanding of why someone was turned down and so the bulk of them folks were turned down for not meeting the credit criteria or not meeting the X Y and Z criteria and the household had a housing choice voucher not necessarily turned down because the household had a housing choice voucher so tempi went ahead and did an an ordinance change just to do it they you're saying that they really didn't have many complaints is that correct that's after they put it in place when we said because the number was high that we had initially heard and when we said okay we'll have you looked at these is that that many and that's how many complaints they had versus how many were founded so it was things that they we did through in order to get down to that and what it was it was an and they had a housing choice voucher rather than excuse me the the reason the household wasn't rented to was because of the housing choice voucher there was another reason and they had a voucher and then real quick can you explain to us again me again how does a voucher expire is that would that's been a real center of this conversation is that these vouchers are expiring 30% and you know they're claiming it's for income discrimination so how does it if I have a voucher how does mine expire I can give you a very generalized answer but I'm going to let the expert provide it and she's also going to talk about how we renew vouchers or we we extend that deadline last mayor vice mayor and councilman mayor Matthews so at one and eight when a voucher is issued initially they are given 60 days they have 60 days to search they have to prove that they've searched if they're buyer if they're voucher is set to expire they come back they ask for 30 more days with that 30 days we ask for contacts where have you gone have you contacted people what does that look like what are you running into if they do it in that timely manner before that 60 days up then they're given another 30 days then after that they get another 30 days if they still couldn't find a suitable house or a house or unit and during that process and you're asking where have you gone and they're giving you feedback on why what's the general reason why I know housing is rough up here so what's the general reason why they can't secure housing so most of the we we have them do a survey so that there is a survey that we have them fill out and most of them is security deposit that they just don't have the money for security deposits legally it's one and a half times the rent is what they can charge and a lot of households that are income based don't have that kind of money again that security deposit assistance program is offered however most of the time it's the security deposit or there's a wait list there there's like a two or three year wait list and it's like put your name on the wait list if it doesn't cost you to put your name on the wait list put your name on the wait list rarely do you hear that because we provide a resource list of landlords, realtors that say start here this is where you want to go because this is these are the landlords and property managers that know the program and that take the voucher a lot of time we hear oh they don't take vouchers or they're not taking the voucher we work with a few property managers and apartment complexes that they offer 8% of their units to voucher holders if they run out of that allotment of 8 to 10% of those units they'll tell the client we don't take vouchers at this time or we can't accept it and that's not because they don't take the voucher it's just because they don't have any available units that they've already offered out to our community so you'll run into that so deposits wait lists some background checks you know they don't pass background checks and those the ones that expire right at the 60 day we know is because they didn't qualify for anything that they tried to apply for so those are probably the main three ones that we've seen across the board and Sarah I hate to make you get a but I will it's all good you know four steps four steps it's been mentioned a couple of times about looking into deposit assistance increasing that within our bond money is that is that a possibility mayor vice member council member Matthews know the bond categories were very very strict as to what that money was for one of the categories is completely spent one is completely dedicated um the other is CHAP which is under contract and the fourth is for RAD and so we don't have the ability under the housing bond approved in I'm not going to give you a year but the 20 million dollar housing bond approved by voter 2018-22 thank you I'm like I can't get to a year um does not have a category where we could utilize funding um without going back to the voters to ask to do so thank you I just wanted to clarify that because it seems like that is the real issue I haven't heard a lot of evidence that the income discrimination is I mean it one is one too many but you know if there's several dozen that aren't getting in because of the deposit issue that's a bigger issue to climb so thank you for clarifying that thank you that's why we created the deposit program that we have with limited funding we were able to identify vice mayor thank you thank you ACE for bringing this forward and for meeting with me I think a couple of times now and we've had some really good conversations um I'm in support of moving this forward I think that this does give um those something to point to and it is another tool in the toolbox I would like to you know just be cognizant of our staff time and expense and I would like to maybe get more information on what this could look like and what it would entail because I know we have a skeleton crew for housing and I don't want to add to that so I would like that to come back um education outreach enforcement all very important uh especially if we do move forward with this and our community um and I would like to explore ways to add to the deposit assistance program um that was one of my first questions I asked Sarah during our last meeting and was told no that can't be in the bond but I you know it doesn't close the door I hope maybe there's other options out there so again thank you for um bringing this forward and I look forward to having further discussions on it but I am very supportive thank you comes from our response thank you mayor I do support directing the staff to draft an ordinance to prohibit source of income discrimination in our community and my I'm struck with the fact that um most of our discussion this evening has centered on vouchers different categories of vouchers but we really haven't talked about uh discrimination against income from social security we haven't discussed disability payments that people want to use to contribute to their rent um and most importantly we haven't really discussed child support and alimony as a category of income that could be discriminated against and I am reaching this conclusion based on um two things that we've um included at the start of our meeting tonight we say our mission is to protect and enhance the quality of life for all it's my belief that having a safe affordable available place to live is a quality of life issue for each of our citizens and if we're going to protect quality of life for all this anti discrimination on the source of income will contribute to that aspect of quality of life we also pledge allegiance to that flag with the words with liberty and justice for all it's my belief it is a basic injustice to consider that a dollar from child support or a dollar from housing voucher is worth less than a dollar from wages i think it's the most egregious injustice in in my opinion is to discriminate against a a renter who wants to use their child support payment or alimony payment as a source of income specifically this custodial parent receives that child payment or alimony um to provide for housing in addition to food and um transportation so i think if we're going to be true to our values in our mission and our pledge of allegiance we need to move this forward and i thank you for listening councilmember Garcia thank you madam air this will be brief i just wanted to make sure that we uh didn't forget about the folks out there that are renting houses locally and our real estate uh community and my message to them is is is pretty simple um i don't want our real estate or our rental industry to see sort um source of income protections as a burden um i want to see our housing staff and our team here at team flag staff write an amendment that is user friendly for everyone involved i believe that this will be a win for everyone in the community um because it shouldn't change anything that isn't already currently happening we're just we're just wanting to protect the citizens from those um you know one-off cases or give them the ability to have investigations that will protect their rights it's as simple as that okay councilmember and i just wanted to just real briefly say that i am supportive of this even though i don't think that it's a really big problem but even just one or two um if we can give people some assurance but as the vice mayor stated i think a bigger conversation is to look at any opportunities for um deposit assistance i think will be a larger impact so i'm in support of as well uh Sarah would you mind coming back up i'm wondering if the housing commission has discussed this at all ever mayor the housing commission has not discussed this this discussion was based off of a citizen's petition and following procedure it comes back to you first how did it or do you remember how it made its way into the um housing plan i do sorry if you're getting dizzy it's within the protect section of the 10-year housing plan with the wording explore expanding state and local fair housing protected classes to include items such as age and source of income um it was a broad discussion based on what other areas um excuse me what what areas were not included within the national and or state protections i believe councilmember house was serving on that committee as a citizen at the time and i would welcome any additional comment from her i don't think i have much to add to that i mean that was just the the general nature of the conversation was recognizing that um i what i can say is that at the time this was also a very um i hate the phrase hot topic because that makes it sound kind of unimportant but it was very much a major conversation uh across the state and growing in focus across the country in that years between um 2020 2022 2023 source of income protection was a huge movement um that was kind of prevalent along the uh southwest and um up the the pacific coast um but was recognized as because of the nature of the housing choice voucher program and the section A program and uh other programs like it that are um traditionally optional for a landlord or property manager to opt into um it was recognized that because of the discrimination that exists in just economic factors over time um that that was one of those situations where it was creating disparate impact for a lot of people and so it might not have been a very prevalent thing that we were seeing many cases of necessarily but it was speaking into that larger question of how systemic discrimination has happened in terms of uh economic factors uh inequitable opportunities for homeownership and renting and and so forth the committee was meeting in the fall and winter of 2020 and spring of 2021 and so housing security was a huge focus based on the COVID pandemic at the time and was um i don't want to say the source of some of the discussions but was part of what was on people's minds as we move through the creation of the tenure plan.

Great thank you um and the rest are comments that you don't have to stand there for um thank you I support um continuing to have discussions about this I think of all the things that staff is working on in terms of housing this is not going to be the biggest bang for the buck and I don't want to see a slowdown on the redevelopment of public housing because I think that is going to be huge as well as um development of city-owned land so that's what's top most of my mind is that those will have a bigger impact on our community than will this ordinance having said that I'm in support of I'm in support of exploring an ordinance having an ordinance and um and I've always been supportive of increased education for for landlords to be able to understand that these sources of income that we're talking about um maybe not so much um child support and alimony but what we've really been discussing tonight are guaranteed sources of income and so it is a um benefit to them to not discriminate against this so all the education and love what you're already doing and um but anytime we can reach out to a landlord and get additional landlords to come on board and accept these um I think is a good thing so I am supportive of of looking at um at looking at this and so with the caveat that I think these other things have a bigger impact and also I would just like to better understand what enforcement would look like because that seems to me like the big issue that could be expensive and time consuming and so I would like to know more about what that looks like and um so I'm seeing kind of a general consensus up here and I believe city manager had something she wanted to say I do uh mayor and council I just um you know it sounds like you you would like um staff to look at drafting an ordinance and bring it back to council I really do want to look at what the staff impact could be um and that's something that we will have an internal discussion about and would like some time to work on this mayor I think you stole my the words out of my mouth on all of the things that we're working on related to housing um and this is not something that um I think we would see as a as a priority um so if we could have some time to work on this uh we would appreciate it thank you all right so moving down to open call to the public I see none and then announcements and updates to from council and city manager and I will start with council member spence nothing this evening council member house nothing tonight mayor thank you council vice mayor I just wanted to thank my colleagues for representing this past weekend I was out of town um enjoying a little bit of a musical vacation but I saw a lot of you out there in the community with all of the events and I just really appreciate that you all are taking the time to be there and I I appreciate you thanks aslin council member Garcia thank you madam mayor so I this is going to be um the introduction to uh excuse me on Wednesday is going to be the introduction to me serving on the victims compensation board for for the um coconut county's period court so I'm excited to get started on a new path of um helping victims get back what is owed to them from the criminality that was caused um there is something happening at na h on uh that Wednesday at high country conference center at five p.m.

that I'll also be at um right before attending the youth led town hall at the girls and boys club on thursday we have a library board meeting all are welcome at the library across the street here at one p.m.

see what's going on oh yeah I would like to invite everyone in flagstaff but more importantly the east side and sunny side community to this spruce wash ribbon cutting at ponderosa park tapping at three o'clock if you want to get there I think there's going to be um some good conversations and some highlights of the park expansion and also a direct opportunity to connect with those in the neighborhood who are getting ready to help the city staff create that new park and that's it for me for today thank you oh was that on friday but yeah the 26th at three o'clock ponderosa park thank you for that council member wrestling council member mathews nothing today thank you uh i just wanted to say that I had a great trip to kinder camp this morning and i just love that program saw council member garcia there talking with all the the kiddos and i have a ride along with code enforcement on thursday pretty stoked about that and the uh graduation ceremony for kinder camp is coming up on thursday and i'm looking forward to the spruce wash ribbon cutting i'm i know i've shared this before but i'm really excited about the redevelopment of ponderosa park city manager mayor and council just a couple of updates um we received word that their role uh potentially be an aps power safety shutoff on uh saturday and sunday due to uh weather conditions high winds um i know city of bike stuff sent out a notice and uh last time aps did notify residents impacted as well so that will likely be happening and we'll get out communication in coordination with aps um also wanted to recognize all of our um city personnel that have been assisting with the pocket fire um just north of sedona um our fire team uh emergency management and also our water services team we had quite a bit of communication over the weekend um that the forest service um was was using some new tools to to fight fires including um buckets and and putting water over the fire and utilizing lake marie and we worked with them on a really quick agreement to get that um to get that going so just recognizing all of those individuals it's they're still there there's um my understanding is there's about 600 personnel still on that fire so we are not out of the woods yet thank you thank you all right we're adjourned