Residents' Advocacy Project -- Budget Proposal

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Greg Casar
Posts: 189
Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2015 3:20 pm

Residents' Advocacy Project -- Budget Proposal

Post by Greg Casar »

Dear colleagues,

Many of us want to improve the way our City departments respond to dangerous rental properties and short-term rental housing enforcement. The recent report from the Community Development Clinic at the UT Law School was released detailing our challenges in adequately enforcing code in substandard properties--and since our marathon meeting on short-term rentals, the public’s awareness about these issues has increased significantly.

The City has encountered barriers to effectively enforcing existing ordinances as it relates to both substandard rental housing conditions and short-term rental housing. Lack of enforcement on these issues threatens quality of life and our constituents’ ability to live safely without harm. I believe the budget provides an excellent opportunity to assess how we support entities within the City to address the many issues facing our community.

I want to thank Council Member Leslie Pool for already introducing a proposal to address problem properties and improve the quality of life in neighborhoods as it relates to the impact of short-term rentals (STRs). She and I have worked together on a proposal that I believe incorporates her intent to provide resources so communities can proactively address neighborhood public safety and code enforcement issues, while also providing an education and outreach component to implement a holistic approach to addressing dangerous properties in high-need areas. I also want to thank Council Member Ann Kitchen, who has also sought to pursue recommendations from the UT Law report to improve safety in Austin’s neighborhoods.

Our goal in creating the Residents’ Advocacy Project is two-fold: first, to provide education and outreach to empower tenants better understand their rights and the remedies available to them; and second, to empower our Law Department and Code Department to pursue litigation to address substandard and dangerous rental properties and the persistent non-compliant STRs.

Our budget proposal requests utilizing $350,000 from the proposed budget of the Austin Code Department for a contract to fund outreach positions, legal support and supervision to address major violations of city and state laws related to rental housing with substandard and dangerous conditions. Too often, low-income tenants who live in these conditions do not know their rights, or do not have a trusting relationship with the City.

This contract will be awarded to a nonprofit legal organization to perform education and outreach to engage residents about their rights as tenants at rental properties and mobile home parks, as well as bring forward complaints to address substandard building conditions. By contracting out this requirement, the Code Department can remain focused on enforcement of dangerous properties and repeat offenders and will be better equipped to perform that enforcement with the information that will be collected by outreach specialists. By replacing already proposed FY15-16 Code Department resources with the Residents’ Advocacy Project, this project would be budget neutral and does not propose any additional fees.

As mentioned in the UT Law report, neighbors often know best which properties in a neighborhood are creating problems for the community. This contract would empower neighbors to assist us in the identification of these properties, which will provide Code more time for support and follow up with property owners.

The other portion of this proposal is not budget-related, but would create new performance measures for the Law Department and Code Department to track their progress in bringing enforcement actions against owners of rental properties for major violations of city ordinances, including both short-term rentals and repeat offender properties. This will empower the Law Department & Code Department to inform the City of their progress, and these measures could be incorporated into our passage of the budget.

I know our Code Department and Law Department are working hard to keep our community safe. This proposal seeks to provide a range of resources so they are better supported to pursue the needs in our neighborhoods. I believe this is a cost-efficient measure that utilizes City and outside resources to address the many issues that are before us. I welcome any questions you may have and look forward to a broader conversation about this proposal on Thursday.

Sincerely,
Greg
Gregorio "Greg" Casar
Council Member District 4