For 17 years, the Tenant Resource Center provided services to tenants in Dane County. This year, tenants only get services if they are at risk of homelessness and then the services they get are very limited. Why? What can you do to help?
Is the elderly lady in Monona who’s apartment floods when it rains not worth helping? Is the mom with lead paint in her apartment not worth helping? How about the tenant who’s landlord is being forclosed on? Or can’t get their $900 security deposit back? Or the tenant who is breaking their lease because they got a job and have to move? Why don’t these folks in Fitchburg, Sun Prairie, Stoughton, Waunakee, Middleton, etc deserve the same tenant services as those in Madison?
Is there no need? No understanding of the problem? Political payback?
Discussion at Health and Human Needs about amendment $55,000 for tenant services
As luck would have it . . . I meant to mark the area on the tape when the amendments discussion started, and guess what, I shut it off instead. Doh. And, as far as I know, Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner handed the only copy of the amendment to Lynn Green at the end of the meeting. Since that was the only copy and I screwed up audio taping it and they wouldn’t present the amendment to Personnel and Finance . . . it’s hard to explain what we are talking about but I will do my best. Here’s all the amendments and the results at HHN.
The original amendment said this:
Expenditures be decreased in the Department of Human Services – Division of Economic Assistance and Work Services – Housing and Homeless Support by $55,000 and increased by $55,000 to fund tenant counseling and education services to be awarded via an RFP process.
Supervisors felt this was too vague. Perhaps rightfully so since the drastic reduction in services was never anticipated. So Heidi was asked to clarify what the gaps were. The final amendment added that the qualified vendor would be trained in federal state and local tenant-landlord laws and provide written materials and education.
This came after a long discussion of what the gaps in services are and a request to clarify exactly what services are missing. The motion was made by Wegleitner and seconded by Richard Kilmer. Ultimately, Kilmer and Jeremy Levin were the two that voted against. And Ronn Ferrell had to leave.
Discussion at Personnel and Finance about same amendment
Jeremy Levin, chair of the Health and Human Needs Committee and Dane County Human Services Director Lynn Green are doing the presenting of the Health and Human Needs Committee, with Chuck Hicklin, the Controller adding in his two cents.
Levin says this amendment seeks to use the homeless resource consultant, the second use of the money (because he’s the chair and he made his amendment #1 and this is amendment #8) to create an RFP for tenant counseling and education services. It did pass 4-2. There were some amendments made during the process to this amendment, one that called for it to be tenant counseling and education services and we actually went into a little bit more discussion with the committee talking about a “qualified respondent” which I was informed tonight the reason that language was not included, I was informed by the controller, that we can’t do that language, anymore, in terms of how you define qualified, which we added. That is there for $55,000.
Lynn Greens says, so I would just reinforce what you just said, there were people on the HH&N committee that were concerned about the lack of detail and so this actually passed because the amendment did give more detail to what the RFP would be about. (???) It was significant when this passed.
Jenni Dye, the chair of the Personnel and Finance Committee asked Chuck Hicklin to explain.
Chuck says the issues there is when an RFP is issued that has been an administrative function so the department will take that into consideration, but to have that definition as the exclusive definition of what is qualified, there may be other things that come along as that RFP is developed so that’s where that came from.
Jenni Dye asks for other questions.
Carl Chenowith asks if with that clarification, what the feeling of the minority, the two people that voted against this, change?
Levin says the majority would have less support. Those who voted in favor were Wegleitner, Young, Veldran and Zweifel and Supervisor Zweifel was the one that was strongest about getting some more language in there. But I would confer with those four.
Dye asks for more questions, there are none.
Wait! What?!
Staff can just tell and elected body that they can’t have the information about an amendment made by a referring body? Where is that in Robert’s Rules?
Doesn’t it at least need to be presented and voted down after discussion?
How does this work?
How can you help
Email the Personnel and Finance Committee, tell them that they should request the language of the amendment be provided to them and that they should fix the technicality in the specificity of the language to allow an amendment for tenant services to go through. They will be voting on a yet unseen amendment on November 10th, so you have until then to urge support of tenant services.
Here’s the emails for the committee members:
schauer.andrew@countyofdane.com
clausius@countyofdane.com
chenoweth.carl@countyofdane.com
erickson.chuck@countyofdane.com
williams.danielle@countyofdane.com
pertl.jeff@countyofdane.com
dye.jennifer@countyofdane.com
corrigan@countyofdane.com
stubbs@countyofdane.com
Here’s the emails for the entire board:
Background
This morning I made this quick list about the gaps in the services between last year and this year:
1. If a senior center in DeForest wants a presentation about tenant-landlord law issues (security deposits, repairs, landlord entry, etc), who does that?
2. When the Oregon library calls and wants copies of the brochure series for their library, who does that?
- Apartment Safety
- Carpet Cleaning
- Credit Reports
- (Renting with a) Criminal Conviction or Arrest Record
- Debt Collection
- Discrimination
- Ending A Lease (subletting, moving out early, death of a tenant, illegal lease clauses)
- Eviction
- Fair Housing Laws
- Foreclosure
- Landlord Entry
- Landlord Retaliation
- Pets and Service Animals
- Preparing to Rent (choosing where to rent, disclosures)
- Tenant Property / Property Left Behind
- Repairs in Wisconsin (heating, pest infestations, appliances, lawns/grounds, fires and floods)
- Roommates and You
- Security Deposits in Wisconsin
- Subletting
3. When Community Action Coalition wants their 20 case managers trained, who does that?
4. When a mom has a question about her child’s lead levels, who points her in the right direction of who to talk to?
5. When a disable person wants a list of the Section 42 properties in Dane County, who provides that list?
6. When a tenant has a question about getting their security deposit back so they can pay next month’s rent, who do they call?
7. If someone has a question about an eviction notice – will they get a quality answer? After 5 years state legislative bills and a 15 page summary of the changes, who can keep it all straight?
8. When the Middleton High School wants someone to do a presentation on tenant landlord law to a class, who do they call?
