FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — At a Fayetteville City Council meeting on July 2, Councilmembers D'Andre Jones and Sarah Moore brought forward a resolution to bring a renter onto the newly formed Mayor's Housing Crisis Task Force.
Back in April, the city declared a housing crisis and planned to create a housing task force to bring solutions to the city council.
Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan requested nine members "with expertise or a demonstrated interest in housing services, housing development, and city planning."
On June 17, just over two months after declaring the crisis and requesting applications for a task force, the City of Fayetteville announced its task force members, with Jordan commenting that the members "meet and exceed" the necessary criteria.
However, Jones said he received multiple calls, emails, and social media messages saying the group lacked representation, specifically for renters.
"In order to address the challenge, representation matters, and we wanted to make sure that we had individuals and we had stakeholders from as it relates to those directly involved in housing," Jones said. "We believe that those who are closest to the problem should be closest to the solution, and unfortunately, many times, those individuals don't have the resources."
The resolution required "the appointment of a renter and an individual who works with renters' rights to the housing crisis task force."
The council went back and forth on the issue and even came up with the idea of having the members of the housing task force appoint a renter.
"I'm stunned of the caliber of people who they chose and could not be more pleased," said Councilmember Mike Wiederkehr. "I don't want to give the false impression that renters have not had a significant amount of influence and impact on the resolution being adopted and the task force being created. I'm not aware of any of the nine people who would not be empathetic to renters."
"We need to let them do their job; this discussion tonight is muddying the waters of their task. We want them to be able to come back and form their sub-task groups if they need to. If they need some renter expertise, they'll have the power to be able to do that. But I do not feel comfortable mandating them to do that," Councilmember Teressa Turk added.
Ultimately, the council voted against the resolution 5-3, as they felt they were confident in the nine members they chose and didn't want to add another thing onto the current members' plate.
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