The advisory panels are meant to give tenants and landlords opportunities to raise concerns without the formality of a board or commission.
Commissioner of Housing Advocacy and Community Development Charlie Lanter said turnout at the meetings has varied – with the landlord group having more of the same faces in the crowd and the tenant group depending on interest in the kinds of issues raised.
Vice Mayor Dan Wu told Lanter he liked the idea of spreading out the tenant meetings and creating a more targeted approach.
"You said that you had great turnout going to a specific apartment complex to talk to a specific contingent of tenants, and maybe that might be a different way of thinking about the approach instead of thinking about this global advisory group of tenant kind of tenants writ large around the city, maybe it's these individualized, more localized, hyper-localized little events."
Currently the groups meet quarterly.
Councilwoman Shayla Lynch said she’d like to see the advisory panels continue for another year as the city gets a handle on how best to hear input from both groups.
The discussions come at a time when rising rents remain a major concern. A study by the website Apartment List earlier this year found Lexington had the second fastest growing rent in the country among the cities it surveyed.
