Outcry over the absence of rental standards prompted Eugene Citizens for Housing Standards, the ASUO and OSPIRG to lead a a prolonged campaign that compelled the city to adopt the Rental Housing Code in 2005. The code says its purpose is to “provide minimum habitability standards.” This covers four main areas: structural integrity, plumbing, heating and weatherproofing.
The code has been in effect since July 1, eight months after it was ratified by the Eugene City Council, but much work has gone into informing renters and landlords of its existence and answering questions when assessing complaints.
“We anticipated the program would take as much as a year to get up to speed. The same thing happened in Corvallis,” ASUO Campus Organizer Brett Rowlett said, referring to the three-year-old program to the north on which Eugene’s code was based.
“As word spreads, more renters and tenants will know about it,” he said.
The biggest problem facing the code has been a lack of awareness. Many students and community renters still do not know about the Rental Housing Code so the city has focused on notification.
Over the past year, the city has compiled a database of all rental properties in Eugene to which addresses are still being added.
Using the database, postcards were mailed out containing basic information including how to contact the program to learn more or file a complaint. The number for an informational hotline is 682-8282.
Mark Tritt, one of two code enforcement inspectors for the city, has been working with Rowlett to use door hangers in a program targeted at students. They will be distributed in the fall to the neighbor-hoods that mostly house students surrounding campus during the ASUO’s voter registration program.
“It’s an ongoing challenge, like any marketing program,” Tritt said. “You just have to pound away.”
In a city where almost half the population rents, there is considerable demand for equitable housing standards. According to the 2000 Census, 48 percent of Eugenians rented their homes or apartments, but in student neighborhoods such as West University, the number can be as high as 98 percent.
Randy Sangder, the city’s other code enforcement inspector, said one of the biggest complaints people call about is mold, something that the rental code does not address because so many factors are involved.
“There are a million reasons for it,” he said. “We don’t deal with it directly. We may deal with it if it’s caused by one of the habitability issues we do address.”
The language of the rental is code is sparse, with the housing standards section of the rental code taking up a little more than half a page, but this leaves plenty of room for interpretation, which has been entrusted to Sangder, Tritt and their successors.
This freedom irked at least one property manager who felt the code inspectors were unqualified in their decisions. Kyle Gray, a manager for Evergreen Property Management, said he would have preferred the added oversight of an independent contractor.
“Many of the things they wrote up were not proven to be actual issues,” he said. Gray said he was also frustrated by tenants who would sabotage repairs just so his firm looked bad.
Most of the big property management firms in town spoke out against the program because they saw it as more bureaucratic red tape. To them, the old system of filing a legal action worked fine.
“It’s not a topic of conversation when property managers get together,” Property Management Concepts owner Terry Shockley said.
“People call and things get taken care of.”
While Tritt agreed that the bigger leasers were more responsible, Sangder still sees the program as indispensable.
“The idea behind this was to make something a little more user friendly – cut out some of the red tape and expense and intimidation,” he said. “I think for some people, filing a court case can be intimidating.”
Sangder’s says the biggest benefit has been that the process has opened a dialogue between the two parties. This makes his job all the more easy, though he would never give it up.
“You feel like you’re helping people that might otherwise struggle,” he said. “I was a renter once.”