After years of interest and several months of concerted effort by student groups and ASUO, the city of Eugene is planning to address housing standards at the city level.
In a Eugene City Council work session Monday evening, Ward 8 City Councilor Nancy Nathanson proposed that a work session take place before June 1 to discuss a housing code. City Manager Dennis Taylor later said city staff members have been working on the issue and planned to have information ready for a work session by May or early June.
“I think that we’re in a positive position … but it’s not enough,” ASUO President Maddy Melton said.
Melton was concerned that most of the work on housing standards would take place during the summer months when most students are not in school if a session were planned for early June.
“I think that it’s an irresponsible move on the part of the Council to prioritize this issue and give this issue a work session during the only three-month period when students won’t be here to speak about this issue,” she said. “I think that the students I represent should be able to come here and speak their voices like I am now.”
Melton was at the work session and City Council meeting with about 25 other members of the University and Lane Community College student group, Eugene Citizens for Housing Standards.
The group urged the City Council to prioritize a set of housing standards, which are enforceable at the city level, for rental units. Oregon has a statewide set of housing standards, but they are only enforceable by the Small Claims Department in the state’s circuit courts.
However, the student coalition says the state’s court system is expensive and time-consuming, and therefore prohibitive to most renters. With state budget problems, the group is also concerned that the state will give renters’ cases a low priority, delaying hearing them for long periods of time.
“Some basic needs aren’t being met in the city,” ASUO Campus Outreach Coordinator Shannon Tarvin said.
The standards the group are proposing — which support complaints regarding weatherproofing, structural integrity, heating and plumbing — would not interfere with state standards and would be enforced on a complaint basis, group officials said.
Ward 3 City Councilor David Kelly, the University-area representative, said that in all likelihood there would not be any public hearings on housing standards until the fall, given the usually lengthy process the city goes through to explore a new issue.
“I truly found the prioritizing experience a little bizarre tonight, that we couldn’t give a priority to (housing standards),” Kelly said.
The City Council had been prioritizing issues for the Planning and Development Department to address.
Nathanson — along with Ward 6 City Councilor Jennifer Solomon, Ward 5 Councilor Gary Papé and Ward 4 Councilor George Poling — said that though they thought housing standards were an important issue to address, they wanted more time to gather information about the standards.
Taylor said that city staff is already in the process of surveying West University neighborhood renters and local property owner organizations to see what their housing concerns and priorities are.
He added that given the volume of input from students and the support from city councilors and Mayor Jim Torrey for public comment, it is unlikely that public hearings will take place during the summer.
“I assure you that the city manager and myself, who set the agendas, will not allow these hearings to take place until students come back,” Torrey said.
Melton said she was encouraged by the councilors’ words but was still dissatisfied.
“I feel like issues such as the enforcement of housing standards cannot be put off,” she said.