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B. WORK SESSION: Housing Standards City Manager Dennis Taylor noted that renewed interest in the issue of housing standards emerged from the work of the West University Neighborhood Task Force and he introduced Marsha Miller of the Planning and Development Department's Building and Permits Services Division to present the subject. Ms. Miller used a slide presentation to highlight components of the agenda packet materials. She provided a brief history of the Eugene Housing Code and listed the policy questions to be considered by the council: · Should the City adopt local housing standards for rental properties? · How would the program be funded? · What would the scope of the housing code be? · What properties would be exempted, if any? Ms. Miller reported that there were between 30,000 and 33,000 total rental units in Eugene with a 5.3 percent vacancy rate. She said there were a number of existing state and local regulations that applied to housing, as well as existing services related to housing. She provided an overview of the City of Corvallis Housing Code and enforcement program, noting that all Oregon State University housing was provided on campus, while that was not the case with the University of Oregon. She compared housing codes from Portland, Medford, Corvallis, and Salem. Ms. Miller described options available to the council, which included directing staff to develop a housing code and program modeled on Corvallis, directing staff not to pursue a housing code in Eugene, or providing direction on alternatives. She said that if the council decided to go forward with a code similar to that of Corvallis, the estimated timeline was 45 to 60 days using existing staff with a cost for attorney fees of between $1,000 and $2,000. She projected an implementation timeline of up to 12 months, staffing requirements of 1.0 FTE (full-time equivalent), and a cost of $240,000 that included start-up expenses. She estimated the cost of an ongoing program with two or three FTEs at $200,000 to $290,000. She also provided the option of a phased implementation that could be initiated as soon as January 2005. Mr. Kelly thanked Ms. Miller for the overview and budget projections. He said that the State law related to housing standards was not accessible to many renters because of the lack of a local enforcement mechanism for those who could not afford an attorney. He referred to recent comments by John VanLandingham of the Lane County Law and Advocacy Center that none of the State law's enforcement mechanisms were as good as what was proposed in a Corvallis-style program. He said that using civil penalties instead of municipal courts as the enforcement mechanism made sense. He supported housing standards in the Eugene Code and a local enforcement mechanism that was funded on an ongoing basis by a small fee to owners. Mr. Meisner stated his support for implementation of a housing program covering the four basic habitability standards and liked the use of civil penalties rather than Municipal Court. He also supported a complaint- driven program that was fee-based and hoped that staff would carefully review what fees should be assessed based on program costs. He asked how rooms rented in owner-occupied homes with all residents sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities would be classified. He said another situation was a single-family home that was not owner-occupied and not rented as a single-family home; rather individual rooms were rented and tenants were expected to share kitchen and bath facilities. MINUTES--Eugene City Council May 24, 2004 Page 2 Work Session