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Jesse Harding, 625 East 16th Avenue, noted that he had served on the City of Eugene-University of Oregon Joint Task Force on the West University Neighborhood along with Councilor Kelly. He felt that a housing standard should be a key issue and suggested that a general code dealing with leaking roofs and the need for working heat be crafted in a way that was easy for citizens to comprehend He urged the council to make the code a priority and not to defer the item to a work session in June. He felt holding the work session in June would preclude student input. David Hansen, 2738 Kismet Way, wished to address the community need for housing standards. He asserted that the City Council moved to put off the issue by scheduling the work session on the item for June. He felt it was a move to kill the issue. He thought the issue should be addressed as a City priority as evidenced by the joint task force's long-term recommendation to Mayor Torrey and University of Oregon President David Frohnmayer. Mr. Hansen declared the city of Eugene to have 30,000 rental units. He expressed concern that renters did not have adequate access to legal action and stated that the implementation of housing standards was not costly. He said the cities of Salem and Corvallis had proven, self-sustaining models based on small yearly fees that had were successful in providing renters with protection. He asserted there were no protections for renters in Eugene. Shannon Tarvin, 1330 Oak Patch Road, #64, spoke on behalf of Eugene Citizens for Housing Standards (ECHS), a local group of citizens concerned about the lack of safe rental housing in the city. She stated that between 1966 and 1983, the City had a housing code and, after its repeal, renters had no protection. Having researched housing codes across the state of Oregon, she recommended modeling a housing code after the code adopted by the City of Corvallis which was mostly supported by a per-unit fee of $8 per year. She explained that the fee also paid for a rental housing program that all residents and landlords had access to. She felt the make-up of the two cities were similar in that they both had large college populations. She alleged that some basic needs were not being met in Eugene and conveyed the request of ECHS for minimum habitability standards that addressed plumbing, heating, structural integrity, and weather-proofing. Ms. Tarvin averred that a housing standard code should both educate renters on their rights and ensure compliance to habitability standards. She asserted there were 54,000 renters in Eugene and asked the council to consider what the top council priority should be, based on the needs of its citizen electorate. Maddy Melton, 957 Chambers Street, thanked the council for addressing the need for housing standards, but felt that it should not be delayed until June. She asked if councilors remembered that the students' only issue with code change that allowed campus public safety officers to issue citations was that the hearing on it was held in the summer when the fewet number of students were on campus. She stressed that housing standards were a primary issue for students and added that she had helped, as the student body president, to register circa 4,000 students. She stated that the students were voters in this community. Evan Fransted, 732 West 10th Avenue, stated that the only protection for renters in the city of Eugene was the Landlord Tenant Act in State Code and asserted it had been proven to be inadequate. He averred that a complaint with a landlord had to be taken to Civil Court. He said Ballot Measure 28 had caused the court system to cut back its schedule from five days to four, causing housing complaints to be deferred. Mr. Fransted noted, with irony, that the same system gives evictions a higher priority. He urged the council to take action on this issue sooner than June. MINUTES--Eugene City Council February 9, 2004 Page 2 Regular Meeting