Page 6 RAIN January 1980 Ow-ner---Builder eont. She would be exempt from the requirements of the structural c9de with regard to ceiling heights, room sizes and maintenance of specific temperature levels in those structures. Since owner-builders do sometimes move and an owner-builder may someday choose to sell her house, we said that owner-builders would still be required to get building permits', pay fees, and be inspected. The building inspector would record any ways the building differed from code stand!irds and give a copy of this record to the owner-builder. The owner-builder would be required to give a copy of this notice to the county clerk, who would file it with the deed. This protects any purchaser-he knows what he's getting. If the owner fails to give proper notice, the purchaser has the right to call off the deal. And the owner-builder exemption can only be used once in five years by any person-this prevents a crooked contractor frnm using it. We were trying hard to draft a moderate proposal, one that would appeal to any reasonable person. We presented the proposal to the J3oard of County Commissioners, won their approval, and with their support sent it to our legislative representatives Rep. , Cecil Johnson and Sen. Debbs Potts, to be introduced into the 1979 legislative session. Working with the Legislature I was surprised and pleased by the way the Senate Committee on • Housing treated us. The atmosphere was different than what I had expected. The legislators were more intelligent, and mare like ordinary folks, than I had expected. I had thought the legislators would be hard to persuade, and we would have to have our supporters . write lots of letters and work hard to explain our point of view. Instead it seemed that the legislators aheady understood our point of view and had been thinking some of the same things themselves. It was as if they welcomed our suggestions. The vice-chairperson of the committee, Senator Wingard of Eugene, is a builder by profession, and he clearly had already thought a good deal about the deficiencies of the codes. The building officials present at this hearing did not perceive our proposal as a moderate one. A written statement put out by the Oregon State Building Officials Association says in part, "Both SB 889 and SB 921 create a method by which a person who intentionally wishes to 'beat the system' and who knowingly constructs the building wrong (does not meet minimum.e,stablished and recognized code standards) may legally do so. This does not help the citizens who really do need and appreciate the assistance that their local building department provides but does encourage, endorse and legalize the 'bunko' construction artists, Williamson gangs and those who would perpetuate substandard 'schlock' upon the face of Oregon." [Italics theirs. What is a Williamson gang, anyway?] ... "More and more lending institutions now insist upon code compliance and inspections as a requirement of their loans and involvement. Why ern;:ourage, legalize and endorse substandard worthless construction? ... A better s,olution would be to offer free permits to In .our county . people don't like the idea ofgovernment offi~ials telling us how to build our buildings. 1 people doing work of a limited nature so that they would at least have the benefit of p~ofessional help on their project." [Free permits for low-income owner-builders. That's an interesting idea:] The building officials at this hearing expressed their disapproval of the owner-builder proposal so strongly that one of the committee members felt obliged to remind them that it is the legislators and not the civil servants who are supposed to set policy. He said, "We like this bill. We intend to pass it out of committee. Now you help us do it right." , This hearing was the first time I've ever had the experience of the men up there in the seats of power being on my side. Maybe it won't be the last. Senate Bill 921 passed the Senate unanimously. It went to the House Committee·on Housing and Urban Affairs. At their hearing one committee member asked how come we had asked for so litle. The bill passed the House by a vote of 55 to 5. It was signed by Governor Atiyeh and is now law in the state of Oregon. Readability of Codes Another issue the 1979 Legislature worked on was the readability of building codes. As one staff analyst to the committee put it, "The state building code is a reknowned repository of technical informa- .tion which is as incomprehensible as it is inaccessible to anyone ' other than the professional specialists who produce it and use i.t." The committee at first proposed simply that each published code should have a Flesch Reading Ease score of 60 or higher. (The Flesch score is one of several standard measures of readability-basically it means that you write in short sentences and try to use short
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