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Health Department Targeting Rental Units

Posted on: Tuesday, 24 January 2006, 15:00 CST

PROVO -- The Utah County Health Department is seeking the authority to deal with sanitation and utility-service problems in houses.

The still-being-drafted housing-health regulation largely targets rental units.

The department receives several calls a week from renters with complaints ranging from plumbing and cockroach problems to an inability to adjust the thermostat.

"We have a need for something guiding our staff when they get a complaint about housing," said Joseph Miner, director of the Utah County Health Department.

The Health Department traditionally has had control over issues such as backed-up sewers and cockroaches. But does it have authority to control other issues that renters encounter? That's the question the department wants to answer.

The department's environmental director, Terry Beebe, and his staff are using the Salt Lake Valley Health Department's housing- health regulation as a guide.

Residents in the two counties face different housing issues, however, and there are some different health codes in the counties.

Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn, a member of the county board of health, said that employees in his city have found houses with too many people living inside.

Sometimes, health board chairman Rulon Barlow said, extension cords are used to provide electricity to small corners of houses where entire families live.

"It would be helpful to set up parameter, number of people per house for sanitation," Washburn said.

Some problems are not health problems but violations of city code, and the regulation must direct Health Department employees to contact municipal governments, said Joan Baldwin, also a board member.

It could take months for the Health Department to write the policy, Beebe said. Before any policy is approved by the health board, the public will have the chance to sound off at a public meeting.

Source: Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

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