The Government of the Student Body passed a resolution last week that encourages Ames City Council members to view greek housing as university housing alternative.

At GSB’s Wednesday meet-

ing, the resolution titled “Supporting Greek Community Housing,” was passed after Ames Fire Chief Shawn Bayouth had become aware that the houses within the greek community were not abiding by all regulations with the Ames Municipal Code Chapter 13.

Chapter 13 pertains to rental housing requirements.

The GSB resolution encourages members of the City Council to view greek housing as a university housing alternative, as well as a member-only housing alternatives.

Sen. Khayree Fitten, representative of the Interfraternity Council and co-author of the resolution, said the issues with Chapter 13 lie within living arrangements, including cold-air sleeping areas and number of people per bathroom.

In the open-forum portion of the meeting, City Council member Victoria Szopinski addressed the senate. Szopinski said she believed the resolution was written out of fear and said the council does not want to enforce Chapter 13 with regards to greek housing.

Szopinski said rumors and assumptions that the city council wants to enforce greek housing into the rental housing code are “not true.”

Szopinski also said greek houses should be exempt from the rental housing code because they are a unique situation.

“We talked about how it wasn’t important how many parking spaces you have because they are generally historic homes with limited parking spaces, built in a time when people didn’t have cars,” Szopinski said. “We talked about how it was different that students sleep in large spaces unlike other apartments or rental housing units.”

While Szopinski said greek houses have large sleeping areas, Fitten said that is not necessarily the case with every greek house.

Greek houses are listed under Chapter 13 while dorms owned by Iowa State are not, Bayouth said.

GSB Sen. Gage Kensler said he opposed the resolution because he saw it as exempting the greek houses from the inspection portion of the Rental Housing Code.

“I looked up in Chapter 8, [the municipal code that pertains to fire codes,] and not once in the entire code is the word ‘inspections’ used,” Kensler said.

Greek houses will continue to have fire inspections, Bayouth said,  but he was unable to reference any document stating why fire inspections should continue.

Kensler said many of the students he has talked to are adamantly against the resolution.

“A lot of the students I’ve talked to feel like the greek system is just cherry-picking which parts of the code they like,” Kensler said.

Fitten said that while he believes greek houses should be exempt from Chapter 13, he also believes there should be some kind of oversight.

“The conversation has been to the best of my knowledge crafting a solution that works specifically for these structures and for these facilities,” Fitten said.

Fitten said the entire renovations to meet the expectations of Chapter 13 could cost upward of $100,000 in some greek chapters. He said for those greek chapters  that can’t afford renovations, the cost could get passed down to students who live there, raising the cost of living in a greek chapter facility.

According to City Council minutes from the Sept. 24 meeting,  Ames City Manager Steve Schainker addressed confusion over parking requirements. He said that in the future, greek houses would still be subject to parking requirements under the zoning ordinance if they were to renovate.