Litigator Partner in Charge of the Portland office of Davis Wright Tremaine

Publication of Submeter or Pro Rata Bills – Tenant Inspections. ORS 90.582 has very specific requirements for landlords who bill tenants for water using a pro rata billing method or for landlords who bill their tenants via submeter for water. 

Background  In 2021, HB 2364 was passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor modifying the requirements in ORS 90.842 et. al., which requires manufactured home park owners to give their tenants an opportunity to compete to purchase a park prior to selling to a third party. I have brushed off the questions and answers submitted in 2015 as an update to the new law. 

Please note that there are some significant changes with the 2021 law, including a substantial penalty to owners who do not follow the law. I would encourage you to review the changes closely and let me know if you have any further questions. For some of the minor changes, I have bolded and italicized the changes. Any owner who has received an offer to purchase their manufactured home park that they intend to consider, or are entertaining executing a listing agreement with a broker to sell their park, should reach out to legal counsel who have familiarity and experience with this law.  Any broker who is working with an owner should also seek legal counsel to ensure the process is being followed. 

Question: We were awarded a stipulated payment agreement  prior to the moratorium going into effect. The resident has defaulted on their agreement but has tried to make partial payments. If the courts were open, we could file a notice of noncompliance and move forward with an eviction. But the way I understand our current landscape is,  if we take a partial payment that’s not equal to his stipulated payment agreement,  it gets thrown out and we would have to start the process all over again.   It would be great if we could accept the payments and if by the time the moratorium was over and the resident was still behind on then we could file on the defaulted agreement.

Introduction and Background

SB 586 was developed by the Manufactured Housing Landlord/Tenant Coalition during 19 meetings (each of approximately 3 hours) from September 2017 through February, 2019. There are several pieces to SB 586; however, this Q&A focuses on the limited mandatory mediation policy together with the $100,000 annual grant the Legislature has authorized be allocated to the Oregon Law Center to assist manufactured and floating home tenants with understanding and enforcing the Oregon Residential and Landlord Tenant Act.

Introduction and Background (Part 2 of 2)

As previously mentioned last week, SB 586 was developed by the Manufactured Housing Landlord/Tenant Coalition during 19 meetings (each of approximately 3 hours) from September 2017 through February, 2019. There are several pieces to SB 586; however, this Q&A focuses on the limited mandatory mediation policy together with the $100,000 annual grant the Legislature has authorized be allocated to the Oregon Law Center to assist manufactured and floating home tenants with understanding and enforcing the Oregon Residential and Landlord Tenant Act.

As was reported by Chuck Carpenter during the Legislative session, the goal from MHCO’s perspective, was to use the coalition to get the best possible result considering the political landscape in the Legislature. Bluntly, some of the original ideas proposed by the tenants in the coalition were quite onerous. The end result, however, is a true compromise that is favorable to MHCO landlords, all things considered.

If you would like to learn more about these issues and/or you have particular questions, please join me for my presentation at the 2019 Annual Conference in October. In the meantime here are 17 questions (10 questions were uploaded on 9/4/19.  The remaining 7 were uploaded 9/10/19) and answers that will get you started.