What would actually happen if one passed

The effect on Ohio associations would be the opposite of what owners will assume.

Today, in cities with restrictive ordinances, the municipal layer does some of the association's work. Where a city caps density, requires a licence, or bars the use in certain districts, an owner contemplating a short-term rental faces two obstacles — and frequently gives up at the first one.

Remove the municipal obstacle and the association becomes the only thing standing between an owner and a transient rental. Every enforcement burden that the city currently shares falls entirely on a volunteer board.

That is already happening in Cleveland without any state preemption. Ordinance 561-2026 repealed the old limited-lodging section and added short-term rentals to the permitted-use list in One-Family Districts, effective around November 28, 2026. Boards that had been leaning on the municipal cap lose it. Our Ohio short-term rentals page covers the declaration language that does the work instead.

The tax bill that is not preemption

A third bill, HB 161, would extend sales, use and local lodging taxes to short-term rentals and require platforms to collect them. Sponsored by Representatives Adam C. Bird and Jim Thomas, introduced March 12, 2025, three hearings, not reported.

It is worth distinguishing because it points the other way: it makes short-term renting more expensive rather than easier, and it has nothing to say about who may prohibit it.

Whether any of them can pass

The 136th General Assembly runs to December 31, 2026, and everything pending on that date dies. The Senate's published remaining floor schedule shows November 10, November 18, December 2 and December 9, with December 16 and 17 marked “if needed.”

Neither SB 104 nor HB 109 has been reported out of committee after nineteen months. Neither has a realistic path in four session days. Both are, functionally, already dead, and would need reintroduction in the 137th General Assembly in January 2027.

Two related bills that are moving

SB 428, the Build Smart Act, sponsored by Senator Michele Reynolds — who also chairs the committee hearing it — was introduced April 27, 2026, referred to Senate Housing on May 13, and heard June 2 and June 9, 2026. It is the most active housing bill in Ohio. It would apply the residential building code to four-family dwellings and permit certain buildings to have a single stairway exit.

It is a building-code bill, not a zoning-preemption bill. It does not override local zoning and does not mention covenants.

HB 313, sponsored by Representatives Adam Mathews and Dani Isaacsohn, would award grants to “pro-housing political subdivisions” adopting at least three qualifying policies — among them “Having no or minimal parking requirements for developments that include residential units,” “Repealing minimum lot size requirements for developers,” and “Allowing accessory dwelling units.”

The word “covenant” appears zero times in HB 313 as well. It is an incentive aimed exclusively at local governments. A township could take the grant money for legalising ADUs and every association inside it could still ban them under its own declaration. It was introduced May 28, 2025, referred to House Development on June 4, and has had no hearings.

The pattern worth naming

Across Ohio's 2025-2026 housing legislation — preemption bills, incentive bills, building-code bills — not one reaches private covenants. The legislature is adjusting what cities may do. The private layer is untouched, and in an Ohio association the private layer is the one that decides.