Nobody in Ohio is studying homeowners associations
Nobody in Ohio is studying homeowners associations
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Legislation
There is no committee, task force, working group, study commission or interim committee anywhere in Ohio charged with examining homeowners associations, condominiums, covenants or common-interest communities. Not in either chamber, not joint, not gubernatorial.1
The full Senate committee roster runs to 25 committees; the House has its own. The only select committees that exist in either chamber are on Data Centers and on Gaming.
The bodies that did exist have concluded
The Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform, created in the FY24-25 budget and co-chaired by Representative Bill Roemer and Senator Bill Blessing, delivered its final report on January 2, 2025 with 21 recommendations after eight hearings and testimony from around sixty witnesses. It does not exist in the 136th General Assembly and has no successor.
The Governor's Property Tax Reform Working Group, convened after the line-item vetoes in the budget bill, met ten times between July 24 and September 30, 2025 and delivered 20 recommendations on its deadline. Co-chaired by Pat Tiberi and Bill Seitz, its eleven members included county auditors, treasurers, commissioners, school superintendents and a mayor.
Its framing: “Ohioans are facing rapidly rising property tax bills, and it is our shared responsibility to provide meaningful relief.” And on the legislature's parallel work: “We recognize and commend the legislature's considerable work on this issue. Their Joint Committee on Property Tax Review and Reform held over a year of hearings and delivered 21 thoughtful recommendations.”
Two of its recommendations have gone nowhere. Recommendation 17 asked the Governor to form a working group on the efficiencies of the various levels of government; no such group has been formed. Recommendation 20 proposed “Consideration of expanding the Homestead Exemptions and/or Implementing a Property Tax Circuit Breaker” — still unenacted.
The one recommendation that touches housing supply
Recommendation 18 is the single documented bridge in Ohio between property-tax policy and zoning policy:
“The Property Tax Working Group recognizes Ohio faces a severe housing shortage, estimated at more than 350,000 units statewide in 2023…Therefore, the Group recommends that as the General Assembly continues to examine property tax relief, the role that housing supply plays in driving valuations higher should be a consideration.”
What exists instead is two statutory chapters that have not changed since 2022. Our Ohio governing statute page covers them.
The only standing committee doing adjacent work
The Ohio Senate has a standing Housing Committee, chaired by Michele Reynolds with Jane M. Timken as vice chair and Hearcel F. Craig as ranking member. It is the successor in function to the previous General Assembly's Select Committee on Housing, whose April 2024 report made 23 recommendations after twelve hearings and testimony from more than 200 witnesses.
Its meeting record in this General Assembly runs from February 18, 2025 through June 9, 2026, working on bills including SB 28, SB 145, SB 184, SB 192, SB 250 and SB 428. It has not met since June 9, 2026.
Nothing on its docket is an association-governance bill.
No reform campaign has surfaced either
We looked for an Ohio HOA reform act, an ombudsman proposal, a state regulator for associations, an Ohio homeowners' bill of rights, a petition drive, and any legislator response to one. Nothing exists on the public record.
A national HOA reform organisation lists Ohio in its state directory with a community chat and a legislative committee, alongside a generic guide to talking to the Ohio legislature — but no named Ohio leadership, no Ohio campaign, no stated Ohio ask, and no legislator engagement.
The honest way to put that is: no organised Ohio HOA-reform campaign has surfaced on the public record. Absence from the searchable web is not proof that no group exists; a locally organised effort could be invisible to search.
The comparison that makes the negative meaningful
The Community Associations Institute's national trends analysis, published February 27, 2026, names the states active in each 2026 HOA legislation category. Ohio appears in none of them.
Sunsetting or dissolving HOAs: Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Missouri, Arizona, Idaho. Corporate and investor purchase restrictions: sixteen states. Home-based childcare: Indiana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Kansas, Nevada. Accessory dwelling units: twenty-nine states.
Ohio is not one of the twenty-nine on ADUs, despite Columbus legalising them by right in November 2025 and Cincinnati doing so in 2023. In Ohio that work is municipal and voluntary, not statewide. Our Ohio ADUs and modifications page covers what that leaves in the declaration's hands.
And no structural-safety review, despite a driver event
Official searches of the 136th General Assembly return zero results for the exact phrases “reserve study” and “milestone inspection.” No Ohio legislator has introduced a Florida-style milestone inspection mandate, a reserve-study mandate, or a structural-integrity bill.
That is despite a balcony collapse at a Cincinnati condominium in October 2025 that dropped at least ten people twenty feet onto pavement, produced city orders against the association, and generated litigation seeking court-ordered safety reforms for condominium associations and managers. Eleven months on, there is no legislative or council response on the record.
What this means for a board
Nobody is coming to regulate you, and nobody is coming to help an owner either. Ohio has no study body, no reform bill, no advocacy campaign with a legislator attached, and no agency with jurisdiction over association governance.
The three forces that actually changed an Ohio board's obligations in 2025 and 2026 were the appellate courts, the municipalities, and the secondary mortgage market. A board watching the Statehouse is watching the one place where nothing happened.
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