Oregon voided every CC&R that blocks fire hardening
Oregon voided every CC&R that blocks fire hardening
2026-09-15 · Oregon · Legislation
Since June 5, 2026, an Oregon covenant that stops a homeowner from hardening their own house against wildfire is void by operation of law — and it does not matter when the declaration was recorded. Senate Bill 1551 passed the Senate 28–0 and the House 44–0, was signed by Governor Kotek on March 31, 2026, and became chapter 86, Oregon Laws 2026.1
It is the most consequential change to Oregon association law in a decade, and the least hedged. The operative sentence is three lines long and it contains no exception for existing documents.
What the statute says
Section 2 of the Act was added to ORS chapter 93, which governs recorded instruments generally:
“A provision in a recorded document, including a declaration as defined in ORS 94.550, is void and unenforceable to the extent that the provision would: (a) Prohibit the installation, use or maintenance of fire-hardened building materials on a residential property; or (b) Prohibit the removal of materials that are not fire-hardened building materials, including fences and other structures, from a residential property.”2
Note the second limb. It is not only about putting hardened materials on; it is about taking combustible ones off. A covenant requiring a wood fence is now unenforceable against an owner who wants to remove it.
What counts as a fire-hardened material
The Act does not write its own specification. Section 2(1) defines the term by reference to three external standards, and freezes them:
“'fire-hardened building materials' means materials that meet any of the following criteria as most recently adopted as of the effective date of this 2026 Act: (a) The criteria for construction in wildland areas set forth in the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code; (b) The criteria for construction in wildland areas set forth in the National Fire Protection Association Standard 1140; or (c) The criteria included within a wildfire-prepared home as established by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.”2
“As most recently adopted as of the effective date” pins all three to their June 5, 2026 versions. A later edition of the IWUIC does not automatically expand or contract what the statute protects.
The retroactivity is total
Section 8 of the Act is one sentence:
“Sections 2 and 4 of this 2026 Act apply to recorded documents and governing documents executed before, on or after the effective date of this 2026 Act.”2
There is no vintage cutoff, no opt-out, and no requirement that the association amend anything. A declaration recorded in 1974 is subject to it on exactly the same terms as one recorded last week. That is a deliberate contrast with the rest of Oregon's recent covenant legislation, which is carefully dated — see our Oregon governing statute page for how the two Acts are structured.
What it changes for a board, starting now
Section 4 of the Act, added to the Planned Community Act at ORS 94.550 to 94.783, is where the operational bite is. It voids a governing-document provision to the extent it:
“(a) Prohibits both the removal of materials that are not fire-hardened building materials … and the replacement of materials that are not fire-hardened building materials with fire-hardened building materials; or (b) Limits the design, dimensions, placement, maintenance or external appearance of fire-hardened building materials in a way that: (A) Has the practical effect of prohibiting the use of all fire-hardened building materials; or (B) Requires the use of fire-hardened building materials that cost substantially more than other fire-hardened building materials of similar quality to the materials proposed by the owner such that the cost practically prevents the owner from using fire-hardened building materials or imposes an unreasonable burden on the owner.”2
Read paragraph (b) carefully, because it is the one an architectural committee will collide with. A board may still have standards. What it may not do is operate them so that no hardened material passes, or steer an owner to a materially more expensive hardened product of similar quality. “Similar quality” is the comparator, and the statute does not define it.
An earlier draft of the bill carried a fixed percentage cost cap. The Community Associations Institute's Oregon Legislative Action Committee states it got that removed in favour of the reasonableness framing now in the text, and supported the bill after that amendment.3
The 90-day clock, and what happens when a board misses it
Section 4(2) is the provision boards need in front of them at the next meeting:
“If an owner applies to install fire-hardened building materials or remove nonfire-hardened building materials under this section, the application is deemed approved unless the association denies or requests modifications to the application in a written opinion that: (a) Is delivered within 90 days after the application is filed; (b) Demonstrates in reasonable detail the basis for the denial and the scope of any necessary modifications; and (c) Is not arbitrary or capricious.”2
Three conditions, all of which must be met. Silence for 90 days is approval. A denial delivered on day 91 is approval. A denial delivered on day 30 that says only “does not conform to community standards” does not demonstrate “in reasonable detail the basis for the denial and the scope of any necessary modifications,” and on the statute's face that is not a qualifying written opinion either.
This matters more than it first appears, because Oregon has had no general statutory deemed-approval rule for architectural review. Until June 2026 the only clock in either Act was the 60-day electric-vehicle-charging approval mandate at ORS 94.762 and ORS 100.627. Declarations set everything else. Boards used to long or open-ended review cycles now have a hard outer limit for one category of application, and a reasoned-written-decision requirement attached to it. Our Oregon architectural review page sets out the framework this is layered onto.
Which communities it binds
Section 4 sits in the Planned Community Act. Sections 5 and 6 inserted “and section 4 of this 2026 Act” into ORS 94.572 and ORS 94.573, which is the mechanism that carries the rule to Class I and Class II planned communities created before January 1, 2002 that were not created under the Act. Section 7 added it to the list of limits on association powers that opens ORS 94.630(1), alongside ORS 94.762, 94.763, 94.776, 94.778 and 94.779.2
For pre-2002 Class I and II communities amending their documents to conform, ORS 94.573(1)(b) sets the thresholds: at least 75 percent of owners for non-bylaw governing documents, and at least a majority for bylaws.
What to watch next
Two things. First, the new sections are not yet compiled into the published ORS, which remains the 2025 Edition; until Legislative Counsel assigns numbers, the correct citation is to section 2 and section 4 of chapter 86, Oregon Laws 2026, not to an ORS section. Second, the Act is silent on vegetation. It covers building materials and structures such as fences. It does not touch a landscaping rule requiring bark mulch against a foundation — which is precisely what the State Fire Marshal's model defensible space code, adopted seven weeks earlier, tells homeowners to remove. That gap is unresolved and is not addressed anywhere in chapter 86.
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