2025 Legislature re-cap on property rights, land-use

By Samantha Bayer,
Oregon Property Owners Association,

Despite a Legislature dominated by a progressive supermajority and policy committees stacked against us, the Oregon Property Owners Association is proud to announce a series of victories for Oregon’s property owners. These weren’t just procedural wins, they were hard-fought triumphs for common sense, property rights, and the dignity of rural Oregonians who are too often overlooked in Salem’s policymaking.

Let’s be clear: this session was never supposed to go our way. The odds were steep. The institutional momentum favored regulatory expansion, tighter land use restrictions, and more statewide control. But rural Oregon showed up, stood firm, and spoke louder than the activists and bureaucrats. Because of that, OPOA didn’t just hold the line— we advanced it.

 

 

Passed SB 83 To Repeal the Wildfire Hazard Map

At the heart of this session’s victories was SB 83, a bill that repeals the controversial state wildfire hazard map and its far-reaching mandates on defensible space and home hardening.

This was a major victory for rural communities who demanded respect for their land, their lives, and their liberty. The bill not only repeals the map, but strikes the burdensome statewide defensible space and home hardening mandates that came with it. At the same time, it keeps targeted funding for wildfire mitigation and returns power to local communities to make regulatory decisions based on their unique landscapes and realities.

This is what rural resilience looks like. Since 2021, OPOA fought shoulder to shoulder with landowners who refused to be scapegoats for the state and federal government’s mismanagement of our forests. And we won – finally!

 

Defended the Right to Live and Work Outside of Town

Rural living was under siege this Session from land preservation and environmental advocates who pushed for a series of bills that threatened the right to live, work, and thrive in rural Oregon. SB 79, 78, 77, and 73 were all introduced as committee bills in the Senate Wildfire and Natural Resources Committee.

While those who supported these bills claimed they were intended to “close loopholes” in our planning system, these bills stood as shocking and direct threats to our rural communities and private property rights. Each of these bills would have put new restrictions on building and replacing homes, rezoning land, and running at-home businesses.

Because of strong grassroots pushback from rural Oregon, OPOA’s team was able to kill every single on of these bills in committee before they could even make it to the floor!

 

Tackled the Housing Crisis with Common Sense Solutions

In partnership with the Oregon Home Builders Association, OPOA helped pass SB 974, a landmark win for smart, streamlined urban housing development. It’s a nod to our commitment not just to rural Oregon, but to the future of the entire state.

SB 974 breaks through red tape and helps bring shovel-ready projects to life faster by: (1) Establishing a 120-day “shot clock” for reviewing final engineering plans; (2) Expediting “upzoning” on land already planned or zoned for residential use inside the urban growth boundary; and (3) Eliminating certain aesthetic standards from the design review process, prohibiting bureaucrats from arbitrarily delaying construction and forcing every house to look the same.

 

The Full 2025 Session Recap

Now, take a moment to scroll through the full list of accomplishments below and recognize how much was achieved in one session. In a political environment stacked in the other direction, OPOA and our partners still managed to:

• Pass landmark legislation that protects and empowers landowners
• Improve others that couldn’t be stopped outright
• Kill a laundry list of harmful, anti-property rights bills, the likes of which we’ve never seen before

Bills Passed

• SB 83 – Repeals the state wildfire map and accompanying defensible space and home hardening requirements. Restores local control and leaves in place key funding for wildfire mitigation and community preparedness.

• SB 974 – Streamlines and expedites the approval process for housing projects on lands zoned or planned for residential use inside UGBs. This bill is a critical step in solving our housing crisis and increasing housing production in our cities.

• HB 3940 – Imposes a 65-cent tax on oral nicotine packages, such as “ZYN” pouches and redirects a portion of the interest generated from the state’s rainy-day fund to fund wildfire mitigation.

Bills Made Better

• SB 1154 –Makes sweeping changes to how the state manages areas with impaired groundwater. OPOA successfully removed limitations on homes and structures in these areas, and limited DEQ’s authority to enter property without landowner consent. See our blog post on this bill HERE.

• SB 74 – Changes the law of “navigability” to grant Department of State Lands (DSL) the authority assert title over private property when rivers change their normal course. OPOA worked to improve this bill with the -6 amendment. You can read our blog post on this bill HERE.

• SB 165 – Grants DSL authority to assert title over historically filled lands in cities in perpetuity. OPOA worked to improve this bill with the -3 amendment to reduce the timeframe to only the next 3 years.

Bills Killed

• SB 79 – Prohibited a county from approving new dwelling or replacement dwelling permits on land zoned for farm or forest use that was in high-wildfire areas, groundwater-restricted areas, land with wildlife habitat, land designated as a “wildlife corridor,” and land considered “high-value” farmland.

• SB 78 – Limited the size of replacement dwellings on resource lands, adding an extra barrier to rebuilding homes lost to disaster or decay.

• SB 77 – Added significant restrictions on home businesses sited on lands zoned for resource uses and in urbanized areas under county control.

• SB 73 – Prevented lands that were of such poor quality they did not meet the definition of “farmland” from being rezoned for higher or better use, preserving them as open space.

• HB 3062 – Required local governments to map “sensitive” areas within cities and then mandate a public health impacts analysis and public health hearings before any industrial, manufacturing, shipping, car repair, recycling, animal processing, or food processing activity could be permitted within 1,000 feet of the “sensitive” area.

• HB 2025 – In what would have been the largest tax increase in Oregon history, HB 2025 sought to raise $11.7 billion in new taxes to fund road infrastructure improvements and various transportation related projects.

• SB 1153 – Sought to impose new limitations on “water transfers” thus freezing property owners’ ability to obtain or manage water rights in most of the state. See our blog post on this bill HERE.

• SB 427 – Also sought to impose new limitations on “water transfers” thus freezing property owners’ ability to obtain or manage water rights in most of the state.

• HB 3013 – Drastically changed standing requirements to allow third parties to “enforce” LUBA decisions in a way that wrongly disincentivized the construction of important, needed housing developments and other quasi-judicial land use applications.

• HB 3971 – Would have allowed Lane County to avoid the land use system to super-site a landfill, despite community opposition. Ironically, this bill was supported by several environmental organizations and the usual “defenders of the planning system” were either in support or conspicuously absent from the conversation. OPOA submitted testimony on the bill that you can read HERE calling out this hypocrisy.

 

Support The Oregon Property Owners Association

This momentum is yours, rural Oregon. We will carry it forward into the next session with even more energy, more unity, and more resolve. Your voices, your stories, and your support were the fuel behind these wins— and we’ll need even more of it moving forward.

The Oregon Property Owners Association is a political advocacy organization that represents private property owners in the Legislature and its PAC makes contributions to candidates that support private property rights. The Oregon Property Owners Association is a 501(c)(4) non-profit social welfare organization.

If you want to support OPOA’s government affairs team and support expanding our efforts, please consider making a donation to OPOA below. If you want to support pro-private property rights candidates, please consider making a donation to our PAC below!

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