Senate Bill 873 went into effect January 1, which allows evictions to be expunged in Oregon under certain situations. Oregon Law has long prevented evictions older than 5 years being used against a prospective tenant in the screening process, but some landlords have not always followed this law. While the evictions were not to be held against the applicant, they were still viewable as part of the public record. Screening companies that were aware of the law, would not report such records, but there was nothing barring a private party from seeing those records, if they wanted to.
This new law allows tenants who have been evicted to expunge the eviction if it is more than 5 years old, or if it was a satisfied stipulated judgment, or if the case was dismissed in the applicant’s favor. This law will prevent everyone from seeing any of these types of records, so long as the tenant files to have the record expunged. Objections can be filed against expungement, however, which would cause a hearing as to why the record should not be expunged.
Jefferson Public Radio carried a story about this law over the weekend.