Rural Oregon Is Under Attack This Session: Take Action to Protect the Right to Live & Work Outside of Town

This legislative session, rural living in Oregon is under siege from land preservation and environmental advocates pushing for a series of bills that threaten the right to live, work, and thrive in rural Oregon. While those who support these bills claim they are intended to “close loopholes” in our planning system, these bills stand as shocking and direct threats to our rural communities and private property rights.

While the advocates for these bills will say they are to “preserve farmland”, the reality is that almost ALL land outside of Oregon cities (97%) is farm or forestland. As such, these bills are attacks on rural living in general.

BILLS TO OPPOSE

SB 79: Limiting Most New Homes Outside of Town

SB 79 would prohibit a county from approving a permit on land that is zoned for farm or forest use that is in high-wildfire areas, groundwater restricted areas, land with wildlife habitat, land that is a “wildlife corridor”, and land designated as “high-value” farmland. The bill makes limited exceptions for farmworker housing and other houses used specifically by farmers and foresters.

Given the broad scope of this bill, almost all areas outside of the urban growth boundary will be off-limits for new housing. It is also unclear whether property owners would be able to replace existing homes that are lost to fire or other disaster.

SB 78: Increasing Restrictions on “Replacement Dwellings”

SB 78 targets the “replacement dwellings” provision in Oregon’s land use laws, which was designed to help homeowners replace homes lost to fire, flooding, or decay. Despite this process already being so challenging for property owners, this bill seeks to only add more limitations on dwellings when they are rebuilt under this process. 

As drafted, the bill says that a County may not approve the replacement of a home unless the county ensures that the home will not:

(i) Exceed the floor area of the dwelling being replaced by more than 10 percent; or

(ii) Have a floor area greater than 2,500 square feet.

What good does this bill do to actually help people or get people back on their feet? How does this bill improve the process? We have no idea why the advocates want this bill, other than their unending thirst for control over other people’s property.

SB 77: Tightening the Screws on Small At-Home Businesses

SB 77 addresses the “home occupations” provision, which has allowed small businesses to operate on land designated for agriculture and timber production. This bill aims to “clarify” the definition of “home occupations” by limiting what types of businesses can be home occupations, limit how those businesses can advertise their services, and how many customers they can serve.

SB 73: Preventing the Least Farmable Land in Oregon from Being Rezoned to Any Other Use

SB 73 seeks to end case-by-case rezoning of non-resource land for residential or industrial development. While complicated and technical, the consequences for this bill are simple – if you own rural land that is so unfarmable that even the state doesn’t call it farmland, you can never change the zoning of it to allow for non-farm uses, even though no one believes it is farmland.

For example, if you owned property in say, Central Oregon, and your land has no water, extremely poor soil, or any other factor that makes the land unproductive for farming, you couldn’t change the zoning to turn it into any higher or better use. It’s a high-bar to find any property in Oregon that is so absolutely bad that even LCDC is ashamed to call it farmland, but a little of it exists.  This bill would eliminate the ability of an owner of this kind of land from fixing an obvious zoning mistake. It has to just sit there as open space, and the property owner isn’t able to earn a living or develop the land to support themselves.

How to Engage:

All of these bills are “committee” bills dropped by the Chair of the Senate Committee on Wildfire and Natural Resources. Accordingly, that committee is where these bills will begin and get their first hearing. You can express your concerns to the committee about these bills by clicking their names here, and sending them an email or calling their office: CONTACT COMMITTEE. 

Remember, if you contact a legislator – be respectful! If you name-call or use profanity, they will disregard your email or call and won’t take the issue seriously.

BILLS TO SUPPORT

HB 3133: Supporting Farmers (not just farmland) & Local Food Systems

Oregon is not losing farmland; we are losing farmers. Since the last Ag Census, we have lost over 2,000 family farms. This is because farmers are going out of business, not because people are living and building houses in rural areas.

One of OPOA’s priorities for the session is to support farmers and their ability to use their land to earn a living. HB 3133 removes restrictions on the income they can earn through their farmstands, among other barriers in land use law that prevents farmers from diversifying their income streams and supporting themselves.

SB 464: Making it Easier to Replace Homes Lost to Fires and Other Disasters

Contrary to the land preservationists, we think the Legislature should make it easier on people to replace their homes after they are lost to a fire. This bill would create an alternative process to replace a home that is greatly simplified from the existing process, eliminate a trip-wire that has caused significant hardship for property owners, and limits the chance that any of these approvals are appealed.

The goal of the bill is simple: if you are putting a house basically back to where it was before, there’s no reason to have to go through the bureaucratic nightmare we have now. To be clear, there are limitations with this new process that had to be included for this bill to stand a chance. We don’t love those concessions, but if passed, this bill would significantly expedite the process to get a replacement dwelling permit. 

There’s no reason to kick people when they’re down. We’re going to fix that if we can.

The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not represent the opinions or positions of any party represented by the OPOA Legal Center on any particular matter.Desp