Free Oregon Lead Paint Disclosure

An Oregon lead paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Oregon imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — and we can show you that rather than just assert it. What Oregon does run is a state certification regime for people who disturb lead paint, under ORS 431A.355 and ORS 701.510, plus two statutory provisions that quietly remove lead from two tenant remedies. Generate the form below, then read on for exactly what the rule requires.

▶ Watch overview

Oregon lead paint disclosure overview

The lead paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice an Oregon landlord delivers to a prospective tenant for any residential property built before 1978. It does four things in one document.

First, it puts the tenant on notice of potential lead exposure through the federally mandated lead warning statement, the fixed language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or included within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary defence in any later EPA or HUD inquiry or private civil action.

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Oregon rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees. Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice. The obligations that follow sit alongside, and do not replace, the rest of Oregon’s rental rules — our Oregon landlord-tenant laws overview covers the wider chapter 90 picture.

No. Oregon has no state lead paint disclosure statute, and this page will not invent one. That claim is easy to make and rarely proved, so here is the proof rather than the assertion.

The Oregon Residential Landlord and Tenant Act is ORS chapter 90. We read the chapter in full from the Oregon Legislature’s own published text — all 91,431 words of it — and searched it exhaustively for lead. It contains exactly two references to lead-based paint. Neither one imposes a duty. Both are exclusions that take a remedy away:

• ORS 90.365 (failure of landlord to supply essential services) provides that “imminent and serious threat to the tenant’s health, safety or property” shall not include the presence of radon, asbestos or lead-based paint, or the future risk of flooding or seismic hazard. Lead cannot trigger the 48-hour essential-services termination.
• ORS 90.368 (repair of minor habitability defect) defines a minor habitability defect as one repairable for not more than $300 and then says it does not mean the presence of mold, radon, asbestos or lead-based paint. Lead cannot be repair-and-deducted.

That is the whole of Oregon’s lead-paint footprint in its landlord-tenant act. If a page tells you the Oregon disclosure duty lives in ORS chapter 90, or that chapter 90 “incorporates” the federal requirements into Oregon law, it is wrong — and that specific claim is currently circulating in AI-generated answers to this exact question. Chapter 90 does not incorporate the federal rule. It does not mention the disclosure at all. If you are hunting for the Oregon lead disclosure statute number, there is not one to find, because every substantive requirement on this page comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A.

Oregon is not passive on lead — it simply regulates a different thing than most people searching for “Oregon lead law” expect. Oregon regulates who is allowed to disturb lead paint. It does not regulate what you disclose before a lease. Conflating the two is the single most common error on this topic, and it matters because the certification regime carries real Oregon penalties that the disclosure rule does not.

Oregon runs the programme itself. ORS 431A.350(3)(c)(B) records the mechanism: the federal Act allows states “to receive authorization from the Environmental Protection Agency to provide for the accreditation of lead-based paint activities and renovation training programs, the certification of persons completing training programs and the certification of lead-based paint activities and renovation contractors.” Oregon took that authorization. The Oregon Health Authority reports that EPA authorized the Oregon Construction Contractors Board and OHA to administer the renovation rule in Oregon in 2010. Practically, that means your certification paperwork goes to a state agency in Salem, not to EPA Region 10.

The two tracks — and which one a landlord is on

Oregon’s certification duty lives in two separate statutes, and almost nobody lays both out. They bind different people:

A landlord’s own maintenance operation is not a construction contractor, so it does not sit on the CCB licence track. It sits on the OHA firm-certification track under ORS 431A.358(2). OHA’s guidance to property owners describes the same split — rental owners, property management companies, and in-house maintenance staff certify through OHA rather than hold a CCB lead-based paint renovation licence. We flag that as agency guidance rather than statutory text; what the statutes themselves establish is the two-limb structure above.

ORS 431A.355 is what OHA is required to do. The statute provides that the Oregon Health Authority “shall: (a) Certify firms and individuals to perform lead-based paint activities; (b) Certify firms to perform renovation; (c) Accredit training providers…”, along with adopting the implementing rules and setting fees. Those implementing rules are the OHA lead divisions of the Oregon Administrative Rules; we cite them here only as the rule series OHA adopts under ORS 431A.355(1)(g), and we do not paraphrase any specific rule’s text on this page, because the Secretary of State’s rules database did not return retrievable rule text when we checked it. Confirm current rule detail with OHA directly.

The landlord-facing hook nobody mentions: ORS 431A.363(3)

Here is the Oregon provision that should actually change a landlord’s behaviour, and it does not appear on a single competing page. ORS 431A.363(3)(a) lets OHA issue an order not only to the person who did the uncertified work, but to the property owner. Subparagraph (B) reaches “a property owner, or agent of the property owner, who knowingly contracted with a person who was not certified under ORS 431A.355 to perform lead-based paint activities or renovation when certification was required.”

What can that order require? Under 431A.363(3)(b), the recipient must, as soon as reasonably practical, “(A) Obtain a risk assessment… and (B) Abate or control any lead-based paint hazards identified by the risk assessment.” If you do not comply in time, subsections (4) and (5) let OHA obtain the risk assessment or perform the abatement itself and then impose its costs on you, and ORS 431A.365 lets an unpaid cost order be recorded in the County Clerk Lien Record against you.

Read that chain end to end and the exposure is concrete: hire the cheap uncertified painter for your 1955 Portland fourplex, and Oregon can compel you to pay for a risk assessment, compel you to abate whatever it finds, do the work itself if you stall, bill you, and lien you. There is a further edge at 431A.363(6): a person who fails to identify a third party to the authority on request “is liable jointly and severally for any violation by the third party.” The federal disclosure rule has no equivalent to any of this. It is genuinely Oregon, and it is genuinely aimed at owners.

The Oregon penalty is separate from the federal one

ORS 431A.363(1) provides that OHA “may impose a civil penalty of not more than $5,000 per violation per day” on any person who violates ORS 431A.358, a rule adopted under ORS 431A.355, or an authority order. Note three things about that statutory penalty figure. It is per day, so a two-week uncertified repaint is not one violation. It is written into the Oregon statute rather than adjusted for inflation, which is why we can quote it when we decline to quote the federal number. And it attaches to the certification duty — not to the disclosure. Skipping your lead paint disclosure is not an ORS 431A.363 violation; hiring an uncertified renovator is.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise than that. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires six distinct elements in the lease or an attachment to it. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective, regardless of how professional the form looks. No Oregon page ranking for this query enumerates them. This is the checklist to audit your own paperwork against.

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule. The definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is residential dwellings constructed before 1 January 1978, subject to the narrow exclusions in the next section.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing as housing constructed prior to 1978, meaning construction before 1 January 1978. The historical reason that year was chosen is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on lead-containing paint at 16 CFR 1303.1 — but that ban applies to paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is not the same date. Competing pages routinely merge the two and report the CPSC ban as effective 1 January 1978. It was not. The distinction has no practical effect on your compliance answer, because the construction cutoff in 745.103 is what decides coverage, but it does tell you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule. Housing constructed from 1 January 1978 onward sits outside the disclosure regime entirely.

How to verify the build year in Oregon. The county assessor’s property record is the fastest authoritative source, and Oregon’s populous counties — Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Lane, Marion, Jackson, Deschutes — publish searchable property detail online showing a year built. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file held by the local jurisdiction, and title records also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1962 building stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2001 is still target housing. The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent renovation. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly, and Oregon has a great deal of heavily rehabbed older stock.

Common areas in multi-unit buildings. If the building predates 1978, the disclosure scope reaches the common areas as well as the leased unit — hallways, stairwells, porches, laundry rooms, and shared storage. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Oregon context. Oregon’s pre-1978 housing is heavily concentrated and heavily rented. Portland’s inner eastside and northeast neighbourhoods, Salem, Eugene, Astoria, Baker City, and the older cores of most Willamette Valley towns are dominated by pre-war and mid-century stock, much of it converted to multiplexes and student rentals precisely because it is old. A landlord whose portfolio mixes a 1912 Portland foursquare with a 2004 Beaverton townhouse has different compliance answers for each door, and the mixed-vintage portfolio owner is the one who gets caught. When in doubt, verify against the assessor record rather than relying on the exemption.

Even pre-1978 property can fall outside the rule. The carve-outs are narrow, and they come from two different places in the regulation — which is why competing lists of “the lead paint exemptions” disagree with one another. Some are exclusions written into the definition of target housing at 40 CFR 745.103: a unit that meets one of those was never target housing in the first place. The others are transaction-level exemptions listed at 40 CFR 745.101: the housing is target housing, but this particular deal is outside the subpart. The compliance answer is often the same either way, but knowing which provision governs tells you which text to read and which facts matter. Verify against the current rule before relying on any of them.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• Zero-bedroom units (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area — efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms. This exclusion was unconditional before the 2025 amendment, and older charts still show it that way. But 40 CFR 745.103 as amended effective 13 January 2025 (89 FR 89416) moved the child parenthetical to the end of the clause, so it is now conditional: a 0-bedroom dwelling is target housing where a child under six resides or is expected to reside, exactly like the elderly/disabled limb. That matters in Oregon, where studio conversions and rented single rooms are common in older Portland and Eugene housing stock, and where nearly every competitor page still says studios are categorically exempt.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional), where the housing is specifically designated as such — unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there. This is the only exclusion carrying a child condition.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Coastal and Bend vacation rentals typically qualify; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Property inspected by a certified inspector and found free of lead-based paint. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption. In Oregon the inspector doing that work is certified through OHA under ORS 431A.355.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor has previously disclosed all information required under 745.107 and no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Watch the cross-reference: 745.101(d) points at 745.107, not at 745.113(b); pages that cite 745.113(b) here have followed the wrong thread. If anything new reached you, the exemption is gone.
• Foreclosure sales (40 CFR 745.101(a)). Exempt — but note this is a sales exemption, and it is the one most often misread on rental pages. A purchaser at foreclosure who then leases the pre-1978 property owes the tenant the full disclosure.

Federal law requires the lessor to give the prospective lessee the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home before any lease obligation attaches. This is a separate duty from the disclosure form, and failing it is a separate violation supporting independent damages. Handing over a beautifully executed disclosure without the pamphlet is a violation.

Where to get it. The pamphlet is published jointly by EPA, HUD, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is free at epa.gov/lead. It is available in English, Spanish, and additional languages, and the Oregon Health Authority also distributes lead materials to Oregon landlords. EPA refreshed the pamphlet in recent years; deliver the current edition rather than a decade-old PDF sitting in your templates folder.

Language. The disclosure must be provided in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. This is not a formality in Oregon, where Spanish-language tenancies are common in the Willamette Valley agricultural corridor, in Hood River, and in parts of the Portland metro. Landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation.

Delivery. Hand delivery with the lessee initialing receipt is the gold standard. Electronic delivery is permitted subject to the E-SIGN conditions covered below. What does not satisfy the rule is pointing at a website: posting a link is not delivery. The pamphlet must be transmitted as a complete document, on paper or electronically.

Existing tenants. The leasing disclosure duty attaches to new leases, not to sitting tenants mid-term. There is one important exception, and it is the renovation rule: if you disturb paint in an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive the lead hazard information regardless of when their lease started. That is covered in the renovation section below.

The rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. EPA states this plainly: the disclosure rule does not require sellers or landlords to test or remove lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards, and it does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. It is a disclosure rule, not an abatement rule. Non-disclosure does not void your lease.

The standard is actual knowledge, not constructive knowledge and not a duty to investigate. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the honest, lawful answer, and checking it exposes you to nothing.

The trap is the opposite direction. “No knowledge” becomes fraud when you actually know something:

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, or abatement record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood-lead result traced to the unit.
• A code-enforcement notice, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You know the property was tested and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it.

Note the asymmetry the rule creates. Testing is optional; disclosing is not. A landlord who tests and finds lead must disclose it, and many owners conclude — rationally — that they would rather not know. That is lawful. What is not lawful is knowing and papering over it, because 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) attaches its treble-damages remedy to knowing violations, and a fact-finder deciding what you knew will look at every document in your file.

There is an Oregon-flavoured version of this trap. Because OHA administers the certification programme and the blood-lead screening programme, a hazard identified through an Oregon risk assessment or an OHA order under ORS 431A.363 becomes knowledge you hold. Once an Oregon agency process has put a report in your hands, “no knowledge” is gone for every subsequent tenancy in that unit.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, and it is worth being precise about, because form vendors routinely bolt a “10-day inspection opportunity” checkbox onto rental disclosures — and some pre-tick it on the landlord’s behalf, which manufactures a tenant acknowledgment of a right that does not exist.

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), is scoped the same way.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. The sales disclosure at 745.113(a) carries a received-or-waived statement about that 10-day opportunity; the lease disclosure at 745.113(b) has no inspection item at all. That asymmetry is deliberate.

Why this error is especially bad on Oregon searches. Look at what actually ranks for Oregon lead queries. The deepest lead-specific pages are written for home sellers and realtors — an Oregon real-estate law blog aimed at realtors, a national forms vendor’s Oregon “sales transaction” product, a home-seller disclosure guide, an Oregon State Bar sales form. Every one of them discusses the 10-day window correctly for its own audience. A landlord who lands on any of them and reasonably assumes it applies to the lease has just been mis-served by a page that was never wrong, only wrongly matched. The Oregon lead search results are dominated by the sales transaction; the rental duty is the one this page exists to answer.

What this means for you. An Oregon landlord owes a prospective tenant no statutory inspection window. You may offer one voluntarily, and doing so is a reasonable gesture for a tenant who asks — but do not describe it as a federal right, and do not put a checkbox on your disclosure asserting the tenant received or waived a right the rule never gave them. A form that documents a fictitious waiver is worse than one that stays silent: it is an inaccurate statement on a document every party signs certifying accuracy.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Oregon lead paint disclosure. The generated PDF reproduces the lead warning statement, the lessor’s disclosure items, the lessee’s acknowledgment items, the agent’s acknowledgment, and the certification of accuracy with signature and date lines for each party. It is free, and nothing is emailed, gated, or stored — every Oregon lead form we found in the search results is either paid, member-gated, or a flat PDF you have to hand-letter.

40 CFR 745.113(c) requires the lessor to retain a copy of the completed disclosure for no less than three years from the commencement date of the leasing period. That is the entire legal requirement, and it is also the single highest-leverage thing in this whole guide, because the signed disclosure is the only artefact that proves you complied.

Think about how a lead dispute actually unfolds. A tenant alleges no disclosure. There is no agency database to consult; nothing gets filed anywhere. The dispute reduces to whether you can produce a signed document. If you can, the claim usually ends. If you cannot, you are defending a knowing-violation allegation with your word against theirs, and the statute puts treble damages and fee-shifting on the other side of that argument.

What belongs in the file:

• The executed disclosure with every party’s initials, signatures, and dates.
• A note identifying which pamphlet edition was delivered, and how.
• Copies of every record and report you handed to the lessee.
• The lease itself, if the disclosure was inserted rather than attached.
• For electronic delivery: the consent record and the delivery/access log.
• For Oregon: proof that any firm which disturbed paint in the unit was certified, plus the pre-renovation acknowledgment the occupants signed.

The rule itself says the three years is not the measure of your exposure. 40 CFR 745.113(c)(2) provides that the recordkeeping requirement “is not intended to place any limitations on civil suits under the Act, or to otherwise affect a lessee’s or purchaser’s rights under the civil penalty provisions of 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3).” Read that carefully, because it is the sentence that should govern your retention policy: three years is how long you are required to keep the file, not how long you can be sued. The tenant’s treble-damages right is expressly unaffected by the retention clock running out. A landlord who shreds the file on the three-year anniversary has discharged the duty to retain while keeping every bit of the liability that file would have defended.

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. Oregon’s limitation periods for the underlying claims run longer than three years, and a lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface many years after the tenancy ends. Retention is nearly free; destroy the file on the three-year anniversary and you have optimised for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale.

Electronic disclosure and e-signature are permitted. The signed electronic disclosure is the same legally binding document as a paper one, under the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001. Almost no competing guide states the conditions EPA attaches, so here they are.

If you provide the required disclosure information electronically, EPA expects you to give the tenant:

• A clear statement of the right to receive paper documents. Electronic delivery is the tenant’s option, not your default imposition.
• The procedure to withdraw consent, and the consequences of withdrawing. Spelled out, not implied.
• How to access and retain the electronic records. A file the tenant cannot open or keep has not been delivered.
• Consent demonstrating they can actually access the materials. You need affirmative consent showing the tenant can receive the forms in the format you are using.

The underlying principle: the use of electronic technology must give the tenant complete access to all disclosure materials. A portal link buried in a welcome email, a PDF the tenant cannot download, or an e-sign flow that shows the signature page without the pamphlet all fail that test even though a signature comes back.

Retention is identical. Three years, same as paper — but electronic records need a real home. An e-signature vendor account you stop paying for is not a retention plan. Export the executed PDF and the audit trail into storage you control.

The disclosure rule governs leasing. A different rule governs work on the building, and Oregon landlords routinely comply with the first while breaching the second. In Oregon this section carries more weight than it does in most states, because Oregon administers this rule itself and attaches its own penalty to it.

The RRP rule. The EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E applies to renovation, repair, or painting that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing. Above the de minimis threshold, the work must be performed by a certified firm using certified renovators and lead-safe work practices — containment, prohibited practices such as open-flame burning and uncontained power sanding, and cleaning verification. This is not a paperwork rule; it dictates how the work is physically done, and it applies to a landlord’s own maintenance staff, not just outside contractors.

In Oregon the certification is a state certification. As set out above, ORS 431A.358 makes it unlawful for an individual to perform lead-based paint activities, or for a firm to perform a renovation for compensation, without OHA certification; ORS 701.510 puts construction contractors on the CCB licence track. A landlord whose maintenance crew scrapes and repaints a 1958 Portland duplex’s window trim is squarely in scope. One honest caveat: ORS 431A.358(2) speaks of a firm performing renovation “for compensation“, and whether an owner doing unpaid work on their own rental meets that description is an interpretive question rather than something the statute answers on its face. EPA and OHA read rental income as compensation, which brings landlord self-performed work into scope. That is the agencies’ interpretation, and it is the one enforcement will apply to you — treat it as the operating assumption and get certified rather than litigate the point from the wrong side of a stop-work order.

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins — the EPA pamphlet for renovation, delivered to the tenants in the unit, with a signed acknowledgment retained. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, notice must go to every unit in the building describing the nature and location of the work and the dates it is expected to begin and end. Every unit — not merely the ones adjacent to the work.

Note also that entering an occupied unit to carry out that work is its own compliance question under ORS chapter 90 — see our Oregon landlord entry laws guide for the notice a landlord owes before entering to renovate.

Why it matters in Oregon. Repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business, and Oregon’s rental stock is old enough that most of that repainting happens on pre-1978 surfaces. Doing it with in-house staff and no OHA certification is a violation with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure — and unlike the federal disclosure penalty, the Oregon one is a fixed statutory figure of up to $5,000 per violation per day under ORS 431A.363(1). Add the ORS 431A.363(3)(a)(B) hook for knowingly hiring an uncertified person, and Oregon has built a materially sharper set of teeth on the renovation side than on the disclosure side. There is also a second-order effect: work that disturbs paint can create the very hazard you then have to disclose to the next tenant, and it can generate the records that make “no knowledge” unavailable to you going forward.

Search this topic and you will be told the penalty is a specific number per violation. Oregon results currently surface a specific per-violation dollar figure. You will see several different numbers, none dated, most copied from an old page. Here is the accurate structure, which has three separate limbs.

Limb one: the tenant’s private action, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3). Any person who knowingly violates the section is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages that person incurred. This multiplier is written into the statute; it does not move with inflation. Section 4852d(b)(4) adds that a court may award court costs together with reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The fee-shifting is what makes small disclosure violations economically worth suing over.

Limb two: federal government civil money penalties. These are assessed by EPA and HUD, and they are inflation-adjusted — annually, under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, with the operative amounts published in the table at 40 CFR 19.4 for EPA-assessed penalties. Knowing violations can also carry criminal exposure.

Limb three: the Oregon certification penalty, ORS 431A.363. This one is Oregon’s own, it is statutory rather than inflation-indexed, and we can therefore quote it: OHA “may impose a civil penalty of not more than $5,000 per violation per day”. Because it is a statutory penalty assessed per violation per day, an uncertified two-week repaint is not a single event. Under ORS 431A.363(9) it is “in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other penalty or sanction provided by law” — so it stacks on top of the federal exposure rather than replacing it. Critically, it attaches to the certification duty, not to your disclosure paperwork.

The asymmetry is what should drive behaviour. Completing this form correctly costs fifteen minutes. The downside is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s legal fees attached, plus an agency penalty, plus — if a child was actually poisoned — a tort claim in which the disclosure violation supplies a ready-made negligence theory.

EPA and HUD share enforcement of the disclosure rule. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes run the programme jointly, and enforcement has historically concentrated on larger landlords and property managers, where a single practice failure replicates across hundreds of tenancies and produces a large per-violation multiplier.

In Oregon there is a second enforcer for the renovation side. Certification enforcement runs through OHA under ORS 431A.355 and 431A.363, with the Construction Contractors Board handling contractor licensing under ORS 701.510. OHA’s powers here are unusually direct: under ORS 431A.355(3) the authority may enter property with the owner’s or custodian’s consent to inspect, investigate, evaluate, or take samples; may issue subpoenas; and may suspend, revoke, or modify a certification. Under ORS 431A.363(2) it may order all lead-based paint activities or renovation to stop immediately. And under ORS 431A.363(10) OHA reports every penalty it imposes to the Construction Contractors Board, Oregon OSHA, and the Department of Environmental Quality — so one finding propagates across three more agencies that regulate you.

How a case starts. Rarely with an inspector at the door. Usually one of four ways: a tenant reports a missing disclosure; a child’s elevated blood-lead result triggers a health-department investigation that works backwards to the paperwork; a private lawsuit’s discovery exposes a systemic gap; or an agency initiative targets a market and requests files from a portfolio owner. The second route is worth dwelling on in Oregon, because ORS 431A.355(1)(f) puts blood-lead screening and hazard identification in the same agency that certifies renovators — the screening programme and the enforcement programme are not strangers to each other.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a disclosure violation to EPA or to HUD through the channels published on their enforcement pages, and the National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. In Oregon, concerns about uncertified renovation work go to the Oregon Health Authority’s lead-based paint programme. Nothing about the process requires the tenant to hire a lawyer first, which is precisely why a clean file matters more than a good argument.

What an inquiry asks for. Signed disclosures for the tenancies in scope, proof of pamphlet delivery, and the records you disclosed or certified you did not have. That is it. An owner who can produce the file usually ends the matter at the document-request stage; an owner who cannot is negotiating over the size of the penalty, not whether there is one.

Federal disclosure is the compliance floor, not the whole picture. Oregon habitability law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint — but Oregon has done something here that no competing page mentions, and a landlord and a tenant should both understand it before they argue about lead.

What ORS 90.320 actually says

ORS 90.320(1) provides that a landlord “shall at all times during the tenancy maintain the dwelling unit in a habitable condition”, and then lists what a unit must not substantially lack: effective waterproofing and weather protection of roof and exterior walls; conforming plumbing; an approved water supply; adequate heating facilities; conforming electrical lighting and wiring; buildings, grounds and appurtenances safe for normal and reasonably foreseeable uses, clean, sanitary and free from accumulations of debris and vermin; garbage receptacles; floors, walls, ceilings, stairways and railings maintained in good repair; ventilating and air conditioning facilities in good repair; safety from fire hazards including a working smoke alarm; a carbon monoxide alarm where there is a carbon monoxide source; working locks and latches; and, for buildings permitted on or after 1 April 2024, adequate cooling facilities.

Read that list again and notice what is missing: lead and paint. Neither word appears. We verified this exhaustively rather than by skimming — the two lead-based paint references in the entire chapter are in 90.365 and 90.368, not in 90.320. So the honest position is this: deteriorated paint reaches ORS 90.320 only through the general limbs, most plausibly subsection (1)(h), requiring “floors, walls, ceilings, stairways and railings maintained in good repair”, or subsection (1)(f), requiring the premises to be safe for normal and reasonably foreseeable uses. That is an argument a tenant can make. It is not an express Oregon lead duty, and any page that tells you Oregon’s habitability statute contains a lead provision has invented one.

The two carve-outs: Oregon removed the tenant’s self-help routes for lead

This is the part that will surprise both sides. Oregon’s legislature looked at lead-based paint twice in the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, and both times it took a remedy away:

• No 48-hour termination for lead (ORS 90.365). Where a landlord fails to supply an essential service and the lack poses “an imminent and serious threat to the tenant’s health, safety or property”, the tenant can terminate on 48 hours’ notice. But the statute expressly provides that such a threat “shall not include the presence of radon, asbestos or lead-based paint or the future risk of flooding or seismic hazard”. A tenant cannot walk out on 48 hours because they found lead paint.
• No repair-and-deduct for lead (ORS 90.368). Where a landlord fails to fix a “minor habitability defect”, a tenant may cause the repair and deduct from the next rent payment “the actual and reasonable cost of the repair work, not to exceed $300” — a statutory ceiling under that section, not a flat allowance — and note the tenant may not do the work personally, under ORS 90.368(4)(c). But the definition says a minor habitability defect “does not mean the presence of mold, radon, asbestos or lead-based paint”. A tenant cannot hire a painter, deduct the cost, and call it repair-and-deduct.

Both sides should read this carefully rather than triumphantly. For landlords: this is not permission to ignore lead. The carve-outs remove two fast, cheap, self-help routes. They leave completely untouched the federal treble-damages action under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3), the general habitability duty under ORS 90.320, OHA’s abatement-order power under ORS 431A.363(3), and ordinary personal-injury claims — which are the expensive ones. Arguably the carve-outs make things worse for a landlord, not better: they channel a lead dispute away from a $300 deduction and toward a lawyer. For tenants: your remedies for lead are the slower and larger ones, not the immediate ones the Act gives you for a broken furnace.

There is a coherent policy logic to it. Lead, mold, radon, and asbestos are hazards that a tenant should not be self-diagnosing at 48 hours’ notice or self-remediating with a $300 budget — and in Oregon, remediating lead paint is work the law says must be done by a certified firm. A statute that let a tenant fix lead paint for $300 would be inviting exactly the uncontrolled paint disturbance that ORS 431A.358 exists to prevent. The carve-outs and the certification regime are pulling in the same direction.

For the wider condition-based duties that disclosure does not address, see our Oregon habitability laws guide.

The fair-housing edge

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., adds one more consideration. It prohibits familial-status discrimination, and a landlord who steers families with young children away from pre-1978 units to dodge lead obligations has swapped a disclosure problem for a fair-housing complaint — a considerably worse trade. Oregon’s own fair-housing protections under ORS chapter 659A run alongside the federal ones. See our Oregon tenant screening laws guide for where screening practice and familial status intersect.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most common violation, and the one with the worst risk-to-effort ratio. There is no penalty for over-disclosing and a severe one for guessing wrong. When the build year is uncertain, deliver the form.

Believing you found an “Oregon lead statute”

You did not. ORS 431A.350 is a findings section describing federal law; ORS 431A.355 and 431A.358 are about certification; ORS 90.365 and 90.368 are exclusions. None of them tells you to disclose anything. Citing one of them in a lease as the authority for your disclosure is citing the wrong law.

Confusing the certification regime with the disclosure duty

They are different duties, with different triggers, different agencies, and different penalties. Being OHA-certified does not discharge your disclosure obligation, and a perfect disclosure does not let your uncertified crew sand window trim.

Delivering it at signing instead of before

The disclosure must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced with the lease packet at the signing table, signed in the same motion as the lease, does not give the tenant the pre-obligation information the rule exists to provide. Send it in advance and let the tenant read it.

Wrong build-year assumption

“Around 1980” is not a defence. The county assessor record, permit file, or certificate of occupancy establishes it. A 1976 building renovated in 1985 is still target housing.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a distinct requirement and a distinct violation, and substituting your own lead handout does not satisfy it.

Verbal or implied disclosure

Disclosure must be written, signed, and retained. Conversations, text messages, and oral assurances do not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113 — and cannot be produced three years later when an inquiry asks for the file.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or folding it into your lease’s own warranty language can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

A landlord cannot acknowledge, on the tenant’s behalf, that the tenant received the pamphlet. Forms that invite you to do this create a false statement on a document certified for accuracy by every signatory. The acknowledgment items belong to the lessee and are completed by the lessee.

Printing a 10-day inspection line on a lease disclosure

Copied from the sales form, and wrong. Worse than useless: it documents a waiver of a right the tenant never had, on a certified document. Oregon landlords catch this one more often than most, because the Oregon search results for lead are dominated by sales-side pages.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

Honest when nothing is known; fraud when something is. A landlord aware of prior peeling paint, a prior report, or a child’s elevated blood-lead result cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

If multiple tenants sign the lease, each must receive the disclosure and pamphlet and each must sign the acknowledgment. One signature on a four-tenant lease leaves three undisclosed tenancies — a live risk in Eugene and Corvallis student housing where four unrelated adults sign one document.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

A building-wide evaluation covering common areas or other units is disclosable to this tenant. Owners routinely disclose the unit-specific file and sit on the building report.

Hiring the cheap uncertified painter

The Oregon-specific one. ORS 431A.363(3)(a)(B) reaches a property owner who knowingly contracted with an uncertified person, and the order that follows can compel a risk assessment and abatement at your expense, with a lien if you do not pay. The discount on the paint job is not worth the option you just wrote.

Tenants of Oregon pre-1978 rentals hold meaningful rights under federal and state law — though, as set out above, Oregon has deliberately narrowed two of them for lead. Landlords benefit from understanding the full set, because they define the consequences of a defective form.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

Delivery must precede the lessee’s obligation under the lease. A disclosure produced afterwards does not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113, and the timing violation stands on its own even where the substance was accurate.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

Independent of the form. Non-delivery is a separate violation supporting separate damages.

The right to triple damages plus fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) a tenant injured by a knowing violation recovers three times actual damages, and under (b)(4) the court may add costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. The knowing standard is broad enough to reach reckless disregard. This is the tenant’s most powerful lead remedy in Oregon precisely because Oregon has closed the two cheap ones.

The right to report to EPA or HUD

Tenants may report violations to either agency without filing suit. Agency action can bring civil penalties, consent decrees, injunctive relief, and ongoing compliance monitoring across a portfolio.

The right to report uncertified work to the Oregon Health Authority

An Oregon-specific route with real force. Where a landlord has paint disturbed by an uncertified person, OHA may order the work stopped immediately under ORS 431A.363(2), may penalise up to $5,000 per violation per day, and may order the property owner to obtain a risk assessment and abate identified hazards under ORS 431A.363(3). A tenant who cannot repair-and-deduct for lead can still make this call.

The right to a habitable unit

ORS 90.320 entitles Oregon tenants to a dwelling maintained in habitable condition. Deteriorated paint is not named in the statute, but severely deteriorated walls and ceilings can be argued under subsection (1)(h). Note the limits Oregon has drawn: no 48-hour termination for lead (ORS 90.365) and no $300 repair-and-deduct for lead (ORS 90.368). The general habitability claim and its remedies under ORS 90.360 remain available.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child or pregnant tenant suffers lead exposure, ordinary tort remedies apply — medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation supplies a ready foundation for a negligence theory, which is why the paperwork failure and the injury claim tend to arrive together.

The right to fair-housing protection

The Fair Housing Act prohibits familial-status discrimination, and Oregon’s ORS chapter 659A protections run alongside it. Avoiding families with young children to sidestep lead obligations is itself actionable.

The bottom line for landlords. Compliance is cheap and mechanical. The failure mode is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s fees attached, a federal agency penalty that rises every January, an Oregon certification penalty of up to $5,000 per violation per day if you also disturbed the paint, and — in the worst case — a poisoned child and a tort claim your own file helps prove. The form above handles the mechanics; the rest of this page is what the form cannot do for you.

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