Oregon Tenant Screening Laws: The Landlord and Applicant Guide

Oregon tenant screening sits at the crossroads of two bodies of law: the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, which governs how a consumer report may be pulled and used everywhere in the country, and Oregon’s own rules under the Oregon Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, chiefly Oregon Revised Statutes sections 90.295, 90.303, and 90.304, which cap the screening charge at actual cost, limit how criminal history may be used, and force a written statement of reasons for a denial. Oregon landlords who screen properly follow the law at each step. The ones who overcharge, skip the consent form, or reject an applicant without the required notice pay for that shortcut, and the mandatory attorney-fee provisions are what make the bill so large.

This guide walks the whole framework in plain English: the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act requirements every landlord must meet and the one it does not impose, Oregon’s actual-cost screening-charge rule and one-fee-per-sixty-days limit under section 90.295, the criminal-history limits of section 90.303 and the individualized assessment that Senate Bill 291 added on January 1, 2022, the fourteen-day statement of reasons under section 90.304, source-of-income protection under section 659A.421, the Portland Fair Access In Renting ordinance and the Eugene ten-dollar cap, why the pre-denial duty here belongs to Oregon and Portland rather than to the FCRA, the rights every applicant holds, a day-by-day screening workflow, a compliance playbook, real scenarios, and an Oregon-specific set of frequently asked questions.

Because Oregon layers strong state protections on top of the federal baseline, the safest posture for a landlord is written applicant authorization, consistent written criteria, a receipted and refundable fee, the section 90.304(5) individualized criminal review completed before any criminal-history denial, and a proper section 1681m(a) adverse action notice plus the section 90.304 statement of reasons every single time, and the strongest position for an applicant is to know exactly which rights the law confers. Treat every figure here as a starting point and verify the current statute and any city ordinance before you screen, charge a fee, or dispute a decision.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act, codified at fifteen U.S.C. section 1681, is the federal statute that governs tenant screening nationwide, and an Oregon landlord must comply with it regardless of any state-law differences, then add Oregon’s own rules under the Oregon Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. Getting both layers right prevents almost all screening-related liability. Two federal requirements sit at the core — permissible purpose and the adverse action notice — plus one step that is practice rather than federal law, applicant authorization; and one widely repeated further requirement, the “pre-adverse action notice,” does not exist in housing at all. Oregon supplies the real pre-denial step, and it is worth knowing which layer each duty comes from.

Permissible Purpose

A landlord has a permissible purpose under Fair Credit Reporting Act section 604(a)(3)(F)(i) — 15 U.S.C. section 1681b(a)(3)(F)(i), a legitimate business need in connection with a business transaction initiated by the consumer — to pull a consumer report on a rental applicant, and the screening company will require the landlord to certify that purpose. Subparagraph (F)(ii) covers reviewing an existing tenancy at renewal. That is the threshold right to obtain the report at all, but it does not eliminate any of the other requirements — it only opens the door to a report the landlord must then handle correctly.

Applicant Authorization — Required in Practice, Not by the FCRA

Take written authorization before you pull the report, on a standalone form rather than a clause buried in the rental application. That is sound practice, and screening companies generally require it by contract as a condition of furnishing the report. But be precise about the source: the FCRA’s stand-alone written disclosure and authorization rule is 15 U.S.C. section 1681b(b)(2), and by its own terms it governs a report procured “for employment purposes.” A landlord’s authority to obtain the report comes from permissible purpose, not from applicant consent. In Oregon, section 90.295(3) adds a real duty of its own: before accepting any payment the landlord must adopt written screening or admission criteria and give the applicant a written notice of the amount of the charge, the criteria, the screening process, the applicant’s right to dispute the accuracy of information supplied by a screening company or credit reporting agency, any right to appeal, the nondiscrimination policy, the rent and deposit amounts, and any renter’s liability insurance requirement. Since House Bill 2680 (Oregon Laws 2023, chapter 319, effective January 1, 2024), the landlord must also give the applicant confirmation of each screening, including a copy of the receipt from the screening company or agency.

Consistent Criteria

Written screening criteria must be applied consistently to every applicant. Inconsistency creates disparate-treatment exposure and liability under the Fair Housing Act, because bending the rule for one applicant and not another is powerful evidence of discrimination even where none was intended.

Adverse Action Notice — 15 U.S.C. Section 1681m(a)

If information in the report causes any unfavorable outcome — denying the application, requiring a co-signer or guarantor, requiring a larger deposit than another applicant would pay, or charging a higher rent — the landlord has taken an adverse action and owes an adverse action notice under 15 U.S.C. section 1681m(a). That is the section the Federal Trade Commission’s own landlord guidance points to. The notice is given after the decision, and it must state the name, address and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency that furnished the report, that the agency did not make the decision and cannot explain the specific reasons for it, and that the applicant may obtain a free copy of the report from that agency within sixty days and may dispute anything inaccurate or incomplete in it. If a numerical credit score was used in the decision, section 1681m(a)(2) also requires disclosing the score and the key factors that adversely affected it. The notice may be oral, written or electronic — the FTC says a written notice is the best practice, not a legal requirement — and it is owed even where the report was not the primary reason for the decision. In Oregon, the separate section 90.304 statement of reasons rides alongside it.

Oregon’s Real Pre-Denial Duty — State Law, Not the FCRA

Oregon does require a landlord to act before a denial. The duty is Oregon’s, not the FCRA’s, and it is narrower than the pre-adverse story it gets confused with. Under Oregon Revised Statutes section 90.304(5), added by Senate Bill 291 of the 2021 regular session (Oregon Laws 2021, chapter 577, section 3) and effective January 1, 2022: before denying an application for housing on the basis of criminal history, a landlord must (a) provide an opportunity for the applicant to submit supplemental evidence to explain, justify or negate the relevance of potentially negative information, and (b) conduct an individualized assessment of the applicant, including any supplemental evidence, taking into consideration the nature and severity of the incidents that would lead to a denial, the number and type of incidents, the time that has elapsed since the incidents occurred, and the age of the individual at the time.

Three limits keep that accurate. It reaches criminal-history denials only — subsection (5) does not touch a credit, income or rental-history denial. It fixes no response window: the statute says only “provide an opportunity,” so no number of days should be published as Oregon’s deadline. And it is not a duty to hand over the report — section 90.304(4) says expressly that, apart from naming the screening company, a landlord “need not disclose the results of an applicant screening or report to an applicant” beyond what the FCRA itself requires. What Oregon requires after the denial is the section 90.304(1) written statement of reasons within fourteen days, which under section 90.304(3) must name any screening company or consumer credit reporting agency relied on if not previously disclosed, explain why the applicant’s supplemental evidence did not adequately compensate for the factors behind the rejection, and state any right to appeal. A landlord who fails to comply owes the applicant one hundred dollars under section 90.304(6).

Inside Portland, more applies — unless the unit is one of the five exempted by subsection G. Under the Fair Access In Renting ordinance, Portland City Code section 30.01.086 (current version effective January 1, 2025, Ordinance 191973), a landlord using the ordinance’s low-barrier criteria must, under subsection E.2.b, consider “supplemental evidence provided by the applicant if provided at the time of application submittal” before denying for criminal history; and a landlord using its own, more prohibitive criteria must, under subsection F, “conduct an individual assessment for any basis upon which the landlord intends to deny an application, before issuing a denial.” Portland fixes no pre-denial response window either — supplemental evidence counts if it arrived with the application — but it adds a thirty-day post-denial appeal under subsection D.8, during which an approved appeal prequalifies the applicant at that landlord’s Portland properties for three months and waives the screening fee. Portland also requires the written notice of denial within two weeks of a denial made after an individual assessment (subsection F.2.c) and, for every applicant, the written acceptance, conditional acceptance or denial within two weeks after the evaluation is complete (subsection D.5). None of this is the FCRA.

How much can a landlord charge to screen an applicant in Oregon?

Unlike California, Oregon does not set a flat statewide dollar cap on a tenant screening charge, and you should not assume one exists. Instead, Oregon Revised Statutes section 90.295 uses an actual-cost model: the applicant screening charge may not be greater than the landlord’s average actual cost of screening applicants or the customary amount charged by tenant screening companies or consumer credit reporting agencies for a comparable level of screening. In practice that keeps most charges in the range of roughly thirty to sixty-five dollars, tied to what the report actually costs, but the number is not fixed by statute — it is fixed by the landlord’s real, documented cost. The official text is published by the Oregon Legislature at Oregon Revised Statutes chapter 90; third-party mirrors of this chapter have been slow to carry the 2025 amendments, so check the chapter text itself.

Four further duties ride with the charge. First, the landlord must give the applicant a receipt for the screening charge. Second, before accepting any payment, the landlord must give the applicant a written notice that states the amount of the charge, the screening or admission criteria, the process the landlord uses, the applicant’s right to dispute the accuracy of information, and related disclosures. Third, a landlord may require only a single applicant screening charge from a given applicant within any sixty-day period, regardless of how many units the landlord owns or manages, and must refund the charge within thirty days under section 90.295(5) if the unit is filled before the applicant is screened or if the applicant withdraws in writing before the landlord orders the screening. Fourth, under section 90.295(4) a landlord may not require a screening charge at all when the landlord knows or should know that no rental unit is available then, or will be within a reasonable future time, unless the applicant agrees otherwise in writing — which is why section 90.295(3)(c) also requires actual notice of the landlord’s best estimate of how many units of that type are or will be available, including the number of applications already accepted and still under consideration. The statutory damages of twice the charge plus two hundred fifty dollars in section 90.295(6)(b) run from any failure to comply with section 90.295 as to that applicant’s screening or charge — a missing receipt or a missing notice included — not only from an unrefunded charge.

The single most important recent change to Oregon tenant screening is Senate Bill 291 of the 2021 regular session, enacted as Oregon Laws 2021, chapter 577, approved by the Governor on July 19, 2021 and effective January 1, 2022. It is frequently — and wrongly — described as a 2019, 2022 or 2023 law; the measure is SB 291 of 2021, and 2023’s SB 291 is an unrelated education bill. The effective date is a computation rather than a date printed in the bill: the enrolled act carries no effective-date section, so ORS 171.022 supplies one — an Act of the Legislative Assembly takes effect on January 1 of the year after passage — which is exactly the date Legislative Counsel printed on the chapter law. Senate Bill 291 amended sections 90.295, 90.303, and 90.304 of the Oregon Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, tightening how criminal history may be used, expanding the disclosures a landlord must give with a screening charge, and codifying an individualized assessment before a criminal denial that mirrors the standard Portland had already adopted.

What Senate Bill 291 changed

• Individualized criminal assessment — the new section 90.304(5). A landlord may no longer apply a blanket criminal ban. Before denying an applicant on the basis of criminal history, the landlord must weigh the nature and severity of the incidents that would lead to a denial, the number and type of incidents, the time that has elapsed, and the applicant’s age at the time. This is Oregon law, not the FCRA — the FCRA has no pre-denial step in housing.
• Supplemental evidence. The landlord must give the applicant an opportunity to submit supplemental evidence to explain, justify, or negate the relevance of potentially negative information before the denial is final. The statute sets no deadline for that submission, so no day-count should be published as Oregon’s response window.
• Expanded fee disclosures. The written notice that must accompany a screening charge under section 90.295 now must also cover the landlord’s nondiscrimination policy, any appeal right, the rent and deposit amounts, and any renter’s-insurance requirement.
• Statement of reasons. Section 90.304 requires a written statement of the reasons for a denial within fourteen days, discussed in the criminal-record section below.

Can an Oregon landlord reject an applicant for a criminal record?

Yes, but only within tight limits. Oregon Revised Statutes section 90.303 tells a landlord what criminal history it may consider — a conviction for drug crimes other than marijuana, person crimes, sex offenses, financial-fraud crimes such as identity theft or forgery, and other crimes whose conduct would adversely affect the landlord’s or a tenant’s property or the health, safety, or right to peaceful enjoyment of the premises. Just as importantly, the statute lists what a landlord may not consider at all. On criminal history:

• An arrest that did not result in a conviction — and even a pending charge is off limits if the applicant is presently participating in a diversion, conditional-discharge or deferral-of-judgment program on it.
• A conviction or pending charge for conduct that is not presently illegal in Oregon, or that falls outside the listed categories: section 90.303(3) is permissive in form, so anything not on the list may not be considered.
• A conviction that has been set aside. This one is routinely mis-cited to section 90.303; the authority is ORS 137.225, under which a set-aside conviction, arrest, citation or charge is “deemed not to have occurred” and the person “may answer accordingly any questions relating to its occurrence.” Inside Portland, the low-barrier criteria go further still and bar reliance on a conviction that has been judicially dismissed, expunged, voided or invalidated.
• Conduct that is no longer illegal in Oregon, such as the possession or use of marijuana, and an applicant’s status as a medical-marijuana cardholder or patient.
• A pending charge if the applicant is participating in a diversion, conditional-discharge, or deferral-of-judgment program on that charge.

On top of those categorical limits, an overbroad criminal-records policy can still create Fair Housing Act exposure under the discriminatory-effects rule at 24 CFR section 100.500, reinstated effective May 1, 2023 and currently the subject of a pending HUD proposal to remove it — a proposal only, so the rule is still in force. Be careful with the older citation you will see on vendor pages: HUD’s 2016 criminal-records guidance was withdrawn effective September 25, 2025 (Federal Register, Notice of the Withdrawal of OGC Guidance Documents, Docket No. FR-6617-N-01), and its 2022 implementation memo was withdrawn effective September 17, 2025. The Fair Housing Act itself is unchanged — withdrawing a guidance document repeals neither the statute nor the case law — but note what section 100.500 actually is: a burden-shifting litigation standard. It imposes no individualized-assessment step and no pre-denial notice; that idea came from the withdrawn 2016 guidance. In Oregon the individualized assessment is mandatory anyway, because state law makes it so and does not merely advise it: the landlord must give the applicant a chance to submit supplemental evidence and must weigh the nature and severity of the offense, the number of incidents, the time since the conduct, and the applicant’s age at the time.

What else section 90.303 bars: eviction records, pandemic rent debt, and immigration status

Section 90.303 is not only a criminal-history statute. Three of its subsections take whole categories of information off the table, and two of them are recent enough that most screening checklists have not caught up.

• Eviction records — section 90.303(1). A landlord may not consider a previous action to recover possession under ORS 105.100 to 105.168 if the action was dismissed or produced a general judgment for the applicant before the application was submitted, or produced a general judgment against the applicant that was entered five or more years before the application or was entered on claims that arose on or after April 1, 2020 and before March 1, 2022. A prior eviction is a lawful denial reason only when it survives all three of those bars.
• Pandemic-era rent debt — section 90.303(5). A landlord may not consider an applicant’s unpaid rent — including rent reflected in judgments or in referrals of debt to a collection agency — that accrued on or after April 1, 2020 and before March 1, 2022. That is the single most common negative item a screening report still surfaces from those two years, and in Oregon it is off limits.
• Immigration status and Social Security numbers — section 90.303(6). Added by Senate Bill 599 of 2025 (Oregon Laws 2025, chapter 226, section 4) and operative June 27, 2025, this subsection bars a landlord from inquiring about the immigration or citizenship status of an applicant or a household member, and from rejecting an application because the applicant or a household member does not produce a Social Security number or prove lawful presence in the United States, provided the applicant agrees to provide identification under ORS 90.306.

Section 90.306, added by the same 2025 act, is the other half of that rule and applies to tenants as well as applicants: except as required by a federal rent-subsidy program, a landlord may not inquire into immigration or citizenship status, may not discriminate on actual or perceived status, and — where the landlord requires identity verification — must accept any of, or any combination of, a Social Security card or evidence of an SSN, a certified copy of a record of live birth, a permanent resident card, an immigrant or nonimmigrant visa, an ITIN card, a passport, driver license or other government-issued identification regardless of expiration date, or any nongovernment identification that permits reasonable verification of identity. ORS 90.388 separately bars disclosing or threatening to disclose that status to harass, retaliate or intimidate. A violation of section 90.306 or 90.388 is treated as discrimination under ORS 90.390(1), with the remedies in ORS 90.390(2) and (3), and as an unlawful practice for the purposes of ORS 659A.885.

Must an Oregon landlord give a reason for the denial?

Yes. Section 90.304 requires a landlord who denies an application to deliver a written statement of one or more reasons for the denial within fourteen days. The statement may be a checklist of common reasons — insufficient rental history, unacceptable criminal history, insufficient income, negative credit information, or a prior possession action, which section 90.304(2)(a)(C) permits as a checkbox but only for an action that section 90.303(1) does not put off limits — but it must also name any tenant screening company or consumer credit reporting agency that supplied a report if that was not already disclosed, address any supplemental evidence the applicant submitted and why it was insufficient, and state any right to appeal. An applicant may recover one hundred dollars from a landlord who fails to comply, under section 90.304(6). Keep the two Oregon duties straight: this statement of reasons is a post-denial duty owed on every denial, while section 90.304(5) is a pre-denial duty owed only on a criminal-history denial. Neither is the federal section 1681m(a) adverse action notice, which is owed separately whenever a consumer report contributed to the outcome.

Which Oregon cities add their own screening rules?

Oregon’s statewide rules are a floor, and two cities build significantly on top of them. If a property sits inside Portland or Eugene, the local ordinance controls in addition to the state statute, so identify the city before you screen.

Does the Portland FAIR ordinance apply to every rental in the city?

No. Portland City Code section 30.01.086 G exempts five categories of unit, and that is the first thing to check, because if an exemption applies none of the rest of the ordinance does. Section 30.01.086 does not apply to a leasing process for a dwelling unit that is:

• Regulated as affordable housing by a federal, state or local government for households earning no more than 80% of median household income and subject to the Multnomah County Coordinated Access System or a formal referral agreement with a non-profit service provider or government agency;
• Not rented to, or advertised for rental to, the general public, including advertisements on online platforms with or without a fee;
• Shared with a landlord who uses the dwelling unit as a primary residence, or shared with an existing tenant holding a separate rental agreement for the same dwelling unit (using the Title 33 definition of dwelling unit rather than the ORS 90.100 one);
• One unit of a duplex where the landlord’s principal residence is the other unit; or
• An accessory dwelling unit subject to the Act where the owner lives on the lot, or the other unit on the lot where the owner occupies the accessory dwelling unit.

Subsection G.2 adds that where local, state or federal funding or loan requirements conflict with section 30.01.086, the funding or loan requirement controls — but only as to the conflicting portion.

The Portland duties landlords most often miss

• Screening-fee caps — subsection D.7, layered on top of ORS 90.295. If the landlord runs the whole screening through a professional screening company, the fee may not exceed what that company charged. If the landlord does some but not all of it in house, the fee may not exceed 25% above the company’s cost. If the landlord does all of it in house with no screening company, the fee may not exceed 10% above what a professional screening company serving the Portland-Metro area would charge for the same work. The state statute’s “customary amount” benchmark is not a defense inside Portland.
• Seventy-two hours of advance notice — subsection C.1.a. A landlord who advertises a unit must publish the rental notice at least 72 hours before the open application period starts, and the notice must say when applications will first be accepted, what factors the landlord will consider if a screening fee is charged, and whether the unit is an accessible dwelling unit. Anything received before the period opens is time-stamped as eight hours after it opens (C.2.a(2)), and an applicant may demand a record of the date and time within five business days (C.2.a(6)).
• Identification — subsection D.1. A landlord may not treat an application as incomplete because the applicant or a household member has no Social Security number or proof of lawful presence, may not inquire about a household member’s immigration status, and must accept evidence of an SSN, a permanent res