As of mid-December 2024, Oregon’s state courts have cleared roughly 47,000 residential evictions thanks to a law that state lawmakers passed two years ago.
The law, passed under House Bill 2001 in 2023, requires state courts to set aside or seal past residential evictions that meet specific criteria. Under the law, evictions that meet the criteria will no longer appear on a person’s publicly available record.
How the Eviction Record Clearance process works
Under the law, Oregon state courts are required to review and dismiss all residential eviction judgments prior to Jan. 1, 2014. In addition to those evictions, later evictions may be removed.
Oregon state court officials said the law may also dismiss other residential evictions. These evictions include eviction judgments without money awards that meet specific criteria. Court officials added that other residential evictions with money awards can also be cleared under the law. They said that if a money award for an eviction has expired, been paid or been discharged by a bankruptcy court, it may be eligible to be cleared under specific criteria.
But court officials said that if a money award for an eviction after Jan. 1, 2014 remains active, it is ineligible under the criteria.
Officials said that residential evictions involving money awards where a court ordered someone to leave a property more than five years ago are eligible to be cleared under the law. In addition to those evictions, they said that residential evictions with stipulated judgments that happened at least 12 months ago are eligible to be cleared under the law. According to the Oregon Judicial Department, a stipulated judgment is when two parties agree to resolve a case in a written agreement that a court approves.
Court officials said they are actively reviewing eligible evictions, starting with the most recent ones on people’s records. They said they are only at the beginning of the process.
In late January 2025, court officials reported a backlog of roughly 50,000 cases. Court officials said the goal is to finish reviewing all cases by the end of the year. After that, cases will be cleared annually.
Individuals can search for their eviction records using the Oregon Judicial Department’s free online records search tool.
Impact of the Eviction Record Clearance Program
Kevin Cronin is the director of policy and advocacy for Housing Oregon, a statewide association of housing nonprofits, organizations, companies and governments that advocates on the state and local level for policies and programs to expand affordable housing. Having experienced a no-cause eviction before himself, Cronin said the eviction-clearing program is a “big deal” for tenants who have faced similar challenges.
Before the law was enacted, Cronin said that the only way people could get evictions cleared was through the courts, a step many renters were hesitant to take. Now, he said the eviction-clearing program does it “automatically.”
“Now, people have an easier time in the screening process,” Cronin said.
Cronin said the impact of the law goes beyond getting housing.
“Evictions can bring down someone’s employment chances,” Cronin said. “Evictions can also affect your credit.”
Tim Morris is the executive director of the Springfield-Eugene Tenant Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting renters’ rights. He echoed a similar opinion to Cronin’s on the prior process that required people to go to court to clear an eviction from their record.
In the past, Morris said that he has heard stories of people who had tried to go to court to get evictions cleared but, for “whatever reason, just didn’t go through.”
“But they moved on with their life … and it was challenging,” Morris said.
Morris said the eviction clearance program also helps remove barriers for tenants with old evictions on their records, some of which they might not even know about.
“Sometimes, we heard on our hotline from tenants who weren’t even aware that they had an eviction that was 7, 8 or 10 years old,” Morris said. “They were denied over and over again for housing because of this extremely old eviction that they forgot about. They didn’t even know.”
Lane County Property Owners Association President Tia Politi commented on the impact of the eviction-clearance program in relation to tenant screening. She said it doesn’t significantly change how landlords evaluate tenants since they already could not consider older or dismissed evictions.
“This doesn’t really affect landlords at all,” Politi said. “But I think it does affect tenants … It’s a positive impact for a renter who’s had an eviction in their past. It’s kind of like the scarlet letter.”
