Oregon Has No Right-to-Dry Law but Protects Cooling Devices (ORS 94.779(6))

First, the negative, because it is the question most Oregon owners are asking. ORS 94.550 to 94.783, the Oregon Planned Community Act, and ORS 100.005 to 100.627, the Oregon Condominium Act, contain no reference to clotheslines, drying racks, drying lines or solar clothes drying. Oregon's covenant-voiding provisions for energy equipment are specific and enumerated: solar panels at ORS 94.778, electric vehicle charging stations at ORS 94.762, and portable cooling devices at ORS 94.779(6). A clothesline is none of those, and the solar provision in ORS 94.778 is written around a roof or other exterior portion of a building on which solar panels may be installed for obtaining solar access as described in ORS 215.044 and 227.190, which does not reach a laundry line. An Oregon association may therefore prohibit outdoor drying, and the owner's remedy is to change the covenant, not to invoke a statute.

What a portable cooling device is. ORS 94.779(6) borrows the definition from ORS 90.355, the landlord-tenant provision enacted by 2022 c.86 after Oregon's deadly heat events. Under ORS 90.355(1)(c) a portable cooling device includes air conditioners and evaporative coolers, including devices mounted in a window or designed to sit on the floor, but not devices whose installation or use requires alteration to the dwelling unit. A window unit and a floor-standing portable air conditioner are in. A ducted central system, a mini-split, or anything that means cutting into the structure is out, because that is an alteration and the association's architectural review governs it in the ordinary way.

The planned community rule is short. ORS 94.779(6) voids the restriction unless the installation or use would violate building codes or state or federal law, or would violate the device manufacturer's written safety guidelines, or unless the restrictions are only to require that the device be removed from October 1 through April 30. That seasonal removal window is the practical limit an Oregon HOA can impose: it may require the unit to come out for the winter half of the year, and it may point to a code violation or the manufacturer's own safety instructions, and that is the whole list.

The condominium rule is longer, and this is where the two acts diverge. ORS 100.023(6) starts from the same voiding rule but adds grounds the planned community version does not have. A condominium association may restrict a device that would interfere with the common elements of the condominium, or that would require amperage the power service to the building, unit or circuit cannot accommodate. It may restrict a window installation where the window is a necessary egress from the unit, where the device would interfere with the unit owner's ability to lock a window accessible from outside, or where the device requires brackets or hardware that would damage or void the warranty of the window or frame, puncture the building envelope or otherwise cause significant damage. It may require that the device be adequately drained to prevent damage, that it be installed in a manner that prevents risk of falling, that it be installed by building maintenance or a licensed contractor, and that it be removed from October 1 through April 30. A condominium owner in a stacked building therefore faces a far larger set of legitimate conditions than an owner in a detached planned community, and none of the amperage, egress, falling or licensed-installer grounds appear in ORS 94.779(6) at all.

Dates and coverage. Both provisions originate in 2017 c.423; the cooling device subsections were added by 2022 c.86, sections 3 and 4, the same act that created ORS 90.355 for rental housing. ORS 94.779 was further amended by 2025 c.2. For a Class I or Class II planned community created before January 1, 2002 that was not created under the Act, ORS 94.572(1) applies ORS 94.779 only to the extent it is consistent with that community's governing documents, and ORS 94.573 supplies the amendment procedure to remove an inconsistency.

There is no Oregon agency that enforces this. 779(6) makes the restriction unenforceable and that none of the three exceptions applies. 780(3) requires that suit within one year after discovery or identification of the violation. 023(6) the same way. On clotheslines there is nothing to enforce and nothing to defend with: because no Oregon statute voids a line-drying covenant, an owner cited for a clothesline is left with the community's own hearing process and, if the members want the rule gone, an amendment of the governing documents.