To amend sections 319.20, 1923.06, 1923.08, 1923.09, 3781.10, and 5321.17 and to enact sections 120.522, 120.531, 319.204, 1923.111, 1923.16, and 3781.181 of the Revised Code to revise the law governing eviction, residential building code enforcement, and real property transfers.
SB83 makes broad changes to Ohio law in three main areas: eviction procedure, residential building code enforcement, and real property transfer administration. On the housing side, the bill creates a Legal Services Housing Defense Fund to finance civil legal services for low-income Ohioans facing housing instability, and it authorizes legal aid societies, certain eligible organizations, other nonprofits, and in some cases private counsel to receive grants to provide housing defense services. The bill also adds new notice, service, mediation, and court-record privacy requirements in eviction cases, including a requirement that eviction summonses inform tenants about legal aid, jury trial and mediation rights, and record suppression rules.
The bill also revises county auditor procedures for transferring real property and apportioning taxes and assessments when only part of a parcel is conveyed. It requires a grantee, before a conveyance is endorsed or registered, to identify a natural person who owns or controls the grantee or, if none exists, to designate a natural-person agent. These provisions are aimed at clarifying ownership information and improving tax and transfer administration for both ordinary real estate and manufactured or mobile home conveyances.
In the building code area, SB83 directs the Board of Building Standards to make residential code certification more accessible, to review and revise certification rules for residential inspectors and related roles, and to adopt rules implementing a new process for third-party private inspectors. It requires local building departments to review plans and perform inspections within 30 days, and if they do not, allows owners or general contractors to hire qualified private inspectors or certified departments to perform the work, with the results sent back to the local department. The bill also allows a general contractor or owner to request a certificate of occupancy from either the local department or the Board of Building Standards.
The bill’s eviction provisions are among the most significant changes to landlord-tenant law. It expands service options, requires more detailed summons language, creates suppressed court records at the start of an eviction case, and allows nonbinding mediation on request by either party, with a stay of proceedings while mediation occurs. It also changes notice rules for certain short-term tenancies involving alleged criminal activity and requires landlords to include legal-aid information in those notices. These changes would affect landlords, tenants, courts, clerks, legal aid providers, county auditors, building departments, and property buyers or transferees.
No committee transcript or vote history was provided, so there is no recorded legislative sentiment in the supplied materials. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears to combine tenant-protection and access-to-justice provisions with administrative and regulatory reforms. Likely points of contention include the new eviction privacy and mediation requirements, the creation and funding of the housing defense fund, the expanded role of private inspectors and deadlines imposed on local building departments, and the new ownership-disclosure requirement for non-natural-person grantees.
SB83 would amend multiple sections of the Revised Code and enact new sections governing eviction procedure, housing legal services funding, county property-transfer administration, and building-code enforcement. It would create a new state fund for housing defense legal services, require new eviction notices and suppressed-record procedures, authorize mediation in eviction cases, require ownership/control disclosures for non-natural-person grantees, and establish a framework for third-party private inspections and faster plan-review timelines under the state building code. The bill would directly affect landlord-tenant practice, legal aid providers, county auditors and treasurers, local courts, and building departments.
No committee discussion or vote record was provided, so there is no documented sentiment from legislative debate or roll calls in the supplied materials. From the structure of the bill, it appears to reflect a policy mix of tenant protections, access to counsel, and administrative streamlining, which may attract support from housing advocates and legal aid interests while drawing scrutiny from landlords, local governments, and some building-code administrators. The overall tone of the text is reform-oriented rather than punitive, with an emphasis on access, transparency, and procedural safeguards.
The most likely areas of contention are the eviction-related protections and the building-code enforcement changes. Landlords and property owners may object to suppressed eviction records, mandatory legal-aid language, and the mediation stay, while tenant advocates are likely to support those provisions as improving due process and housing stability. Local building departments may resist the 30-day review deadline and the ability of owners or contractors to bypass delayed local inspections by hiring private inspectors, while supporters may view those changes as a way to reduce bottlenecks. The new requirement that non-natural-person grantees identify an owner, controller, or agent may also raise concerns for entities with complex ownership structures.