Is Medical Marijuana Right For You?

Now that I've got your attention I want to get your thoughts on allowing tenants to reside on your property who have a medical marijuana card. In property management, there is always something to consider. In Oregon, the voters passed the Medical Marijuana Act in 1998 authorizing the use of medical marijuana, and exempting such use from criminal liability under state law. Today, Oregon is home to 35,500 marijuana grow sites producing marijuana for nearly 55,000 medical marijuana patients. How to handle this law as a landlord or property manager has been a little hazy, pun intended.

Last year I performed an inspection on my duplex and during the inspection I noticed 5 six foot tall marijuana plants in the second bedroom (kind of hard not to notice that). The tenant had medical marijuana cards for herself and two others he was growing for. Although we did not have to allow her to grow for others, I couldn’t do anything about the growing he was doing for himself and his wife (he was within the law in this case). I couldn’t charge an additional deposit and I had to allow her to smoke inside the unit because they can’t smoke marijuana in public according to the law. This is because it would be discrimination due to their disability and in Oregon BOLI (Bureau of Labor and Industries) could investigate a complaint of discrimination on this basis, even in housing.

So, what do you do? Fortunately, the Oregon Supreme Court decided in the case of Emerald Steel Fabricators v Bureau of Labor and Industries that an employer can terminate an employee who used (outside of work) medical marijuana, even though they followed all the rules for using medical marijuana. So what did that mean for housing though? On November 4th, 2010, BOLI released a policy statement that they would no longer investigate employment OR housing claims of discrimination pertaining to the use of medical marijuana. This is the first “good news” for property owners.

And the second is that as of right now, a landlord in Oregon doesn’t have to rent to someone who is a medical marijuana patient. You certainly can if you choose to, but you do not have to. So it looks like more due diligence from landlords/property owners like myself to decide if we do or don’t want to rent to medical marijuana card holders in the future. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this issue for our state but if you live in another state I would like to hear how you are dealing with this issue.

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Dulcey is a member of Rentec Direct who provides Property Management Software, tenant ach payment processing,tenant credit check, and criminal reports for property managers and landlords.