Renting an EV Charger Spot: What a Lease Can Stop

The sentence that settles this for a renter is usually not in the lease at all. In Oregon it sits in the landlord-tenant chapter, and it is one line long: under ORS 90.462(2), a landlord "may prohibit installation or use of a charging station installed and used in compliance with this section only if the premises do not have at least one parking space per dwelling unit."

One space per unit. That is the entire test, and if the building passes it the landlord's answer is on a 60-day clock.

Then go looking for that sentence in your own state. In most of them it is not there.

There is a decoy one chapter over, and it is an easy one to take. ORS 91.265 has everything a renter would want: landlord, tenant, charging station, the same 60-day approval clock, bonding requirements, an insurance figure. It reads like the answer. Its own definitions kill it — "'Rental unit' means a structure or part of a structure that is used as a commercial space by a tenant." Commercial. That section governs shop and office leases; the residential twin is 90.462, one chapter earlier, and the two run nearly word for word. The cheapest way to tell them apart is the insurance line: 91.265(5)(f) names $1 million, 90.462(10) names $100,000. Same drafting, entirely different tenants.

None of this is legal advice; I am not a lawyer. Everything quoted below was read on 29 August 2026, and each link goes to the text I read.

Four states wrote a statute for the tenant, and they wrote four different ones

Only one of those four links is a state server, and the grade matters differently in each row. Colorado's own site returned 403 Forbidden to every request for the statute on 29 August 2026, and ilga.gov refused the connection outright, so the Colorado and Illinois text above comes from a commercial reprint marked current as of 1 January 2025. That is a real limitation, and a double one: an amendment passed during 2025 or 2026 would not show there, and the reprint carries no enactment or amendment history line to check the date against. If either state is yours, take the section number to a county law library and ask for the current text before you rely on it. Oregon's link is a mirror rather than a state server too, but it names its source — the legislature's own ORS chapter 90 file — and dates that retrieval, which is the minimum a reprint owes you.

Oregon's has the sharpest edges anyway. Installation and removal must be done by someone holding a licence to act at minimum as a journeyman electrician — subsection (5) says so notwithstanding the general exemption in ORS 479.540, which means the do-it-yourself route is closed by statute rather than by the landlord. Subsection (7) then hands the landlord a power the other three lack: if cumulative charging on the premises requires additional infrastructure improvements, the cost of those improvements may be assessed to each tenant who has installed or will install a station. You can be the fourth tenant in the building and inherit a share of the upgrade.

Subsection (11) closes the door on manufactured dwelling park tenancies, which are governed by ORS 90.505 to 90.850. If you rent a space in a park, that section is not yours.

California's statute approves you, then lists four ways out

Section 1947.6(a) is written as a command: the lessor "shall approve" a written request that meets the section and complies with the lessor's procedural approval process. Then (b) removes whole categories of building from the section's reach.

It does not apply where charging stations already exist for lessees at a ratio of 10 percent or more of designated spaces. It does not apply where parking is not provided as part of the lease agreement. It does not apply where there are fewer than five parking spaces. And it does not apply where the dwelling is subject to a residential rent control ordinance — though that fourth exemption stops mattering for any lease executed, extended or renewed on or after 1 January 2019, with a further carve-out at (b)(5) for cities that adopted their own tenant charging ordinance on or before 1 January 2018.

Read (b)(2) twice before you celebrate (a). Plenty of California leases are silent about parking and the tenant simply uses a space by custom. Silence is the exemption.

Subsection (g)(3) is the requirement nobody expects. Your written request has to describe how, when and where the work will be done, "consistent with those items specified in the 'Permitting Checklist' of the 'Zero-Emission Vehicles in California: Community Readiness Guidebook' published by the Office of Planning and Research." That is a real document — 180 pages, still posted as a PDF. The "Plug-In Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Permitting Checklist" opens on page 111, and the checklist proper is the table on page 112, split into Residential and Non-Residential columns and starting with a Phase 1 Pre-Work row: establish the intended use of the equipment, obtain an address for the location, determine ownership of the site. A landlord who has never heard of it is not being difficult. Almost nobody has heard of it. Print those two pages and attach them.

Two more clauses shape the money. Under (g)(4) the tenant pays the lessor all costs of the lessor's installation before any work begins, including permits, supervision, construction and, if the contractor requires it, performance bonds. Under (h) the tenant carries personal liability coverage up to ten times the annual rent — unless (i) applies, and (i) is worth engineering for: no insurance may be required where the station has been certified by an OSHA-approved Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory and the station and any associated alterations to the dwelling's electrical system are performed by a licensed electrician. A cheaper uncertified unit fitted by a handyman costs you an insurance policy sized to your rent.

One more thing for anyone who has read the owner-side statutes: California amended §4745 effective 1 January 2026 to delete the additional-insured requirement for owners. Section 1947.6 was last amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 855 and got no such edit. The tenant provision is now the stricter of the two.

Where no statute exists, the alteration clause is the statute

Colorado and Illinois both begin with "notwithstanding any provision in the lease to the contrary." That phrase is doing enormous work. Without it — which is to say in most of the country — the clause that decides your case is the four-line alterations paragraph you skimmed at signing, the one that forbids attaching anything to the walls or altering the electrical system without prior written consent.

Three other paragraphs matter as much and get read even less.

The first is the parking exhibit. Assigned space, numbered space, or "parking is available on a first-come basis"? Every tenant statute in the table attaches the right to a space you control, so first-come parking walks straight into the problem California's (b)(2) exemption describes.

Then the utilities clause, which is where the money actually sits. If electricity for your unit is in your name and the garage is on the landlord's meter, charging from a garage receptacle quietly moves consumption from your bill onto theirs — and that, rather than any objection to the equipment, is what a good many "no charging" replies are really about. It is fixable with a number instead of a rule.

The third is the surrender clause. Whatever goes up on the wall, that paragraph decides what the wall has to look like when you hand it back, and therefore what comes out of your deposit.

Illinois adds a routing rule that catches tenants in condo buildings with an absentee owner. Under 765 ILCS 1085/35(h), a tenant whose landlord is an owner in an association "must obtain approval to do so through the tenant's landlord or owner and in accordance with those provisions of this Act applicable to associations." Your application travels through your landlord to the board, and it is the association sections — not §35 — that govern how it ends.

Hawaii shows how easily this line blurs. HRS §196-7.5(a) says no person shall be prevented by any "covenant, declaration, bylaw, restriction, deed, lease, term, provision, condition, codicil, contract, or similar agreement, however worded" from installing a charging system, and voids anything contrary to it. The word lease is right there in the statute. Read to the end of the sentence and the right attaches to the stall of a "multi-family residential dwelling or townhouse that the person owns" — and subsection (c) repeats the limit in plainer words, a stall at a "townhouse unit owned by that person." What triggers the protection is owning the home, not holding the lease, so a tenant in that same building gets nothing from it.

New York reads the same way once you can see the text. Real Property Law §339-ll sits in Article 9-B, the Condominium Act, and nysenate.gov would not serve it on 29 August 2026 — the copy below is a commercial reprint marked current to 1 January 2026, so grade it accordingly. It voids a covenant or by-law that prohibits or unreasonably restricts a station "within an owner's unit or in a designated parking space," and gives the association sixty days to deny an application in writing before it is deemed approved. The words tenant, lessee and lease do not appear in the section at all.

The outlet already on the wall is a different question from the circuit that is not

For a lot of renters the realistic ask is not a wall-mounted level 2 unit. It is permission to reach a 120-volt receptacle that already exists, plus an agreed way to pay for what comes out of it.

Illinois is the only one of the four that names this case: 35(a)(1) covers "a level 1 receptacle or outlet, a level 2 receptacle or outlet, or a level 2 electric vehicle charging system." Colorado's 38-12-601(1)(a) covers a level 1 or level 2 system, and its definitions describe level 1 as 120-volt AC with a J1772-compliant cord connector. Both definitions require compliance with Article 625 of the National Electrical Code — a code article written into the statute by name, which is a useful thing to point at when a landlord asks what standard you propose to meet.

Whether level 1 is enough is a separate calculation, and for most commutes it lands closer than people expect: the overnight arithmetic is in how many kWh you actually need.

On the money side, Illinois 35(d)(1)(A) contains the most useful sentence in any of these statutes, because it tells both parties how to compute the bill. Costs "shall be based on" either an embedded submetering device, or "a reasonable calculation of cost, based on the average miles driven, efficiency of the electric vehicle calculated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the cost of electricity for the common area." Subparagraph (B) adds that the figure is meant as reasonable reimbursement and "shall not be set to deliberately exceed" it. Colorado's version at (1)(b)(I) allows reimbursement for the actual electricity cost or, alternatively, a reasonable fee for access, and lets a network fee be passed through when the equipment sits on a network. Oregon simply makes the tenant responsible for the cost of electricity and leaves the method open.

Illinois is also the only one of the four that puts a consequence behind any of this. Section 35(f) makes a landlord who willfully violates the section liable for actual damages plus a civil penalty to the tenant of up to $1,000, and 35(g) provides that in an action to enforce compliance the court "shall award reasonable attorney's fees to a prevailing plaintiff." Shall, not may — the same drafting the owner-side statutes in California and New York use, and the reason a letter citing subsection (g) reads differently from one that does not.

To argue any of that you need the landlord's own per-kWh cost for the common area, which comes off their utility bill rather than a national average — the same document-reading exercise as pulling the real overnight price off a tariff sheet.

Where the ask stops being a conversation and becomes a construction project: a new circuit, a new receptacle, anything hardwired. That is licensed, permitted work, inspected by the authority having jurisdiction, and Oregon writes the licence requirement into the statute itself. Illinois §35(c)(2)(B) makes the tenant agree in writing to engage "a duly licensed and registered electrical contractor familiar with the installation and code requirements" before placing a system at all; Colorado carries the identical wording at §38-12-601(3)(b)(II), but only for a system going somewhere other tenants can reach. No statute in this group authorises a tenant to touch a panel, and none of them protects an extension cord run under a garage door.

In three states out of four, the box on the wall leaves when you do

This is the part tenants most often assume runs the other way.

Colorado 38-12-601(5): a charging system installed at the tenant's cost "is property of the tenant," and on termination a removable unit may be taken away or sold to the landlord or another tenant for an agreed price, with nobody obliged to buy it. Illinois 35(e) says the same thing in almost the same words. Oregon 90.462(8) makes the station the tenant's personal property "unless a landlord and tenant negotiate a different outcome," which is an invitation to negotiate one in the addendum rather than during the move-out inspection.

California's section says nothing about ownership. It says at (g)(5) that the tenant pays, as part of rent, for electricity, damage, maintenance, repair, removal and replacement. Whatever is not in the statute has to be in your written agreement, and a hardwired unit fed by a circuit the landlord paid to install is not obviously yours to unbolt.

Then there is the deposit. Illinois 35(a)(2)(A)(iii) lets the landlord charge a security deposit specifically "to cover costs to restore the property to its original condition if the tenant removes the electric vehicle charging system." That is the honest trade for taking your equipment with you: somebody patches the wall, and the money is already sitting with the landlord. Colorado 38-12-601(4)(d) and Illinois 35(d)(4) each add that you can be required to remove the equipment when that is reasonably necessary for repair or maintenance of the landlord's property — mid-tenancy, not only at the end. Both also bind each successive tenant with exclusive rights to that space, so the addendum you sign outlives your lease and lands on whoever rents the space next.

So the envelope to assemble, whichever column your state falls in, holds five things: the section number if there is one; the parking exhibit showing which space is yours; a one-page description of the work with the installer's licence number on it; the electricity method you propose, submeter or EPA-efficiency calculation, with a figure attached; and a removal-and-restoration paragraph naming who owns the equipment on the day you hand back the keys. Date the copy you keep. The Colorado and Illinois text above was current only to January 2025 and printed no amendment history to check that against, and in an argument two years from now the version that matters is the one neither of you can produce.