Can a California HOA Ban the American Flag? A San Diego Fight Goes National
Overview A San Diego County HOA has been threatening homeowners with fines for flying the American flag in front of their own homes, and those homeowners have refused to back down. Their fight has now drawn national coverage, days before the country marks its 250th...
Can My California HOA Avoid Elections and Just Appoint Board Members?
Overview California law hands HOAs a quiet power that bad HOA boards have learned to weaponize. When a seat opens up, the board can usually fill it by appointment, with no vote of the members at all. That power exists for a sensible reason, which is to keep an HOA...
Can My California HOA Block My Power of Attorney From Voting?
Overview It’s close to axiomatic in California HOA law that only members may vote in HOA elections. Homeowner-side attorneys say it, HOA-side attorneys say it, and the Davis-Stirling Act says it. Yet a powerful exception cuts straight through that rule, and far too...
Can My California HOA Fine Me for a Brown or Dead Lawn?
Overview Summer water bills climb, local watering restrictions tighten, and more California homeowners let a thirsty lawn go brown or replace it with low-water landscaping. Then the violation letter shows up, demanding that the homeowner restore a green lawn or face a...
HOA Loss Assessment Coverage: Can Insurance Pay My Special Assessment?
Overview Your HOA announces a major special assessment. Perhaps there was a fire or another disaster, or perhaps there was some other major loss of the common areas. Regardless, every owner owes a large sum, and owes it soon. For many homeowners, that announcement...
Can I Force My HOA to Turn a Claim Over to Its Insurance?
Overview A homeowner with a claim against the HOA almost always wants the HOA to turn that claim over to its insurance carrier. And when an HOA refuses to do that, such homeowners frequently approach us to determine whether they can force that to happen. We’ve...
Can My HOA Charge Its Legal Fees to My Account?
Overview When a California homeowner opens an HOA account statement and finds that the HOA has charged its legal fees to that account, the threshold question is whether the HOA had any authority to put them there. After all, it should go without saying that an HOA...
Why So Many California Homeowners Hate Their HOA
Overview Based on the volume of comments I’ve received from our Reddit account and listeners to my podcast, HOA HELL, who bluntly write things like “Fuck HOAs,” “You’re stupid to buy into an HOA,” “Who would ever live in an HOA community,” and “HOAs should be banned,”...
Can My California HOA Refuse to Give Me the SB 326 Balcony Inspection Report?
Overview Effective January 1, 2026, the Legislature made it clear that California HOA members were entitled to receive a copy of the inspection reports mandated by SB 326, California’s “Balcony Law.” That entitlement reached a category of documents many bad HOAs would...
Why Do My California HOA Fees Keep Going Up?
Overview HOA fees (i.e., dues) move in two directions, and both can signal trouble. Some HOAs raise dues year after year, and homeowners want to know why and whether the increases are even legal. Other HOAs do the opposite, freezing dues for years to look like heroes,...
Can My California HOA Stop My Kids from Playing in the Common Areas?
Overview Bad HOA boards across California routinely tell parents that their kids can't play on the common area grass, can’t ride their bicycles anywhere in the common area, or tell residents that they can't gather a group for recreation in the community park. Many...
Can My California HOA Ban or Regulate E-Bikes and E-Scooters?
Overview E-bikes and e-scooters have exploded in popularity across California’s HOA communities. And with that explosion, the Legislature has passed a variety of laws, many of which are scattered across California’s Vehicle Code, governing how these devices, and the...
Can My California HOA Ban a Flag I’m Flying on My Property?
Overview A flag is one of the most personal statements a homeowner can make from their own property, and it’s also one of the displays HOAs frequently try to police. Maybe you’re flying a political flag, a pride flag, a sports team flag, a flag honoring a cause, or...
Can My California HOA Restrict or Block a Junior ADU?
Overview A Junior ADU, or JADU, is not a backyard cottage. It is a small living space, no larger than 500 square feet, carved out of the walls of your existing single-family home, with its own entrance and an efficiency kitchen. Because a JADU lives inside the...
Who Pays for Water Damage in My California HOA After a Wildfire or Disaster?
Overview After a wildfire or other declared disaster, water damage rarely arrives in a single, tidy form, and the answer to who pays depends on what caused the water and where it went. The firefighters who saved the building may have soaked units that never burned. A...
California HOA Balcony Inspection Law: What SB 326 Requires
Overview California’s Balcony Law exists because of a tragedy. In 2015, a wood balcony in Berkeley collapsed and killed six young people and injured several more, and investigators traced the failure to dry rot and failed waterproofing, the exact conditions a proper...
What Qualifies as a Health and Safety Violation Under California’s $100 HOA Fine Cap?
Overview California's HOA fine rules cap most penalties at $100 per violation, but Civil Code 5850 carves out one exception that lets an HOA board impose a higher fine: a violation that may cause an adverse health or safety impact. That exception has quickly become...
Can My California HOA Use Drones to Surveil My Property?
Overview Drones have become cheap, capable, and widely available, and HOA boards have noticed. What started as an occasional curiosity has become a growing enforcement trend. Some California HOA boards have begun deploying drones, or hiring vendors who operate them,...
Can Outsiders Trespass Through My California HOA?
Overview Most California HOA disputes involve conflicts between homeowners and their boards. This one is different. It involves people who have no relationship with the HOA at all, no ownership interest, no membership rights, and no legal basis for being there, yet...
Can My California HOA Fine Me for a Violation I Fixed Before the Hearing?
Overview People familiar with my prior publications know where I stand on AB 130 and the chaos that it has caused under the guise of helping homeowners deal with abusive HOA fines. And those same people know that I’ve also written about AB 130’s positive attributes,...
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