Overview

A cluster of rare childhood cancers in Ladera Ranch, a large master-planned community in South Orange County, has forced a question thousands of California HOA homeowners never thought to ask. Residents there suspect that years of pesticide and herbicide spraying on HOA-maintained common areas played a role, and their HOA responded by pausing certain applications and reviewing its landscaping practices. No health agency has confirmed a cause, and the science on these cancers remains unsettled. The Ladera Ranch situation exposed how much control HOAs hold over the chemicals sprayed across the places where families live, walk, and let their children play.

The Davis-Stirling Act hands HOAs broad authority over common-area landscaping and pest control, and most homeowners never realize how little direct say they have over what their HOAs apply. HOAs hire the landscapers, approve the contracts, and choose the products, often without telling residents what they apply or when. But that authority isn’t unlimited, and homeowners do hold rights that apply directly to these decisions.

Homeowners can demand the financial records and board minutes that reveal what their HOAs buy and pay for in pest control and landscaping. And while nothing in the Davis-Stirling Act forces an HOA to hand over a full chemical list on request, homeowners can still ask their HOAs to identify any chemicals used in the community by HOA vendors (and can even push to have the board write that disclosure into the landscaping contract itself). Regardless, spraying decisions have to happen in open meetings, not behind closed doors, and homeowners can demand exactly that. Likewise, the Davis-Stirling Act holds HOA boards to a fiduciary standard on every maintenance choice they make, and homeowners can enforce those standards.

In this Fact Sheet, I explain what the Davis-Stirling Act lets California HOAs spray on common areas, the limits of that authority, what records homeowners can pull to see what their HOAs are buying and spending on pest control, and how homeowners can pressure their HOAs to change course. I also explain why this is a governance and homeowner-rights issue, separate from any claim about what caused the illnesses in Ladera Ranch.

Key Points

The Ladera Ranch cancer concerns turned a routine HOA function, common-area pest control, into a statewide question. For years, California HOAs have decided which pesticides and herbicides go onto the common areas where families live and children play, and most homeowners never questioned it. After a cluster of rare cancer diagnosis surfaced, the families in Ladera Ranch started asking questions, and they quickly ran into how much authority their HOA holds over those chemicals and how little of the spraying record homeowners can readily see. To  be clear, no health agency has tied those illnesses to any specific chemical, and this Fact Sheet takes no position on what caused them. It does, however, explain what the Davis-Stirling Act lets HOAs spray, what homeowners can find out, and how homeowners can push their HOAs toward safer practices and more transparency.

• Homeowners hold real rights here even though no one has proven what caused the cancers. No agency has confirmed that the Ladera Ranch cancers are connected or linked the illnesses there to any pesticide, and the science on these rare cancers remains unsettled at this time. Questions about causation and personal injury run through a different kind of case and a different kind of lawyer. What the Davis-Stirling Act governs is the HOA side, meaning who decides what gets sprayed, what an HOA has to disclose, and how homeowners can force a change. Every right in this Fact Sheet applies whether or not any chemical ever gets tied to a single diagnosis.
• Civil Code 4775 gives the HOA, not individual homeowners, control over common-area maintenance, including pest control. Civil Code 4775 makes the HOA responsible for maintaining the common areas unless the CC&Rs assign that job elsewhere, and routine landscaping and weed and pest treatment fall squarely within that duty. The HOA hires the landscaper and signs the pest-control contract, and the licensed vendor it hires chooses the specific products and applies them. That structure leaves an individual homeowner with no vote over the program and no automatic right to be told which chemicals the vendor is using. In Ladera Ranch, the master HOA and its contractor ran the spraying for years while residents had no built-in way to learn what the contractor applied.
  • No rule forces an HOA to publish a list of exactly what it sprays, so homeowners have to surface that information through the rights the Davis-Stirling Act does give. Civil Code 4930 bars an HOA board from taking action at a regular meeting on anything it didn’t first place on the agenda in the meeting notice, and a decision about which pesticides to apply community-wide is exactly the kind of general business that belongs in the open. Homeowners can demand that the HOA agendize its landscaping and pest-control decisions, attend the meeting, and ask on the record, during open forum, what chemicals the HOA’s vendors spray within the community and why. An HOA can’t bury that decision in executive session because Civil Code 4935 explicitly limits what HOA boards may discuss in executive session, and that list is narrow (and it certainly does not include routine pest-control policies). [For the narrow matters an HOA may take into a closed meeting, read my Fact Sheet, “California HOA Executive Session Rules.” And if you’re interested in learning more about your rights during open forum, read “Can a California HOA Stop You from Speaking at a Board Meeting?”]
• Civil Code 5200 defines the HOA records homeowners can request to trace the money and the contract behind the spraying. Civil Code 5200 sets out the records members can inspect, and several categories reach pest control directly. Homeowners can request the general ledger, the check registers, and the written board approvals of vendor invoices, all of which show who the HOA paid and how much for landscaping and pest treatment. They can also request the executed landscaping or pest-control contract, which names the company the HOA hired and often the scope of what that company treats. These records show spending and contracts, not a chemical-by-chemical spray log, so they reveal the vendor and the money without necessarily naming every product applied. [You can read more about your rights under Civil Code 5200 by reading this Fact Sheet, “Can I See My California HOA’s Records? A Homeowner’s Guide to Civil Code 5200.”]
  • Homeowners can (and should) ask the HOA to identify every chemical it applies, though no law forces an answer. A direct request to list the products used isn’t an enforceable records right, so an HOA can refuse it. The stronger play is pushing the HOA to write full chemical disclosure into the next landscaping contract because the contract itself becomes a record homeowners can later inspect under Civil Code 5200. An HOA that stonewalls a plain request to name what it sprays also gives its members a pointed question to raise at the next open meeting.
• Corporations Code 7231 requires HOA directors to make pest-control choices in good faith and after reasonable inquiry. Corporations Code 7231 holds every HOA director to a duty of good faith, an honest belief in the members’ best interests, and the care an ordinarily prudent person would use, including reasonable inquiry. Applied to the spraying of chemicals in the common areas (especially in light of the events in Ladera Ranch), that standard asks whether the HOA board looked into what it approved or just rubber-stamped whatever the landscaper recommended year after year. An HOA that renews a chemical program without ever asking about safer alternatives, resident concerns, or the products’ known risks invites a fair challenge that it skipped the inquiry the law requires. [For how this duty works across every board decision, read my Fact Sheet, “California HOAs and Fiduciary Duty: What it Means and Why it Matters.” You can also watch an episode of our HOA HELL podcast where Sam and I discuss the issue of HOA directors’ fiduciary duties at length.]

• Homeowners who want their HOA to change course have a clear sequence to follow. Start by demanding that pest-control and landscaping policy go onto an open-meeting agenda, then attend and ask the HOA board on the record to name the chemicals the vendor uses and to justify their use. Pair that with a records request under Civil Code 5200 for the ledger, the check registers, the vendor-invoice approvals, and the executed landscaping contract, which together should show what the HOA is buying and from whom. Homeowners who want lasting change can organize their neighbors because a large enough bloc of members can pressure the HOA to adopt safer practices, amend its rules, or write chemical disclosure into the vendor contract. In Ladera Ranch, it was exactly that kind of pressure, thousands of petition signatures and a packed community meeting, that moved the master HOA to pause spraying and form a review committee within weeks.
• If your California HOA won’t tell you what it’s spraying or won’t change course, the HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman can help. If you’re a parent, the Ladera Ranch cancer cluster might cause some serious concern over what your kids are being exposed to. The homeowner-side HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman force HOAs across California to open their records, hold their votes in the open, and answer for the maintenance decisions they make. If your HOA is stonewalling your records requests or ignoring member concerns about what chemicals it applies near your home, contact us today.

California HOAs hold real power over the chemicals sprayed where people live, and the Davis-Stirling Act built that power into common-area maintenance. That same body of law gives homeowners the tools to see the spending behind the spraying, to force those decisions into open meetings, and to hold their HOA boards to the inquiry the law demands. The Ladera Ranch families showed how fast organized homeowners can move an HOA that would rather not change. Whatever the investigations there ultimately find, homeowners everywhere can use these rights right now to learn what chemicals their HOAs are spraying in the common areas and to press for something safer.

FAQs

About Michael Kushner

Michael Kushner is a California attorney with over 30 years of experience representing homeowners in disputes with their HOAs. He is widely regarded as California’s leading homeowner-side HOA attorney, and has built one of the state’s most prominent law practices dedicated to holding HOAs accountable under the Davis-Stirling Act and California law.

In addition to his law firm’s work, Michael is a recognized lecturer, author, and the host of the hit HOA HELL podcast, where he provides homeowners living in HOA-governed communities with clear, practical strategies for dealing with bad HOAs. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, HOA HELL | California Homeowners’ Definitive Guide to Beating Bad HOAs, which has become a go-to resource for both homeowners seeking real-world solutions to their HOA disputes, as well as those good HOA board members who are interested in doing a good job.

About MBK Chapman Fact Sheets

Homeowners searching for answers online will often come across articles that appear authoritative, but are actually written as search-engine marketing content rather than by an experienced HOA lawyer. These pieces tend to prioritize keyword density over clarity, accuracy, or legal context, which often leaves homeowners more confused than informed.

At MBK Chapman, our Fact Sheets are part of our HOA Law Library and are written by Michael Kushner, an HOA lawyer with decades of hands-on experience representing California homeowners. In fact, Michael Kushner is the HOA lawyer who pioneered the systems and strategies used by some of California’s most successful homeowner-side HOA law firms.

Each Fact Sheet is deliberately concise, statute-based, and designed as a quick-reference guide to help homeowners understand key HOA laws and enforcement rules at a glance.

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