New California Law Restricts Hoa Fines to $100 Per Violation
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A new California law caps HOA fines at $100 per violation, sparking debate among commenters about the balance between homeowner rights and HOA authority.
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> “You don’t have the leverage anymore to get people to change bad behavior,” Zepponi said. A neighbor who leaves their RV parked on the driveway in violation of association rules might just eat the $100 rather than pay for RV storage that is more expensive, he said.
Yes, god forbid someone have the legal right to park their vehicle at their own house. I'd prefer my neighbors not do that, but I'd also like to have that right for myself if I ever needed to.
And a friend had a ration of hassle when he replaced the back door on his house with one that wasn't an approved design. I'm certain he'd have been delighted to say "whatever, Karen, here's your $100 and STFU."
I'm convinced HOAs are a product of privileged brains so used to things going their way that they have to make some shit up to act annoyed about.
I’m a bit biased, I’ll admit, as I once served on such an HOA that was near the brink of insolvency and wrestling with owners who would dodge their share of funding basic maintenance for years at a time.
Most of the ire, perhaps, is really directed at single-family HOAs, however.
And then their are HOAs who have strong opinions about which species of grass your lawn can have. That's that craziest, power-trippingest thing I can imagine. I'm glad the state is telling them to get out of the law enforcement business.
They also have 7-8 vehicles, and to top it off the person who lives there is a mechanic that works out of his home garage so there's always all kinds of random cars parked there as well.
Communities should be empowered to self-regulate.
Any other way seems like absolute madness to me.
Depends on the HOA. My HOA board is an executive council. They don't have rulemaking authority.
This is a knock on effect of the wetlands protection act (or maybe it's the clean water act, I forget which). Someone developing >1ac of houses (or duplexes or apartments or whatever) has to do stormwater management permitting BS. This probably means they leave one lot at the end and do like a stormwater catch pond in it or something (there's technical terms for this stuff I'm not using. The owner(s) is obligated per federal law to maintain whatever this solution is in perpetuity. This likely means some sort of HOA to handle that. And if you're gonna do that then why not have the HOA do more.
And I think the evidence is generally that the prices are higher in well run HOAs.
It might help a bit to understand that their origins where to exclude blacks, asians and jews from owning homes in a neighborhood [0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association#History
1. 90% of enforcement is a result of someone's complaint. HOAs can be sued by belligerent owners for not enforcing rules and it will cost everyone in the association a shitload of money.
2. Of those complaints probably at least 80% are totally legitimate grievances because the owner is doing something that's negatively affecting all of their neighbors like say park their RVs in the driveway and then 5 more cars in the shared parking spaces around the neighborhood so nobody else can park when having guests.
3. Every time we decided not to fine someone to force compliance we ended up regretting it - that just resulted in more complaints, sometimes escalations and serious damages, threats of lawsuits, and in the end we had to fine anyway.
4. These days when someone complains i just tell them there's nothing we can do because we really can't and just bug their state legislators, who seems to be living on a different fucking planet.
tl;dr - most people complaining about HOAs just have no fucking clue what they are talking about and they never served on the board. Well guess that also applies to every other issue discussed on the internet.
For #2, you can still fine them $100 per incident, which I'd imagine would include every new time a homeowner takes up all the parking, or dares to store their property on their property.
For #3, see #1. Now you're off the hook because the state said this is nonsense and you can't be responsibile for meeting their power-tripping demands anymore.
For #4, see? Perfect! You can tell them to get bent, because elected representatives said those complainers should mind their own freaking business on how people enjoy their own homes.
It is literally impossible to convince me that such things benefit anyone except the bored sociopaths who charged themselves with enforcement.
If an HOA wants to maintain the sidewalks, build a pool, and pick up trash, right on. If that's what the neighbors want, then go for it. But when they want to dictate the harmless ways people can live, I lose all interest.
And yes, I lived next door to a guy who liked to park his fishing boat next to his driveway. I wasn't thrilled about it, but that was his right. He bought and paid for a house with a driveway, and if he wants to use part of the pavement he owns to park his own personal boat, darned if I can imagine any right by which I can say he shouldn't be allowed to do so.
Your neighbors could buy a remote lot with no neighbors or even unincorporated land and just knock themselves out. Instead they (presumably) read the rules, put their signature on it but then decided that actually they are special and the rules dont apply to them
"Oh, no, the Torkelsens put in a bay window!"
> Your neighbors could [...]
Oh, come one. We both know that's not realistically possible. I think in most cases HOAs are tolerated as something nearly impossible to avoid, and buyers weigh how likely they are to run afoul of the dumb rules. And as I've said elsewhere, governments appropriately limit the kinds of onerous conditions a contract can inflict upon you. That's something we've elected them to do for us so that people with an unreasonable power advantage can't railroad everyone else into agreeing to their bad ideas.
The obvious solution is to make it illegal for HOAs to have any say whatsoever in individual private property.
Shared spaces, shared amenities, common areas, sure. That's what it's for.
On private property, no absolutely not, that needs to be illegal.
People (most sane people anyway) don't randomly hate things they haven't experienced.
That so many people despise HOAs is because they have personally witnessed the horror show that is a HOA.
Let's be very clear that "cause problems" in the context of HOAs means things like planting flowers on their private property that the HOA psychopaths don't like, or painting their house the "wrong color" or parking "unapproved vehicles" on their very own private property.
HOAs are a cancer on society and need to be outlawed, except for the very limited case of maintaining common areas.
I know many who lived in HOAs - one of them got fined for having plants by their condo door, another for putting something on their patio, etc. Who makes up these dumb rules?
And it costs $500/mo easy. This is why most people hate HOAs.
HOAs are usually clear in their rules, so if you want to live in a predictable neighborhood you can choose to live in one. IF you want more laisses faire neighborhoods you can pick one that does not have an HOA.
Less public spending => lower taxes => less money for public spending
Recalcitrant about what? About using their own private property in a way they want (that doesn't violate city/state law)? Well yes, they sure should be. It needs to be illegal for any HOA to have any say about that.
Originally the condo association gave her some minimal fines, but she was wealthy enough that it was just part of the cost of the party - I'm sure she had bottles of booze that cost more that $100 at her parties. It was only when the condo association changed the rules to implement an escalation series (i.e first violation was $X, second was $2X, third was $4X, etc.) that her behavior started to change.
I get that a lot of people hate HOAs and I understand the reasons, but $100 is essentially nothing to a lot of people in California, which means HOAs will essentially have no enforcement mechanisms. This is especially a problem in multifamily buildings like condos where people are literally living on top of one another.
IMO seems like just another well-intended CA regulation that will cause a lot of negative, poorly thought-out consequences. At the very least I think it would make a lot more sense to have the fine limit be based on the value of the house or something similar, and not a single rate for all of CA.
HOAs should be illegal. There should only be one government body, if there has to be one at all.
No one wants to party where the cops routinely show up. Honestly, some of these things are so easy nip in the bud.
Owning a property known to a bunch of miscreants as the home likely responsible for all those expensive DUIs isn't exactly a desirable risk-free position to be in.
I can only hope your HOA takes your living space over the paint on your door some day.
I don’t particularly like my HOA, but I could live elsewhere and at least feel like I have more say in my HOA than any of those other bodies.
In the U.S., ordinances tend to be local. If you have a problem with a noise ordinance, you go to your local authorities.
Below those things. Still doesn’t make it a state or federal legal issue, unless it becomes systemic to the point that it’s affecting folks outside your community.
Good luck with outlawing people's ability to freely associate by entering into contracts.
We've had all sorts of wild issues such as building scaffolding on top of balconies (not attached), ripping up common area plants, parking issues (we all have garages, street parking is guest only), drying food on the pool deck (really), dumping garbage bags outside in the common area and more. If we can only levy a $100 fine there's little incentive for some people to stop doing things that impact the community.
I do cringe when I hear about these crazy HOAs of what are usually a collection of single family homes. I think a better approach would be some kind of limitations of the what HOAs can have rules about vs the penalties. Interiors of homes should be generally off limits (aside from townhomes that are all technically 1 building, so you should not be doing anything structural without approval). For single family homes with private property surrounding them I'd rather there be limits that are purely for safety, legal reasons or impacting common areas.
Fines are administrative. If someone is causing property damage, that’s liability—indemnification (where the homeowner pays the HOA’s legal fees) should be sufficient.
If I go into a private gym and start smashing things, they would want to fine me and kick me out, but it may not be worth several thousand dollars to sue me for the damages.
HOAs have inherent collateral. Indemnification is the answer. If the legal fees wrack up, you take the house. But only through the courts.
As a permanent structure or for temporary renovations?
> ripping up common area plants
Just for fun? Were they drunk? Or is the border between the "common area" and "their property" somewhat hazy? Are you not able to simply forward the invoice for repairs to the resident? That's not a fine and doesn't seem like it would be covered?
> parking issues (we all have garages, street parking is guest only)
This impacts property values? What about tow to impound?
> drying food on the pool deck (really)
> dumping garbage bags outside in the common area
A $100 fine is not adequate for these relatively petty issues?
It might just be me. I don't have kids and I don't spend a lot of time around home. I don't understand HOAs at all.
HOAs are interesting for cities as they cordon off certain parts for which the city pays no street maintenance, no park maintenance, yet it collects full taxes.
For people living in an HOA it can provide amenities like more private parks, pools etc.
No, they don't. But to be fair, your local enforcement agencies have the same power to unilaterally fine people insane amounts of money. So in a technical sense it makes sense that HOAs would have the same unilateral power to screw people.
1) Governments are often much easier to sway. You can get a newspaper or TV station involved. You can show up to open meetings. You can campaign against the incumbents. While you can porbably technically do some of that against rogue HOA boards, it's going to be a lot harder.
2) Governments are usually large enough not to make things a personal vendetta. That's clearly not always true; I'm only talking about trends. Meanwhile, the HOA members are your neighbors, by definition. Get on the wrong side of them and they can easily get involved in everything you do.
Even if you could get a judge to levy an order like that, are municipal police really likely to enforce such an order?
They were ambivalent about dealing with noise, but were happy to stave off a riot.
If people have choice and reasonable guarantees of good governance, then I don’t have an issue with HOAs. In practice, it’s a mixed bag. But we should remember that even though we hear outrageous HOA stories, by and large, most of them function without such frustrations. So restricting all HOAs in response to those few stories, feels like it will backfire.
Why is a fine levied by an HOA any different than an org at one of those other levels of governance from the perspective of democracy?
Seems to me, many of the same people cheering this law, also bemoan 'attacks on democracy' from the federal gov't. So what is the right level of democracy?
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