For decades, a private board you never really chose could fine you, put a lien on your house, and in many states take your home — over the color of your door or a flag in your window. This statute ends that. Your home is yours again.
A private association ruled your property with powers a real government would need a warrant and a courtroom to use.Check it
It could dictate your paint, your roof, your landscaping, your flag, your solar panels, even your parked truck. It could fine you on an officer's say-so, with no real hearing.Check it
Unpaid fines could become a lien — and in much of the country, the association could foreclose and sell your home out from under you over a few hundred dollars in dues.Check it
And you were bound whether or not you ever agreed: buy a house under an old covenant, and its rules ruled you.Check it
If you solely own your walls and roof — a house, duplex, townhouse, or rowhouse — no association controls your exterior. Period.
Paint, flags, signs, solar, landscaping, lawful vehicles, who you house — all yours, subject only to ordinary local law.
No association may ever foreclose on or force the sale of your home over dues or fines. A genuine debt survives only as an ordinary bill, paid when you choose to sell — never as a way to take the house.
And a recorded covenant no longer binds a new buyer who didn't knowingly sign it. The old associations wither as homes change hands.
Condo and co-op boards often reached past shared walls and into your unit — dictating interiors, penalizing conduct inside your own home.Check it
In a condo or co-op, the association governs only the genuinely shared surfaces — façade, roof, hallways. It may enter your unit only for real maintenance of shared systems, on notice. Your interior is yours.
An association formed to maintain a shared road or well used that as a foothold to police appearance and conduct across the whole neighborhood.Check it
Where homes truly share a road, well, or septic system, a bare-bones association may collect only each home's fair share of upkeep — and holds zero power over appearance, use, or conduct.
Fines could be imposed by the same officers who wrote the rules, with no neutral hearing and no limit — accumulating until they functioned as a forced sale.Check it
No fine without written notice, a fair hearing before a neutral decision-maker, and proportionality between the penalty and the violation. Fines can never be stacked into a taking of the home.
Associations routinely banned political signs, flags, religious displays, and other expression on your own property.Check it
No association may restrict speech, religious exercise, political activity, assembly, or the display of a flag or sign.
A covenant recorded against the land bound every future buyer automatically — you consented to nothing, yet the rules governed you.Check it
No one is bound who did not knowingly and voluntarily sign. A recorded covenant does not, by itself, bind a later purchaser.
Closed books, self-perpetuating boards, and officers who answered to no one.Check it
Open books on request, elected boards with one vote per home, notice-and-hearing before any new charge, independent audits, and officers who owe real duties and can't self-deal.
Millions were locked into abusive covenants with no way out.Check it
On ratification, every abusive covenant becomes void. Existing associations keep only the legitimate job of maintaining genuinely shared infrastructure; their reserves and common property are held for the members, not officers or developers.
Fighting an HOA meant expensive litigation most residents couldn't afford.Check it
Any resident can go to court to void an offending rule, stop its enforcement, and recover damages and attorney's fees. Officers who abuse their power face personal liability the association can't cover for them.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-39, which implements Right 52 of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
