OpEdNews.com:  The Trouble with HOAs

By Kenneth G. Eade

Januay 27, 2015

Homeowner’s Associations, created by deed provisions to serve homeowners in condominium developments, are often at odds with individual owners of units. Just last week, news out of New York reported that an HOA was suing a homeowner for parking his own pickup truck in his own driveway. Sometimes these conflicts escalate to the point where the HOA actually forecloses on a homeowner’s interest in the unit, resulting in a total loss to the homeowner. The Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act, codified in California Civil Code Sections 4300, et. seq., gives an HOA the authority to levy assessments, which become an involuntary lien against the homeowner’s interest when the HOA records a “Notice of Delinquent Assessment, and the HOA has the right to enforce that lien in any manner permitted by law, including foreclosure. Thus, if the homeowner does not pay a delinquent assessment, his or her interest may be sold at either a judicial or non-judicial foreclosure sale, resulting in the possibility of the HOA becoming the owner of the unit and evicting the homeowner from their own home.

This is exactly what happened in the case of Marina Strand No. 1 Homeowners Association v. Pelegrino, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No.s SC112127 and 14R10167. John, a bed-ridden elderly paraplegic, and his wife Nancy, both social-security pensioners, have lost their home to their HOA in a foreclosure, and are now being evicted for delinquent assessments, but they still continue to fight the HOA in a companion case, Pelegrino v. Marina Strand No. 1 Homeowners Association, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. SC122125, which goes to trial in August 2015, and which alleges that the HOA failed to give proper notice of their board’s decision to foreclose, nor did they personally serve notice of that decision as required by the Act.  Read more: