She faced $500 daily HOA fines for an unapproved door in her home. A new state law saved her

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18 hours ago

Jinah Kim's HOA said she couldn't fix a doorway inside her condo. She did it anyway.
She figured it was fine. After all, the doorway was completely inside her home, separating an office and dining room. But when the complex's manager peeked into her place through the open garage door one day in March and saw the renovation, she received a notice the next day.
The privacy intrusion was shocking, but the cost of noncompliance was even worse: a single $100 fine at first, then up to $500 per day — $3,500 per week — starting July 10 until she changed the doorway back.
But on July 1, when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 130 into law, her HOA nightmare vanished with the stroke of a pen, and her fee for defiance was capped at $100.
"It's a game changer," Kim said. "For years, HOAs have been able to bend entire communities to their will on a whim. This stops that."
Industry experts and HOA lobbyists were taken by surprise in June when Newsom pushed AB 130 through the state Legislature and signed it into law — not because it passed, but because it included a last-minute update redefining HOA law in California. The overall goal of the bill is to expedite housing by easing California Environmental Quality Act regulations for many projects, but it also amends the Davis-Stirling Act, the framework that governs homeowners associations.
The biggest change? HOA fines are now capped at $100 per violation unless there are health or safety impacts. Want to paint your house neon green? $100. Erect a giant Halloween skeleton on your front lawn year-round? $100.
The bill also bans interest and late fees on violations and prohibits HOAs from disciplining homeowners as long as they address violations before the hearing. It allows homeowners to request internal dispute resolution if they don't agree with the board's findings at hearings.
It's a massive win for disgruntled homeowners, who have long claimed that California HOAs are too aggressive, stringent and overbearing. It's a startling blow for HOAs, which were left blindsided by the changes.
Dyanne Peters, an attorney with Tinnelly Law Group who practices HOA law, said her firm was tracking the legislation, but in a different bill. The HOA language was originally part of Senate Bill 681, a housing bill authored by state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward).
Peters said HOA lobbyists were making headway negotiating the bill and coming to a mutual agreement, but on June 27, the HOA language from SB 681 was added into AB 130 and passed three days later, leaving the HOA industry reeling.
"As an industry, this came as a shock," she said. "Everyone is scrambling to get a handle on the changes."
Peters said no one likes paying fines, but noted that fines aren't a money-making tool for HOAs. Instead, they're used as deterrents for actions that disrupt communities.
For example, if a neighborhood doesn't allow homes to be used as short-term rentals such as Airbnbs, but a homeowner shirking the rules only has to pay $100 one time, they'll probably just pay the fine and keep renting out their home. Or if a resident wants to build a huge fence but doesn't want to deal with the architectural approval process, they'll just eat the $100 and build whatever they want.
"It's frustrating because these new rules are handcuffing homeowners associations," Peters said. "It takes away the ability for HOAs to govern their own communities. Clients are calling us asking, 'What's the point?'"
However, the bill added a lifeline for HOAs by specifying that fines can be greater than $100 if they "result in an adverse health or safety impact on the common area or another association member's property."
Peters said associations should go through their current rules and see which could be health or safety violations, and then adopt resolutions that specify in writing that certain actions, such as speeding or having aggressive pets, have health or safety impacts and therefore qualify for fines greater than $100.
Luke Carlson, an attorney who represents homeowners in HOA disputes, called the bill a "long-overdue course correction."
"AB 130 is more than a law — it's a signal that Sacramento is finally starting to hear the voices of homeowners who've suffered in silence for too long," said Carlson, who authored the book "Bad HOA: The Homeowner's Guide to Going to War and Reclaiming Your Power."
Carlson said HOAs in Southern California are uniquely aggressive because of soaring home prices. Property values are high — and so are the stakes for maintaining a problem-free community that keeps those values high.
But he said when an association is bad, it tends to feed off its own power, making arbitrary decisions or giving out preferential treatment until someone pushes back.
"Everyone agrees bad HOAs are a bad thing, and it takes legislative reform to stop them," he said.
HOA horror stories abound in California, the state with the most HOAs (more than 50,000) and the most homes within HOAs (4.68 million) in the country — roughly a million more than Florida, the state with the second most. More than a third of Californians live in HOA communities, and nearly two-thirds of homeowners are a part of HOAs, according to the California Assn. of Homeowners Assns.
In San Ramon in Contra Costa County, a woman was fined for replacing her lawn with drought-tolerant plants. In Oakland, HOAs are installing surveillance cameras to track cars and sharing the data with police. Last year, a Times investigation dove into allegations of grand theft and money laundering inside a Santa Monica co-op.
Kim, a resident of Shadow Ridge in Oak Park in Ventura County, wanted to remove a blockage in the doorway between her office and dining room. The previous owner had filled the top of the entry with drywall to cover up plumbing pipes, but Kim grew tired of ducking to get under it.
The HOA denied her initial request to fix it since the work required briefly shutting off shared water and rerouting pipes. But Kim had her contractor do it anyway.
It was an hourlong fix.
A few months later, the complex's general manager spotted the unauthorized renovation. The next day, she received four violation letters: one for the door, one for installing an EV charger in her garage, one for having her dog off-leash and one for an unpermitted rug on her balcony.
"It's a door within my home that no one else sees and no one else is affected by," Kim said. "It felt like accidentally tapping someone in the hallway and getting the death penalty."
She resolved the dog and rug violations and is appealing the EV charger one. But she refused to change the doorway back.
On June 27, Kim received a letter saying that since the renovation rerouted shared plumbing lines, she'd have to pay to fill the doorway back in, plus pay $100. If she didn't resolve the issue by July 10, she'd get slapped with fines of up to $500 for every day it wasn't fixed.
But after AB 130 went into law, the deadline came and went. She hasn't heard a peep from her HOA, which didn't respond to a request for comment.
"It was a big relief. Having a daily $500 fine hanging over my head was a huge source of anxiety," Kim said.
She acknowledged that the new blanket of rules will probably allow homeowners to get away with things they shouldn't. But for now, she's just happy to stop banging her head on drywall every time she walks through her dining room.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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