Can A Homeowners’ Association Restrict On-Street Parking?
Many homeowners associations have provisions in their CC&Rs that prohibit homeowners from parking on public streets. In other cases HOA Boards may try and restrict parking on public streets even where the CC&Rs do not include such a prohibition by passing rules and regulations that are not included in the recorded CC&Rs. Needless to say, Arizona HOA lawyers receive lots of calls from homeowners upset about these restrictions. To be fair, there is something that doesn’t seem right about an HOA having the power to control parking on a public street.
A few years ago the Arizona legislature decided to address this issue and enacted a statute (A.R.S. § 33-1818) that states as follows:
A. Notwithstanding any provision in the community documents, after the period of declarant control, an association has no authority over and shall not regulate any roadway for which the ownership has been dedicated to or is otherwise held by a governmental entity.
B. This section applies only to those planned communities for which the declaration is recorded after December 31, 2014.
So the law in Arizona now provides that a homeowners’ association may NOT regulate parking on public roadways, but this law only applies to communities where the Declaration of CC&Rs was recorded after December 31, 2014.
This means that in many cases if you live in an older community where the CC&Rs do include parking restrictions, then the HOA may try and regulate parking on public roads. In those cases, objections to those efforts may be based the more fundamental question of whether a homeowners’ association has the authority to regulate what happens on public streets. No Arizona court has yet answered that question clearly, but if you have an objection to an HOA trying to regulate parking you may want to speak with an Arizona HOA attorneys experienced in fighting HOAs.
In some cases, associations seek to regulate parking in ways that are not supported by the governing CC&Rs. In other cases, older communities may have recorded amendments to their CC&Rs after December 31, 2014, which may bring them within the purview of A.R.S. §33-1818. In many cases, HOAs enforce parking and other restrictions in arbitrary, discriminatory, capricious, or retaliatory ways. Such enforcement efforts violate the fundamental tenet of Arizona HOA law that associations have to treat all homeowners fairly and equitably.