top of page
Search

Are HOAs and Condo Associations Helping or Hurting Affordable Housing in Maryland?

  • Admin
  • Nov 11
  • 4 min read

Updated: Nov 16

NOVEMBER 2025 CHARM Newsletter

Learn the facts about HOA and condo associations!
Learn the facts about HOA and condo associations!

 

MYTH: HOAs and condo associations must hire an outside vendor to run their board elections because of a new Maryland law. That will cost lots of money!

 

FACT: There is a new election law, but it does not require hiring an outside vendor. The board and/or a meeting of the homeowner-members can create a committee of trusted neighbors to administer the community’s elections. Proxy ballots can be sent to a committee member's home address, and the committee can set procedures, in accordance with community bylaws, for counting votes and validating results. Read the details (and a quote from the new law, SB758) in our September 2025 Newsletter. The new law took effect on October 1, 2025.


MYTH v. FACT is an occasional feature in the CHARM Maryland newsletter. Please submit your puzzlements, questions, and suspected myths to contact.charm.md@gmail.com. You may see your submission in a future editon.


 

Opinion-editorial

 

 

Are HOAs and Condo Associations Helping or Hurting Affordable Housing in Maryland?

 

Is affordable housing out of reach? Skyrocketing assessments in HOAs and condo association communities are making the American Dream of living securely in your own home impossible for more and more Marylanders. Homeowners in these communities may find themselves increasingly trapped by monthly dues that balloon and force them to flee the neighborhood.


As a result, young families buying their first house in a new development sometimes regret choosing a common ownership community (COC). Poor and working-poor families see their hope of finally owning their own home slip out of sight. Elderly and other homeowners on fixed incomes may suddenly find that they can't afford to live in the home they've lived in for decades – even after mortgage and taxes have been paid.


Too often, boards misuse reserve studies as a platform to dramatically raise assessments. In short, for more and more COC homeowners, affordable housing is becoming an unattainable goal as the result of a “manufactured” financial burden that only grows with each passing year: the runaway COC monthly assessment.  


Is fair housing fading?


Rapidly rising assessments – without limit – is one example of the abuses that make fair housing in America an empty promise for many COC homeowners. Today, there is almost no check on the power of COC boards of directors who, in collusion with hired agents, raise assessments unreasonably, fine individual homeowners excessively, then place a lien on their home when those assessments or fines go unpaid.


In most cases, the homeowner’s only option (to protect their legal rights) is to pay out-of-pocket to hire a lawyer, while an abusive COC board has the community’s treasury to cover its attorney’s fees. The demoralized community frequently does not participate in elections, which are often corrupted. State and county agencies are set up only to offer mediation.


What is needed, however, in a growing number of cases, is investigation and enforcement of laws to protect member privileges, civil rights, and financial security – especially when a homeowner belongs to a vulnerable population such as language and ethnic minorities, the working poor, and the elderly.


Profiting from Unfairness?


COCs, many invented in the 1970s by real estate interests (not by homeowners), generate profits for developers, realtors, law firms, and management companies. Too often, players in this nationwide “HOA industry” benefit from the turnover of any house and the acceleration and pursuit of any homeowner debt.


While homeowners remain relatively unarmed, the industry supports a bevy of full-time lobbyists in state capitals. CHARM Maryland believes the HOA industry "regularly engages in unethical, opportunistic, and even illegal actions, depriving homeowners of their rights and financial interests." We refuse to believe, however, that Americans can be legally stripped of their rights, including their Constitutional rights.


Asleep at the Wheel?


Elected officials and the media suffer from a great lack of awareness about the emerging issue of COCs abusing their own members while experiencing no consequences. Most new homes built today are within COCs, yet local and state governments are not measuring these problems, tracking their upswing, or aggressively seeking remedies.


Increasingly, however, research is busting the myth that COCs protect property values. When assessments rise beyond reason, only corporations are interested in purchasing (and then renting out) a COC house.


Homeowners Speak Up and Vote


As per CHARM's mission statement, homeowners are increasingly organizing to assert their right to “live without fear of their own association, which shall abide by the law; be transparent, accountable, and fair; and be welcoming to all residents.”


In 2025, CHARM and COC homeowners advocated for a new fair-elections law. We are reclaiming the power of our own vote in our own communities. CHARM Maryland is seeking allies among homeowners, civic groups, and elected officials to advocate with us for fair and affordable housing in Maryland’s Common Ownership Communities.


Please visit our website (www.charm-md.org), and join us in advocating for the rights of Maryland Common Community homeowners! 

 

CHARM Maryland, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) civic organization fighting to protect the rights of individual homeowners in Maryland Common Ownership Communities. Visit CHARM-MD.org to learn more, make a tax-free donation, volunteer your skills, and join our efforts. CHARM stands for Common Ownership Community Homeowners Advocating for Reform.  


Notes (URLs revealed)

“No Checks and Balances, HOA Reform Leaders,” www.charm-md.org/post/october-2025-newsletter

“Live without fear …,” www.charm-md.org/who-we-are

 

 






 
 
bottom of page