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From California to Florida ... HOA Coast to Coast
By Jacqueline Vanacek
This article first appeared in The Communicator Magazine, Spring 2025.
When I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Gulf Coast of Florida, I thought I was done being an HOA board president. Not so! Now I have one HOA foot on each coast.
It is fascinating to see homeowner associations end to end, from a builder board in Florida to an owner board in California. And boy are those board objectives different. In 2024, I attended CAI West Florida Chapter’s “Home On The Range” to learn about Florida’s HOA best practices. As a California board director living in a Florida HOA, I was looking for common ground.
WHERE DID HOAS COME FROM?
California has the largest number of homeowner associations in the country, with approximately 80% of multi-family residences in HOAs. Homeowner associations (HOAs), or common interest developments (CIDs), first appeared in the 1960s when high density housing exploded. Cash-strapped municipalities looked to “associations” to fund...