2026-09-09 · District of Columbia · Legislation · Did not pass

A District of Columbia measure that would have stopped a condominium or homeowners association from foreclosing on an assessment lien while the owner's Homeowner Assistance Fund application was pending died without a final vote. Bill 26-194, the Foreclosure Moratorium and Homeowner Assistance Fund Coordination Temporary Amendment Act of 2025, was postponed indefinitely at the Council's legislative meeting of May 6, 2025.¹

The protection it carried has been gone since July 21, 2025, and nothing has replaced it.

How the sequence worked, and failed

Councilmember Robert C. White, Jr. introduced two measures on March 27, 2025. Bill 26-193 was the emergency version; it passed April 1, was signed by the Mayor on April 22 as D.C. Act 26-52, and — as emergency acts do — ran 90 days and expired on July 21, 2025.²

Bill 26-194 was the temporary act meant to carry the policy for 225 days while a permanent solution was worked out. It passed first reading on April 1, 2025. It never received a second. When it was postponed indefinitely on May 6, the bridge collapsed and the emergency simply ran out.

What it would have required of associations

This was not a lender-only measure, and that is the point most easily missed. The operative text named associations directly, applying to “a mortgage lender, condominium association, homeowners association, or tax sale purchaser, or an agent acting as a representative for any housing or financing entity to which the homeowner is indebted.”

Two obligations followed.

A pause on the association's own sale. The bill suspended sales under § 313(c) of the Condominium Act of 1976, D.C. Code § 42-1903.13(c) — the assessment-lien foreclosure sale — alongside deed-of-trust foreclosures under §§ 42-815 and 42-816 and tax-sale redemption judgments under § 47-1378, while an assistance application was pending.

A duty to re-notice. An association that had already sent a notice of intent to foreclose without information about the assistance fund would have had to send a fresh notice telling the owner the fund might cure the debt.

1. Bill 26-194, the Foreclosure Moratorium and Homeowner Assistance Fund Coordination Temporary Amendment Act of 2025 — legislative record (postponed indefinitely May 6, 2025) ↩
2. Bill 26-193, the emergency companion — D.C. Act 26-52, effective Apr. 22, 2025, expired July 21, 2025 ↩
3. D.C. Code § 42-1903.13, Lien for assessments — including the subsection (c) sale the bill would have suspended ↩