DC killed the bill that paused condo foreclosures during aid applications
DC killed the bill that paused condo foreclosures during aid applications
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.
What the law is now
Stated plainly, because the absence is the news: since July 21, 2025, a District condominium or homeowners association has been under no statutory obligation to pause an assessment-lien foreclosure while a delinquent owner's Homeowner Assistance Fund application is pending, and no obligation to tell the owner the fund exists.
There is no successor. A search of Council Period 26 for measures addressing the Homeowner Assistance Fund and foreclosure returns only the emergency declaration resolution and the two bills above. Nothing has been introduced since.
Why a protection it does not have still matters to a board
It would be a mistake to read this as a win for associations. Three reasons.
A funded application is the best outcome available. An assistance award clears arrears in cash. A foreclosure sale, by contrast, is slow, costs the association legal fees it may not recover in full, and frequently produces a bidder who pays less than the debt. A board whose delinquent owner has a live application in a programme that pays association fees is looking at the cheapest possible resolution — and now has no statutory reason to wait for it.
The discretion is now the board's, and so is the record. Where a statute compelled a pause, the decision was made for the board. Where none does, a board that forecloses through a pending application has made a choice it may be asked to explain — to owners, to a court, or in a fair-housing context if the pattern is uneven. A written collections policy that says what the association does when an owner reports a pending application is worth more now than it was when the statute did the work.
The re-notice duty was also a service to associations. Telling an owner that a fund exists which may cure the debt is, from the association's side, an invitation to be paid. Its repeal removed an obligation, not a burden.
The adjacent programme that did survive
One District assistance route did become permanent and did expand to reach association fees. The DC Housing Finance Agency's Reverse Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Program is no longer a pilot, its cap rose from $25,000 to $40,000, and condominium and homeowner association fees are now an eligible use — covered in our report on that change.
That programme reaches a narrower population — owners with reverse mortgages — but for those owners it does what the killed bill would have done and more: it pays, rather than merely pausing.
What to watch next
Whether anyone reintroduces. Under the Council's rules a measure not finally adopted lapses at the end of the Council Period without prejudice to reintroduction, and Council Period 26 ends at noon on January 2, 2027. A reintroduction in Council Period 27 would be the signal that the policy is still alive.
Watch also for whether any successor drafts associations back into the definition. That single drafting choice — naming condominium and homeowners associations alongside mortgage lenders — is what made this measure a community-association story rather than a mortgage one.
Related District of Columbia HOA Topics
- Bill 26-194, the Foreclosure Moratorium and Homeowner Assistance Fund Coordination Temporary Amendment Act of 2025 — legislative record (postponed indefinitely May 6, 2025) ↩
- Bill 26-193, the emergency companion — D.C. Act 26-52, effective Apr. 22, 2025, expired July 21, 2025 ↩
- D.C. Code § 42-1903.13, Lien for assessments — including the subsection (c) sale the bill would have suspended ↩
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