Georgia created no HOA study committee — before or after passing its HOA law
Georgia created no HOA study committee — before or after passing its HOA law
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. Georgia passed the most consequential community-association statute in its history in 2026, and scheduled no interim body to watch the rollout. It also legislated without one.
The 2026 interim roster
The Georgia General Assembly's own study-committee dataset for 2026 lists 24 committees. The House Blue-Ribbon committees cover community health and healthcare oversight, criminal post-conviction litigation, education performance metrics, local government taxation, online platforms and youth, transportation infrastructure, kratom, and pharmacy benefits managers.
The Senate's thirteen cover higher education in prison, nuclear power, paid student teaching, pharmacy benefits managers, Rosenwald schools, a museum of African American history, adoption affordability, public safety and civic health, charter school capital funding, higher education funding, recycling, free and fair markets, and artificial intelligence. Three joint committees address foster care costs, family farms and election equipment.1
Not one touches homeowners associations, condominiums, housing affordability, property insurance, land use or short-term rentals. The single keyword hit across every title and charge is “tax,” in the Local Government Taxation committee.
Two attempts to create one, both dead
This is not for want of trying. Both efforts are in the composite status report:
- SR 445 (2025) — “Dept of Community Affairs; investigate the abusive practices of homeowners assoc,” by Sen. Donzella James. Referred to Senate Economic Development and Tourism on 25 March 2025. Never moved.
- HR 1675 (2026) — “House Study Committee on Community Associations; create.” Referred to House Special Rules; read first time 16 March 2026, second 18 March 2026. Never favourably reported, never adopted.
Note that HR 1675 was introduced after the House had already passed SB 406 — an attempt to create a body to study a subject the chamber had just legislated on.
The pattern goes back further
Georgia has created exactly one HOA-specific interim body in recent memory: the Senate Study Committee on Property Owners' Associations, Homeowners' Associations, and Condominium Associations, created in 2022 by SR 615. The legislature's own committee record carries the flag notAppointed. No members, no chair, no meetings, no report.
A near-identically titled resolution, SR 37 in the 2023-2024 term, appears in bill-tracking services but does not appear as a seated committee in the 2023 or 2024 rosters. We could not reconcile advocacy-side accounts of its hearings with the legislature's roster data, and we are not asserting it was seated.
What Georgia did instead
Two ad hoc hearings by standing committees in September 2025 — not a study committee, but the closest thing to one.
On 16 September 2025, the Senate Rules Committee heard SB 361. On 18 September 2025, the Senate Urban Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Donzella James, took up SB 106, SB 107 and SB 108 before dozens of homeowners, condominium owners and renters.2
Why a study committee would have mattered here
Not as procedural nicety. An interim study committee produces three things Georgia now does not have, and the absence of each is visible in the statute.
A record. A study committee takes sworn testimony, collects data and issues a report. When a court later has to construe an ambiguous provision, that report is legislative history. Georgia's new Chapter 17A contains at least three genuinely ambiguous provisions — the registration opt-out and what it forfeits, the records right that is made “subject to… the governing documents” while naming specific documents, and the caption that promises binding arbitration the body does not deliver — and there is no committee report to consult on any of them.
Numbers. Nobody knows, on any published figure, how many Georgia associations exist. The Community Associations Institute's estimate of more than 11,300 associations and 2.5 million residents is the working number, and it comes from the trade body that opposed the bill. Nor does anyone know how many Georgia associations are currently administratively dissolved for missing their annual corporate registration — a real and consequential problem the Secretary of State does not publish data on.
Implementation oversight. This is the live one. A statute covering 11,300 organisations takes effect on 1 January 2027 with rules that had not been proposed as of early September 2026. In most states, an interim committee would be receiving progress briefings from the implementing agency right now. Georgia has no forum in which that happens.
The one committee worth watching anyway
The House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Local Government Taxation, Funding, and Budgeting is the only 2026 interim body whose subject reaches association members' household costs.
Chaired by Rep. Chas Cannon, with members including Victor Anderson, Shaw Blackmon, Josh Bonner, Mike Cheokas, Matt Dubnik, Robert Flournoy, Trey Kelley, Chuck Martin, Lauren McDonald III, Yasmin Neal and Mitchell Scoggins. Its published schedule runs to five meetings: 22 July 2026 in Cartersville, 19 August in Atlanta, 23 September in Moultrie, 21 October in Perry/Warner Robins, and 18 November in Savannah.
Three of those fall after this article's publication date. The connection to associations is indirect but real: homeowners in Georgia associations pay twice, once in property tax for county services and once in assessments for services the association provides, and the unfinished half of the 2026 property-tax fight is this committee's charge.
We were not able to verify what was said at the July and August hearings, and are not characterising them.
What this means for the 2027 session
The practical consequence is that whatever HOA legislation arrives in January 2027 will arrive without a committee record behind it — drafted by individual members, informed by whatever their constituents have told them, and referred to committees that have lost several senior members to statewide races.
That was also true in 2026, and 2026 produced a statute that passed 155-10. So the absence of a study committee is not a prediction of inaction. It is a prediction about quality: bills written without a record are bills that arrive with the drafting problems already visible in Act 715.
What to watch next
Whether a study-committee resolution is filed again in 2027, and whether it is seated this time. Georgia has now written an HOA interim study into resolution form three times — SR 615 in 2022, SR 445 in 2025, HR 1675 in 2026 — and seated a committee zero times. A fourth resolution would be the fourth attempt; the thing to watch is not its introduction but its appointment.
Related Georgia HOA Topics
- 2026 Composite Status Report, Session Final, Georgia House of Representatives (14 May 2026) ↩
- 2026 House Study Committees — Georgia General Assembly ↩
- “Georgia Senate committee vows change to HOA, renters' rights laws” — Atlanta News First, 18 September 2025 ↩
- 2026 Georgia End of Session Report — Community Associations Institute Advocacy ↩
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