Two Georgia bills would have let homeowners vote their HOA out of existence
Two Georgia bills would have let homeowners vote their HOA out of existence
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. Georgia's 2026 session contained not one but two bills letting the owners in a community abolish their association. They came from different parties, took different routes, went to different committees — and neither received a recorded committee vote before dying at sine die on 2 April 2026.
HB 1036: dissolution by referendum
The “Property Rights Through the Ballot Act” would have created a binding community referendum. A petition signed by at least 20% of eligible owner-occupants triggers a community-wide vote; a majority dissolves the association within 180 days.
On dissolution the governing documents become void and outstanding association liens convert to unsecured debts. The bill also barred association foreclosure on owner-occupied homes, mandated open meetings, financial audits and fiduciary duties, addressed the transition of shared infrastructure, and prohibited retaliation against owners who took part in a referendum.1
Six Democratic sponsors: Sandra Scott (Rex), Viola Davis (Stone Mountain), Kim Schofield (Atlanta), Rhonda Taylor (Conyers), Sylvia Wayfer Baker (Douglasville) and Imani Barnes (Tucker).
Referred to House Judiciary; read first time 28 January 2026, second time 29 January 2026. Never reported.2
HB 1219: dissolution through the courts
The second bill approached the same end far more carefully, and it carried Republican names.
HB 1219 would have required every property owners' association formed on or after 1 July 2026 to be automatically subject to the Georgia Property Owners' Association Act, and required existing associations to vote on whether to adopt the Act. Then it created a full statutory termination process:
- petition by at least 20% of members;
- a member vote on a termination plan;
- court approval of that plan;
- appointment of a termination trustee — normally the sitting board — to manage assets, settle debts and distribute the remainder to members; and
- penalties for officers and directors who obstruct the process.
Sponsors: Gerald Greene (R-Cuthbert), Alan Powell (R), Carolyn Hugley (D), Regina Lewis-Ward (D), Billy Mitchell (D) and David Wilkerson (D).
Referred to House Regulated Industries; read first time 6 February 2026, second time 9 February 2026. A committee hearing is recorded on 17 February 2026, but the official composite shows no favourable report.
The through-line
Two dissolution bills, one with Republican sponsorship including a senior member, and neither got a recorded committee vote in a session where HOA reform passed 155-10. That is the shape of the opposition: not a floor defeat, but a decision not to hold the vote.
Why dissolution is harder than it sounds
Both bills faced the same practical problem, and HB 1219's court-supervised design shows its drafters knew it: an association is usually the legal owner of things that cannot simply stop being owned.
In a typical Georgia planned community that includes some or all of:
- Stormwater detention ponds, which carry ongoing maintenance obligations under local ordinance. Cherokee and Cobb counties both publish HOA-facing guidance on exactly this. If the association dissolves, the obligation does not.
- Private streets, which the county has no duty to adopt.
- Amenities — pools, tennis courts, clubhouses — with their own liability and insurance profile.
- Entrance features, lighting and landscaping on common parcels that must belong to somebody.
HB 1036 addressed “shared-infrastructure transition” at the level of principle. HB 1219 addressed it with a trustee, a plan and a judge — which is the mechanism a lawyer would design, and also the mechanism that makes dissolution slow and expensive enough that few communities would complete it.
The lien conversion is the sharpest provision
HB 1036's provision that outstanding association liens convert to unsecured debts on dissolution is the part that would have had immediate effect, and it is the same move HB 1035 proposed for all assessments.
Read together, the two Scott-Davis-Schofield bills of January 2026 make a single argument: that the association's power over the home — the lien and the foreclosure that follows it — is the thing worth removing, whether by ending it directly or by ending the association that holds it.
Georgia's legislature declined both, and instead removed fines from the foreclosure calculation while extending the lien's life from four years to six.
What a Georgia community can actually do today
Because both bills died, the position is unchanged, and it is worth stating plainly for owners who have read about these proposals.
There is no statutory dissolution mechanism for a Georgia property owners' association. What exists is the association's own governing documents — whose termination clauses typically require a supermajority far above the 20% petition and simple majority HB 1036 proposed, and often require mortgagee consent as well.
Note one consequence of SB 406 that cuts the other way, and that a community considering its options should understand. Where an association submits to the Property Owners' Association Act under the new 80% route in § 44-3-235(a)(3), the amendment threshold in § 44-3-226(b) is capped at 80% — and a declaration requiring more collapses to 80% unless the association votes to retain the higher figure within one year. That makes amending easier, not dissolving.
The Court of Appeals also made clear this year that individual owners cannot use litigation as a dissolution route. In Boaz v. Thirteen Hundred on Lake Nottely Property Owners Association, four owners sought to have their association “dissolved and declared illegal”; the court held those were “remedies for which the statute does not provide.”3
What to watch next
Whether a dissolution bill returns in 2027, and if so which model. HB 1219's court-supervised trustee structure is the one that could plausibly pass — it is bipartisan, it answers the infrastructure objection, and it does not abolish liens by fiat. HB 1036's referendum model is cleaner for homeowners and far harder for a legislature to accept. Neither sponsor group has announced a 2027 bill.
Related Georgia HOA Topics
- “Georgia reps introduce bills to stop HOA foreclosures, allow homeowners to dissolve an HOA” — Atlanta News First, 28 January 2026 ↩
- 2026 Composite Status Report, Session Final, Georgia House of Representatives (14 May 2026) ↩
- Boaz v. Thirteen Hundred on Lake Nottely Property Owners Association, Inc., No. A26A0455 (Ga. Ct. App. 16 June 2026) — slip opinion ↩
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