The asymmetry: co-ops are exempt, 55-plus condos are not

This is the detail worth the whole article. As reported by Maryland counsel reading the enacted text, age-restricted cooperatives are exempt from the requirement — and the age-restriction exemption was removed from the condominium and homeowners association provisions.²

So on the same facts, three Maryland 55-plus communities get three answers depending on which statute they were organised under:

• An age-restricted cooperative housing corporation may prohibit a family child care home.
• An age-restricted condominium may not.
• An age-restricted homeowners association may not.

That is a substantive difference with no obvious policy rationale, and it is the kind of thing Maryland's three-statute architecture produces. Condominiums sit in Real Property Title 11, HOAs in Title 11B, and cooperatives in Corporations and Associations Title 5, Subtitle 6B — and when a measure is drafted in parallel across all three, the three versions do not always come out matching.

Age-restricted communities are a meaningful share of Maryland's association stock, particularly on the Eastern Shore and in the Washington suburbs, and a 55-plus condominium board operating on the assumption that its age restriction carries a child-care exemption is operating on the cooperative rule.

We flag this as reported rather than verified from the chapter text itself. Any board relying on it either way should read Chapter 375.

Why the fee cap is the operative constraint

“May not prohibit” provisions are common in American community-association law and are frequently defeated in practice by charging for the protected activity. A $500 annual fee for operating a child care home is not a prohibition, and it has the same effect.

Capping the fee at $50 closes that route, and the wording — a nominal annual common-area use fee — signals the intent. What remains permissible is the pro-rata insurance recovery, and that is uncapped because it is measured: an association may recover a premium increase directly attributable to the operation, which means it has to be able to show the increase and show the attribution.

In practice that is a conversation with the association's carrier rather than a line a board can set. A board that adds a flat surcharge without an identifiable premium change is charging something the statute does not authorise.

The capacity provision works the same way. An association cannot cap enrolment below the State's authorised level — so a rule permitting “no more than three children” in a home licensed for eight is unenforceable, regardless of how it is framed.

The pattern this belongs to

Maryland has spent three sessions removing categories of use from associations' reach, and the structure is identical each time: a protected activity, a reasonableness standard, and a narrow list of permitted association responses.

• Solar, 2025. Chapters 517 and 516 put numbers on unreasonableness in Real Property § 2-119: a restriction is unreasonable if it increases installation cost by more than 5 percent or decreases energy generation by more than 10 percent in areas of exclusive owner use.
• Accessory dwelling units, 2025. Chapters 197 and 196 bar unreasonable limitations, while expressly permitting an association to treat an ADU as a separate lot for voting and assessment.
• Family child care homes, 2025. Chapter 375, as above.
• Recreational common areas, 2025. Chapters 523 and 522 bar an association from requiring sensitive information as a condition of access — Social Security or tax identification number, birth certificate, racial or ethnic origin, citizenship status, religious beliefs, or medical records. Government-issued photo identification remains permissible.²
• EV charging, 2026. Chapter 753 bars governing documents from unreasonably restricting the board from installing charging equipment in common areas, retroactively, from 1 October 2026.

Five protected activities in two sessions. The drafting convention is now settled, and a board's task in each case is the same: identify what response the statute permits, and do not do anything else.

What to watch next

Whether the age-restriction asymmetry gets corrected. It is exactly the kind of parallel-drafting discrepancy Maryland's Annual Corrective Bill exists to fix — the 2026 edition, Chapter 153, replaced an erroneous “condominium” reference in HOA Act § 11B-111.5(a) — though a substantive exemption is more than a corrective bill can carry.

Nothing is pending. No pet-, child-care- or assistance-animal-specific community-association bill was filed in the 2026 session at all, and no 2027 bills exist yet. Pre-file drafting requests are due 20 November 2026.