Vermont's HOA resource center became a web page
Vermont's HOA resource center became a web page
2026-09-19 · Vermont · Legislation
Vermont came closer in 2026 than it ever has to giving condominium and homeowner-association owners somewhere to go. It ended with a sentence about a website.
H.172, An act relating to establishing a Common Interest Community Resource Center, was introduced on February 11, 2025 by Reps. Emilie Krasnow and Dara Torre with eight co-sponsors. It went to the House Committee on General and Housing, was taken up on March 19, 2025, was taken up again on March 12, 2026 — with the Secretary of State's Director of Business Services testifying — and was never voted out.1
What H.172 proposed
The bill would have added 10 V.S.A. § 700. The Secretary of State “shall establish and maintain the Common Interest Community Resource Center”, could contract with a nonprofit to run it, and the Center would assist the public in understanding and navigating issues related to common interest communities and provide information, materials and guides for their creation and administration — including, in the bill's own list, organization, governance, budgeting, conflict resolution, transparency, and rights and responsibilities for homeowners and associations. Free, and online.
What passed instead
Section 1 of Act 179 of 2026 adds 3 V.S.A. § 119, “Common Interest Community Resources”. The section is one sentence and a qualifier:
“The Secretary of State shall provide on its website or otherwise distribute to the public information about Vermont's common interest communities. This information shall include the governing statutes.”2
Effective July 1, 2026. Compare the two and the subtractions are the substance: the name “Resource Center” is gone, the power to contract with a nonprofit is gone, and the content list — governance, budgeting, conflict resolution, transparency, rights and responsibilities — is gone, replaced by a floor requirement of “the governing statutes.” The section carries no deadline for the page, no appropriation, and no enforcement.
No document says Sec. 1 descends from H.172. The resemblance is close and the committee re-opened H.172 in March 2026 while S.328 was in the Senate, but the lineage is inference, not record.
Why this is the whole of Vermont's state-level infrastructure
Vermont adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act without its administrative article. Title 27A runs to four articles — general provisions, creation and termination, management, and protection of purchasers. The uniform act's Article 5, “Administration and Registration of Common Interest Communities”, which in adopting states creates an agency, a registry and a complaint process, is not in Vermont's statute. No section anywhere in Title 27A confers registration, enforcement or complaint-intake power on anyone.
The consequence is that every VCIOA right is enforced by a private lawsuit in Superior Court. Section 119 does not change that. It obliges the Secretary of State to publish the text of the law an owner would have to sue under.
The one Vermont program that does the opposite
The contrast is inside the same title-space. Under 10 V.S.A. ch. 153, the Department of Housing and Community Development registers every mobile home park annually, receives every lot-rent increase notice on a department form, publishes the mediation threshold each year, receives notice of every intended park sale, and pays for the mediator and for leaseholders' legal representation out of the registration fees.
A Vermont mobile home park resident has an agency. A Vermont condominium owner has a web page with the statutes on it.
What to watch next
H.667, An act relating to collective homeownership resources — Reps. Chloe Tomlinson and Emilie Krasnow, introduced January 14, 2026 — would have required the Department of Housing and Community Development to publish free online guides and template documents for cooperative and tenants-in-common homeownership. One committee date, then nothing. Both bills died with the biennium on May 29, 2026 and would have to start over in 2027.
Related Vermont HOA Topics
Stay on top of Vermont HOA law
Every week: new Vermont legislation, court rulings, and regulatory developments affecting condos, planned communities, and property managers. Free.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.