California · Davis-Stirling Act

Architectural review, and the procedure that has to exist first.

An association may require approval before a member changes anything physical. What it may not do is require approval without a written procedure, decide without writing, or disapprove without saying how to appeal.

What a member may do without asking

§ 4760(a)(1) is the baseline: subject to the governing documents and applicable law, a member may make any improvement or alteration within the boundaries of the member's separate interest, so long as it does not impair the structural integrity or the mechanical systems, or lessen the support of any part of the development.

§ 4760(b) draws the other edge: any change in the exterior appearance of a separate interest must follow the governing documents. Inside your own boundaries and invisible is one thing; the face the building shows the street is another.

Accessibility modifications are judged by a stricter test

§ 4760(a)(2) lets a member modify the separate interest at their own expense to facilitate access for people who are blind, visually handicapped, deaf or physically disabled, or to alter conditions hazardous to them — including the route from the public way to the door, where the unit is on the ground floor or already reached by a ramp or lift.

Plans go to the association for review, and here the standard changes. For an ordinary application the association must not be unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious. For one of these, § 4760(a)(2)(D) says the association shall not deny approval without good cause. The burden has moved: it is no longer enough that a refusal be defensible, there has to be a reason for it.

The member carries four conditions in return — the work must meet the building code, must be consistent with the intent of the governing documents on safety and aesthetics, must not block reasonable passage by other residents, and anything external must be removed when the unit is no longer occupied by a person who needs it.

The procedure has to exist, and it has to be written down

§ 4765(a) applies only if the governing documents require association approval. Where they do, § 4765(a)(1) imposes four things at once, and the third and fourth are the ones that get missed:

1. The procedure must be fair, reasonable and expeditious.
2. It must be included in the governing documents — not in a handbook, not in the committee's practice, not in what the manager has always done.
3. It must provide for prompt deadlines.
4. It must state the maximum time for a response to an application, and to a request for reconsideration by the board.

An association whose documents require approval but contain no such procedure has an approval requirement that does not satisfy the section it is governed by. That is worth checking before a dispute rather than during one.

The decision

§ 4765(a)(2): made in good faith, and not unreasonable, arbitrary or capricious. § 4765(a)(3) adds that notwithstanding a contrary provision of the governing documents the decision may not violate any governing law — naming the Fair Employment and Housing Act, building codes, and other law on land use or public safety. A CC&R cannot authorise a decision that the law forbids.

Reconsideration, and what it is not

On a disapproval the applicant is entitled to reconsideration by the board, at an open meeting — § 4765(a)(5). So the appeal is not a private conversation with the committee; it happens where other members may attend, under the open meeting rules.

There is one exception, and it turns on who decided in the first place. If the decision was made by the board itself, or by a body with the same membership as the board, at a meeting that already satisfied those rules, no further reconsideration is required. The member got the open meeting the first time.

The notice nobody sends

§ 4765(c): the association shall annually give members notice of any requirements for approval of physical changes. The notice has to describe the types of change that need approval and include a copy of the procedure used to review them. It belongs with the other annual disclosures, and it is the one most often left out of them.

Where the deadlines became numbers

§ 4765(a)(1) requires "prompt deadlines" and leaves the association to set them. For one category of application the Legislature has now set them instead: a substantially similar reconstruction after a disaster runs on 30 calendar days to determine completeness, 45 to decide, and 60 to resolve an appeal, with the application deemed complete if the body misses the first. See rebuilding after a disaster — and note that § 4766 routes its appeal back through this section.