Beverly Albright is 81 years old and has lived at the Villa Moura condominium complex in San Clemente, California, long enough to call it the place she worked her whole life to afford. Now she says she may have to leave it, because her HOA board just billed her and 197 other unit owners $26,000 each for what it’s calling an emergency roof repair, according to ABC7 Los Angeles. “I will have to move,” Albright told the station. “And this was my… I’ve worked very hard to make it so that I could be here.”
The number itself would be jarring under any circumstances. But what has turned this into an open revolt inside a 198-unit complex is that residents don’t buy the “emergency” label at all, and they’ve got the state’s own regulatory language to back them up. Resident Noah Martin points to California Code of Regulations Section 5610, which spells out what actually qualifies as an emergency assessment exempt from the normal disclosure and bidding process HOAs are otherwise required to follow. Martin argues this repair doesn’t come close to meeting that bar and calls it, in blunter terms, ordinary “deferred maintenance” that the board sat on for years and is now trying to shove through under emergency rules specifically because emergency rules let a board skip the steps that would let homeowners push back.
The underlying facts support at least part of that skepticism. Residents told ABC7 the roofs at Villa Moura aren’t actively leaking. The dispute, as owners describe it, is about underlayment that needs replacing, not the tile roofing itself, which raises the question of why a full-scale, all-at-once assessment was necessary instead of a phased repair plan residents could budget around over time. Resident Megan Blanda put the math problem plainly: “They’re not going to be able to afford this, and the board’s response is to take out a loan,” she told ABC7, describing a fix that would trade one financial strain for another.
The board has offered owners a choice: pay the full $26,000 up front, split it into two lump payments, or take on a monthly installment plan that runs more than $2,000 a month for six months before dropping to roughly $400 a month after that, according to ABC7’s reporting. For homeowners on fixed retirement incomes, none of those options look particularly survivable, and residents say the board has threatened to place liens on units that don’t comply. Resident Adam Dubin has raised a separate concern about whether the board even followed its own fiduciary obligations, arguing competitive bids should have been solicited before locking owners into a repair contract of this size.
The community’s response has moved well past complaint letters. A GoFundMe has been set up for owners who say they simply cannot cover the assessment, a legal claim alleging the board violated state law is already filed, and a board-recall effort is underway among residents who want new leadership before any roof work begins.
Part of what has made this assessment land so hard is the math of who actually lives at Villa Moura. Condo complexes built decades ago in coastal Orange County towns like San Clemente skew heavily toward retirees and long-tenured owners who bought in well before prices in the area climbed to their current levels, meaning a large share of residents are living on fixed incomes even though their properties are, on paper, worth a great deal. A $26,000 bill doesn’t scale down for someone in that position the way it might for a younger owner with two incomes and refinancing options. It simply doesn’t fit the household budget, full stop, which is why residents keep circling back to the emergency designation itself rather than the roof work in isolation. If the board had built a normal capital improvement reserve and phased the underlayment replacement over several years, as California’s regulatory framework generally expects HOAs to plan for routine building maintenance, owners say this would be a manageable, if unwelcome, line item. Framed as a sudden emergency instead, it becomes a five-figure surprise with a compliance deadline attached.
The board has not publicly responded in detail to the Section 5610 argument or explained why competitive bidding wasn’t pursued before the contract was signed, according to ABC7’s reporting. Whether the recall succeeds or the legal claim forces the board to redo its numbers, Villa Moura’s owners have made one thing clear: they’re not refusing to fix a roof, they’re refusing to be told an invoice is an emergency when the people paying it can see for themselves that it isn’t.
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