Sumner County, TN HOA Rules: CC&R Enforcement (2026)

Section 806(E) of the Sumner County Zoning Resolution addresses who enforces a subdivision's recorded covenants when the homeowners' or property owners' association created under Chapter 8 stops performing. The County's role is discretionary, not mandatory: in the event the association fails to maintain required open space or common areas, the County 'may, but is not required to, seek to enforce' the association's non-performance of the duties spelled out in the recorded covenants and provisions, or as Tennessee Code Annotated may separately require, through an injunction or any other civil remedy.

If the County does step in, Section 806(E) shifts the cost back to the residents: enforcement expenses are reimbursed by the lot owners, and the County may place a lien against every lot in the subdivision for its pro-rata share of the cost plus administrative fees. This sits alongside Section 806(D), which addresses what happens if the association itself dissolves: maintenance responsibility falls to individual lot owners on a pro-rata basis, or, if the covenants allow it, any lot owner may re-form the association and assess every lot equally to fund the needed maintenance.

Only after both self-help routes fail does the County's Section 806(E) enforcement option come into play, again as a discretionary backstop rather than an automatic County duty. Because the covenants themselves, not a county ordinance, set the substantive maintenance obligations, County enforcement is limited to holding the association or, failing that, the individual lot owners, to the open-space and common-area duties the covenants and Chapter 8 already impose; the County does not adjudicate disputes over other HOA rules unrelated to open space.