Fresno, CA HOA Rules: CC&R Enforcement (2026)

Any Fresno subdivision with common areas administered by an owners' association must adopt Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions under Section 15-4002, and Section 15-4003 sets the floor for what those documents must include -- terms the association cannot simply skip or later amend away. The City requires CC&Rs to grant it the right of immediate access to all portions of the common areas for the purpose of preserving the public health, safety, and welfare, regardless of what else the association's board decides to adopt. The association must take on maintenance duties the City would otherwise have to absorb: repairing on-site sewer, water, and storm drainage facilities unless the City or Flood Control District has designated a facility public, and paying utility and waste-collection charges that aren't separately metered to each unit.

Where private streets carry public utilities, or public streets carry private utilities, the CC&Rs must state the City is not responsible for private pavement repair beyond what direct utility work requires. The association also has to maintain landscaping in common areas next to public streets, cannot cut assessments in a way that would starve that maintenance obligation, and takes on responsibility for street sweeping in the common areas. Beyond those baseline items, an association is free to add its own rules -- architectural standards, use restrictions, additional assessments -- but Section 15-4003(I) draws a hard line around anything touching the City's mandated provisions: any amendment by the association to the above provisions, or any other provision specifying a right of the City, requires the City's prior written consent.

That single requirement is the enforcement boundary: an HOA can expand its own rules freely, but it cannot narrow, remove, or reinterpret any term the City put into the CC&Rs without the City signing off first.