Louisiana Makes HOA Rental Restrictions an 80 Percent Vote With Grandfathering

The framework came from Acts 2024, No. 158, which replaced the old Louisiana Homeowners Association Act with the Louisiana Planned Community Act, R.S. 9:1141.1 through 9:1141.50, effective January 1, 2025. Under R.S. 9:1141.14(A) a declaration is normally amended by whatever vote the declaration itself requires, and by majority vote if the declaration is silent. Majority vote is defined in R.S. 9:1141.2(21) as more than fifty percent of the voting interest present at a duly called meeting, so it is a majority of those who show up. Subsection C then pulls a specific list of amendments out of that easy track.

An amendment needs a supermajority, or any greater vote the community documents require, to prohibit or materially restrict the uses of a lot or the number or other qualifications of persons who may occupy a lot, and to impose more burdensome restrictions. Supermajority is defined in R.S. 9:1141.2(33) as more than eighty percent of the voting interest in the association. Note the difference from the majority definition: supermajority is measured against the whole voting interest, not against the owners present, so absent and apathetic owners count as no votes. In a 200 lot subdivision that means 161 lots must affirmatively vote yes.

Paragraph (C)(5) is the leasing rule, and it is unusually specific for a state that has no rental cap statute. It provides that a use restriction establishing or increasing the minimum term for the lease of a lot, or prohibiting the rental of less than the entirety of the lot, shall be considered a more burdensome restriction. The first clause captures the standard anti short term rental amendment, the one that sets a thirty day, six month, or twelve month minimum lease. The second captures the room rental or roommate ban. Both now require the eighty percent vote. An outright prohibition on leasing is a restriction on the uses of a lot under (C)(1)(a) and lands in the same place.

Grandfathering is automatic but conditional. Paragraph (C)(2) provides that an existing occupancy or use of a lot shall not be prohibited by an amendment to the community documents if that occupancy or use has commenced prior to the filing of the amendment for registry. The trigger is recordation in the parish conveyance records, not the vote, so an owner who signs a tenant before the amendment is filed keeps the use. Paragraph (C)(3) then sets the loss condition: if the existing occupancy or use has ceased for twelve consecutive months after the amendment is filed, the lot becomes subject to the prohibition. A Louisiana owner who lets a rental sit vacant through a year of renovations can lose the grandfathered status. Paragraph (C)(4) provides the escape valve. An owner may ask the board to extend the twelve month period when the use was discontinued due to a fortuitous event, a Civil Code term that in Louisiana covers hurricane and flood damage, and the board must grant or deny the request using reasonable discretion.

An association still holds real leverage over tenants once an amendment passes. R.S. 9:1141.20(B) lets the association require that an occupant execute and file with the association a lease or other occupancy agreement containing mandatory language for the benefit of the association, and an occupant who fails to comply may be denied access to a lot. R.S. 9:1141.20(C) lets the association enforce those mandatory lease provisions directly against the occupant, in addition to acting against the owner.

Two limits on the reach of all this deserve attention before you rely on the eighty percent figure. First, R.S. 9:1141.3(A) says the Part applies to existing and future planned communities but shall not be construed to affect the validity or superiority of any provision of a community document filed for registry prior to January 1, 2025, and R.S. 9:1141.3(H) says nothing in the Part requires a planned community in existence before that date to alter its previously established method of amending community documents. Owners in older Louisiana subdivisions must read the recorded declaration alongside the statute. Second, R.S. 9:1141.3(B)(1) excludes condominium property, which is governed by the Louisiana Condominium Act, R.S. 9:1121.101 et seq. That Act contains no counterpart to R.S. 9:1141.14(C)(5), so a Louisiana condominium association's leasing amendments are governed by the vote stated in its own declaration.

Two clocks run. S. 14(G) provides that an action to challenge the validity of an amendment adopted in accordance with that Section shall be brought within a peremptive period of one year from the date the amendment is filed for registry. Peremption in Louisiana is not prescription. It cannot be interrupted, suspended, or renounced, so a suit filed on day 366 is dead regardless of the merits. S. 14(F) requires the amendment to be executed and filed for registry by an authorized officer or agent and to contain a certification that the minimum voting requirements have been met, which is the document an owner should pull from the parish conveyance records first. S. S. S. 35(A). S. 20(F) requires that the association not be arbitrary or capricious in choosing whether to pursue enforcement.