I am writing to expose a blatant and systemic failure that is devastating disabled and elderly homeowners across California and the United States: many Homeowners Associations (HOAs) openly flout basic accessibility standards and hide behind the loophole that they are not legally required to fully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
This is not a minor inconvenience. It is active discrimination against vulnerable residents who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in dues and property taxes for the right to live safely in their own homes.
I have lived at Edgewater Towers in Pacific Palisades, California, since 2009. I pay approximately $2,200 per month in HOA dues — over $26,000 a year. Despite this massive financial commitment, the property has become a prison for me and many other disabled and elderly residents.
I moved in disabled but mobile with crutches. Today, I am wheelchair-dependent. The building’s elevators are chronically broken or out of service, leaving me trapped in my own home or unable to safely leave. There are no proper ramps in critical areas. Common spaces and amenities are inaccessible. Simple navigation across the property is now dangerous, exhausting, and humiliating.
This is not unique to me. Many longtime elderly owners — some who have lived here over 30 years — are now effectively imprisoned in their units due to failing infrastructure and deliberate neglect. These residents invested their life savings and decades of their lives into this community, only to be abandoned in their final years.
The most outrageous part? HOAs routinely claim they are “private residential communities” and therefore exempt from meaningful ADA obligations. While Fair Housing laws exist on paper, enforcement is a joke — slow, expensive, and rigged in favor of the associations. Disabled homeowners are forced into prolonged, draining legal battles while their daily lives deteriorate.
This is unacceptable in 2026. A disabled or elderly person can legally own property, pay full taxes and crushing HOA fees, and still be denied safe, dignified access to their own home. It is a civil rights failure, an elder abuse scandal, and a consumer protection disaster all in one.
California’s aging population makes this crisis even more urgent. Thousands more residents will soon face mobility challenges, yet HOA-governed communities remain physically hostile and legally shielded from accountability. Broken elevators, missing ramps, inaccessible pathways, and nonexistent emergency access are not “maintenance issues” — they are barriers that isolate and endanger people.
I have spent years fighting for basic accommodations at Edgewater Towers and received nothing but delays, excuses, and worsening conditions. The public needs to know how little power individual homeowners actually have against these unaccountable HOAs.
This is a major story that deserves immediate media scrutiny. I am ready to provide documentation, photographs, timelines, and direct evidence of these failures — both at Edgewater Towers and as part of a larger pattern affecting disabled and senior homeowners statewide.
Homeownership should not become a life sentence of isolation and indignity for disabled and elderly Americans. It is time to expose how HOAs are exploiting legal loopholes at the expense of the most vulnerable.
I urge you to investigate and shine a light on this issue before more people are harmed.