HOA - Home Owners Associations

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Your Satellite Rights as a Homeowner or Renter

NOTE: The following should be judged as an opinion and should not be regarded as legal counsel.

A homeowners association (HOA) does not have the right to keep you from having a satellite tv dish system for your home except in a few instances. There are some limitations for having satellite tv equipment installed.

The Satellite Consumer Bill of Rights, a regulation released by the FCC on August 6, 1996, says that as long as the dish antenna provided by the satellite company is between 18 and 20 inches and otherwise does comply with the rest of the Satellite Consumer Bill of Rights, then the consumer has the right to have a satellite tv system installed.

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This Bill of Rights over-rules any area zoning ordinances or Homeowner Association covenants (HOA's) and other restrictions that are put on satellite tv dish antennas. This ruling was part of the Telecommunications Act that was enacted by Congress in the 1996. Some of the HOA'S have been trying to keep their rights for restriction by way of making threats of court action on residents that have dish antennas. Sometimes they have argued that a dish antenna has been installed in what they consider to be a "common area". They justify this by calling the space of air that is directly above the homeowners or renters roof where the dish antenna has been installed, the "common area".

The good news is that congress is on the side of the would-be satellite tv system owner in this matter. The FCC has gone as far as to mandate that no landlord, no city or state or any other type of organization or agency of the government be allowed keep anyone with deeded space or a balcony (for apartment renters) that has a clear view of the southern sky, the right to install a satellite dish under 1 meter (1.5 meters in Alaska). These organizations, agencies and HOA's are not allowed to require a advance notification, a permit, payment of any fees. They also cannot force the owner or tenant to move the dish (or antenna) if they don't happen to like the way that it makes the property look. As long as the space is deeded then there can be no exceptions to this rule.

However, the rules do not apply to certain common areas that happen to be owned by a community association, landlord, or by joint cooperative owners. These 'common areas' can include the exterior wall or roof of a multiple dwelling unit. In these cases, restrictions that are made on dish antennas installed in or on such 'common areas' can be enforced.

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