Court Says Association Must Create a Handicapped Parking Space for Disabled Owner’s Exclusive Use

This case involved a dispute between two condominium owners (jointly “Owner”) and their homeowners association (“Association”) over Owners’ right to be assigned a dedicated handicapped accessible parking space in the community parking garage. Pursuant to the agreement of the parties, the issues were submitted to binding arbitration.

When Owner purchased their condominium, they also acquired two dedicated parking spaces in Association’s underground parking garage that were included in the deed to the condominium unit. After Association installed a pressure reducing valve on a plumbing line above one of their parking spaces, Owner contended that the nature of the installation prevented use of the spaces by one of two owners who was disabled, and because the parking garage did not have any designated handicapped parking spaces, the disabled Owner was entitled to a reasonable accommodation from Association with respect to his parking. The requested accommodation was that Association provide Owner with one permanent reserved handicapped parking space for his exclusive use in the underground garage, or, if that was not possible, in an outside parking area located as close as possible to the underground garage.

Because all the parking spaces in the underground parking garage were owned by condominium owners, Association was unable to: