Nevada’s Homeowner Task Force: Another Political Stage Prop in the Making?
It didn’t take long for the interests behind the state’s estimated $80 billion homeowners association industry to make their appearance. Nearly half of all Nevadans live in those communities.
Earlier this year, Kris Sanchez, Director of Nevada’s powerful Department of Business and Industry, began what he described in his own communications as the “reconstitution” of the state’s Common-Interest Communities (CIC) Task Force — a select working group first authorized by lawmakers in 2019 and, unusually, empowered to introduce legislation directly before the Legislature to address the growing dissatisfaction with Nevada’s HOA laws and regulatory structure.
After only a couple of meetings in 2020, the Task Force went dormant under Sanchez’s predecessor and was nearly consigned to the scrapyard in Senate Bill 78 (2025), which Sanchez himself championed during Nevada’s most recent legislative session. The Nevada HOA Reform Coalition — a homeowner-advocacy group I founded to push for transparency and fair governance — had called for the Task Force’s revival, arguing that meaningful reform could not resume without it.
In the end, the need for reform survived. Lawmakers — urged by a growing level of owner dissatisfaction — continued to question whether the Nevada Real Estate Division (NRED) and the state’s Commission for Common-Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels (CICCH), an appointed panel that regulates HOAs and adjudicates disputes, were functioning as intended: neutral enforcers of homeowner protections.
In meetings with me, Sanchez touted this reconstituted Task Force as a major initiative he would personally chair and — albeit late, nearly two years into his tenure — one he intended to make a central focus. His powerful Division that oversees 12 state regulatory agencies and numerous commissions and boards, is poised to announce the Task Force publicly.
Reform Coalition members and those familiar with the many reform recommendations found on NVHOAReform.com know I am a longstanding critic of NRED. Yet despite that — or maybe precisely because of it — Sanchez saw my presence on the expected expanded Task Force panel as constructive. Surprised by that bold direction — and encouraged by the potential the Task Force offered — when asked to serve, I accepted.
Then, just days after being formally notified of my appointment, I received a call from Sanchez informing me I would no longer be serving on the Task Force — silenced before I could speak a single word in support of homeowners.
My selection had not yet been made public. In that light, Sanchez offered a strained explanation difficult to square: he said he had received “many calls” from parties he declined to identify, expressing “concern” over my selection — creating a level of disapproval he believed would make it impossible for the Task Force to function.
If a Task Force meant to explore reform cannot function in the face of competing ideas, then independence was never valued — and the outcome is likely pre-ordained. Deference to private disapproval replaced commitment to public purpose.
Even When Lawmakers Seek Answers — The Establishment Prevails
For years, Nevada lawmakers — many of them earnest, overworked, and constrained by the state’s 120-day biennial sessions — have sought outside expertise to help modernize and reform HOA law. That outreach itself was a welcome signal: an acknowledgment, at least by some, that HOA issues can no longer be seen as trivial or purely local. What’s clear is that lawmakers recognized that meaningful solutions require continuity and independent knowledge beyond what the Legislature alone — inundated and often blinded by dominant special interests — could provide.
That was the purpose of creating and now reconstituting the CIC Task Force: to bring knowledgeable, independent voices to the table so the law could finally catch up to reality. Or at least, that was the advertised reason.
Yet before the first agenda was set or the first discussion held, the same industry that captured the regulator has now captured the reform process itself. The very mechanism lawmakers hoped would level the playing field for homeowners looks on track to be co-opted by those determined to preserve it as tilted ground.
Once again, Nevada’s homeowners have been left watching the door close — this time, before it even opened.
Smoke-Filled Rooms Silence Our Institutions
This episode lays bare what Nevadans have become inured to — how easily the machinery can operate in preserving special interests.
Even when Nevada’s lawmakers take the extraordinary step of asking for solutions — acknowledging that HOA reform requires outside expertise and independent voices they have neither the time nor temperament to properly vet — the process is easily redirected behind closed doors. The very Task Force intended to represent transparency has become a shield for opacity, a tool destined to be little more than a rubber stamp managed from outside by those who have long profited from confusion and inaction.
Kris Sanchez knew my selection would be controversial. To his credit, he initially appeared ready to stand firm — to let the process unfold openly and on the merits. For a few weeks, he even had me convinced of his objectivity.
It seems that resolve was shallow, collapsing easily under early political pressure. The message from offstage was seemingly clear: avoiding backlash from donors and developers mattered more than open dialogue.
As one longtime political player close to the current administration wrote to me after hearing the news, “This is very disappointing and frustrating, Michael. You’re making waves in the CIC community, and major players are exerting political influence. The Governor trusts Kris and will be deferential to him on these kinds of decisions.”
Those lines capture exactly what’s wrong with the system. The problem isn’t policy — it’s power, and our collective numbness to the normalization of political manipulation. Decisions about how Nevadans live, vote, and are governed in their communities are being shaped not by fairness or law, but by relationships and campaign money.
Epilogue
I hope my prognosis for the CIC Task Force effort proves wrong — that it will, in fact, serve homeowners’ need for an open venue of reform. But my years advocating for HOA accountability in Nevada tell me otherwise.
If there is any good news here, I see Kris Sanchez’s reversal as an acknowledgment by Nevada’s political insiders that their CIC interests — and offstage control — are vulnerable to sunlight.
If Nevada wants genuine reform, homeowners must demand sunshine. Lawmakers must reclaim the process they set in motion and insist that homeowner voices be restored. Otherwise, the “Task Force” will become just another stage prop in Nevada’s long performance of pretending that change is underway.
by Mike Kosor, Founder NVHOAReform
