Is my HOA legally required to carry earthquake, wildfire, or windstorm insurance?

Of the three perils in this question, windstorm is the odd one out, because it is generally already inside the base property policy rather than excluded and sold back as an add-on. A standard special-form (all-risk) master property policy covers wind unless the policy specifically excludes or sublimits it, which is uncommon outside of the wind-hurricane deductible mechanism itself. The real windstorm issue for most boards is not whether the peril is covered but how large the separate percentage wind or hurricane deductible is, since that deductible, not a coverage gap, is what determines how much of a wind loss the association actually absorbs.

Florida addresses this at the deductible-structure level rather than through a purchase mandate: Florida Statute 627.701 requires insurers writing certain residential coverage to offer policyholders a choice between deductible levels and to periodically notify them of that option, which regulates how the wind exposure is priced and disclosed rather than mandating that any association buy a separate windstorm policy.

Earthquake and wildfire behave the opposite way from wind: standard master property policies exclude both, so coverage, where it exists, is a separate policy, endorsement, or difference-in-conditions (DIC) purchase. No federal statute requires a community association to buy either one, and the overwhelming majority of states impose no purchase mandate either, leaving the decision to the board and, where one exists, to the recorded declaration.

California is the one state worth knowing by name here, and it is important to be precise about what it actually requires. The Davis-Stirling Act does not require an association to buy earthquake insurance. What it requires, under Civil Code section 5300, is that the association's annual budget report to owners include a summary of the association's property, general liability, earthquake, flood, and fidelity coverage, so that owners know whether the coverage is in force even if the answer is that it is not. Civil Code section 5810 separately requires notice to members if certain coverage lapses or is not renewed. Both are disclosure obligations, not purchase mandates, and the same distinction generally holds for wildfire, where no comparable state disclosure statute has emerged.

Two private mechanisms can turn an optional purchase into a real obligation even though no government body is doing the mandating. First, the recorded declaration itself can require the association to carry earthquake or wildfire coverage as a matter of contract, and where it does, not carrying the coverage is a covenant breach the board has to answer for regardless of what state law says. Second, a lender covenant can impose the same result: an association that has borrowed against its own property for a capital project, or a cooperative carrying an underlying blanket mortgage, can be contractually required by that loan agreement to carry earthquake, wildfire, or other named-peril coverage the lender specifies, entirely independent of any state or federal insurance statute.

It is also worth noting what does not create a requirement: FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program has no wildfire equivalent, and the California Earthquake Authority, the state-created residential earthquake insurer, writes individual unit and single-family policies, not association master coverage, so its existence does not create or satisfy any association-level requirement either.

Read the declaration's insurance article first, before treating any of these three perils as fully discretionary, since a private mandate in the governing documents overrides the absence of a state law. Where the decision is genuinely discretionary, quantify it before deciding: for a percentage-deductible peril like earthquake, translate the deductible into current dollars against the insured building value, since a high percentage deductible can mean the policy pays little on all but a catastrophic event, which is itself a legitimate reason to decline or to buy it, depending on the community's risk tolerance and reserve strength.

Whatever the board decides, document it as a deliberate action rather than a default, and where a disclosure obligation applies, California's annual budget report being the clearest example, make sure the decision is reflected there so owners can weigh individual coverage, an earthquake policy through the California Earthquake Authority or a private wildfire policy on their own HO-6, with accurate information about what the association carries.