A Kent townhome owner can do everything right and still end up stuck. You buy the car. You get a quote. Then the board tells you to fill out a modification request, and the request goes into a drawer somewhere, and three months later you are still running an extension cord you know you should not be running.
Since January 1, 2026, that drawer has a deadline attached to it.
Washington law now gives owners in every common interest community in the state a fairly specific set of rights around EV charging. Most Kent boards we deal with are acting in good faith and simply have not read the current statute. A few are still enforcing a 2015 covenant that stopped being enforceable a while ago. Either way, knowing what the law actually says changes how the conversation goes.
This is not legal advice, and your governing documents matter. But the rules below come straight from the statute, and they are worth reading before you email your board.
What changed on January 1, 2026
The Washington Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, or WUCIOA, took effect in 2018 but only applied to communities created after that date. Older townhome developments and HOAs stayed under the previous chapters, and plenty of them assumed the newer rules were somebody else’s problem.
That gap closed. The legislature accelerated the timeline so that a set of WUCIOA provisions, including the EV charging section at RCW 64.90.513, now applies to every common interest community in Washington regardless of when it was formed.
The core of it: your association cannot adopt or enforce any rule, covenant, bylaw, or governing document provision that prohibits or unreasonably restricts you from installing an EV charging station for personal, noncommercial use, either inside your unit’s boundaries or in a designated parking space.
Boards can still impose reasonable restrictions. They cannot say no on principle.
Whether your board gets a vote at all depends on your parking
This is the part most people get wrong, and it cuts both ways.
The statute carves out associations of single family homes, site condominiums, and planned use developments where the units are not immediately adjacent. In those communities, the association may not require approval at all, unless the charger goes in or on a common element, or connects to a common electrical power supply.
Kent townhomes are usually immediately adjacent. Shared walls, shared roofline, that whole arrangement. So the exemption typically does not apply, and your board can require an application. Owners in a detached-home HOA out past Lake Meridian may be in a different position entirely and may not need approval at all, assuming they are working entirely off their own meter inside their own lot.
Worth knowing what the statute means by designated parking space, because it is broader than people expect. It covers a garage, a deeded parking space, and a parking space in a limited common element restricted to one or more owners. If you have an assigned spot in a carport, that likely counts.
The 60 day clock
If approval is required, your application has to be processed the same way the association handles any other architectural modification request. Approval or denial must be in writing. It cannot be willfully avoided or delayed.
And if the board does not deny your application in writing within 60 days of receiving it, the application is deemed approved. The one exception is a delay caused by a reasonable request for more information.
Send your application in a way that creates a record of the date it was received. Certified mail, or email with a read receipt, or hand delivery with a countersigned copy. The 60 day clock is only useful if you can prove when it started.
On fees: the association cannot charge you a fee for the placement of a charging station. It can charge a reasonable processing fee for the application, but only if it charges that same fee for every architectural modification application. A fee that exists only for EV chargers is not allowed.
Where the power actually comes from in a Kent townhome
Legal permission is one problem. Available capacity is a separate one, and it is the part we get called about.
Kent townhomes generally fall into one of three wiring situations.
Some units have their own panel, usually in the garage or a utility closet off the entry, fed by an individual meter. This is the straightforward case. We run a load calculation, confirm there is room for a 240 volt circuit, and the job looks a lot like a single family install.
Some have a subpanel fed from a main panel elsewhere in the building. Here the limiting factor is the feeder to your subpanel, not the subpanel itself. A panel with six open spaces can still be unable to carry a charger if the feeder is already close to its limit. We see 60 and 100 amp feeders in Kent townhome stock fairly often, and a 48 amp charger is simply not going to fit on one without help.
And some have garage or carport parking wired to a house meter, which means the electricity you would use is the association’s electricity. That changes the whole conversation, because now you are connected to a common electrical power supply, board approval is definitely required, and somebody has to work out metering.
Load management is what usually saves these jobs. A charger with load management, or a separate energy management device, monitors what the rest of the unit is drawing and reduces charger output when the panel gets busy. It lets a smaller service carry a charger it could not otherwise support. Overnight it makes almost no practical difference, because you are parked for ten hours and the car needs four. We cover the wiring side of this in more detail on our EV charger installation page, and the code requirements changed meaningfully with the 2023 NEC, which we broke down in what the 2023 NEC changed for Washington installs.
If load management is not enough, the answer is a panel or service upgrade, which in a townhome means coordinating with the association because the meter bank and service equipment are usually common elements.
Paying for the electricity you use
The statute puts the cost of electricity on the owner, along with the cost of whatever is needed to facilitate that payment. In a unit with its own meter this is a non-issue. On a house meter it is the thing that makes boards nervous, and reasonably so.
Two approaches work in practice. You install a submeter on the charger circuit and the association bills you off the reading. Or you use a networked charger that logs kilowatt hours and reports them, and the association bills off that. The second is cheaper to install and depends on the charger staying connected to wifi. The first costs more up front and does not care about your network.
Bring one of these to the board before they ask. An owner who shows up with a metering plan gets approved faster than an owner who shows up with a charger model number.
What you agree to in writing
If approval is required, the association has to approve an installation within your unit boundaries or your designated parking space when it is reasonably possible, provided you agree in writing to a list of conditions. In plain terms, you agree to:
follow the association’s reasonable architectural standards; hire an electrical contractor familiar with EV infrastructure standards to assess existing capacity, identify what else is needed, and do the install; provide a certificate of insurance naming the association as an additional insured within 14 days of approval, in communities other than the detached-home types described earlier; register the charger with the association within 30 days of installation; and pay for the electricity.
You also carry ongoing responsibility. Inspection, maintenance, repair, replacement, and any damage caused by the installation or use of the charger stay with you and with whoever owns the unit after you. If you sell, you have to disclose that the charger exists, what obligations come with it, and whether you intend to remove it.
That contractor requirement in the middle of the list is not decorative. A board is entitled to see a license, and a certificate of insurance is going to name your electrician’s coverage. ElectON Enterprise holds Washington electrical contractor license ELECTEL765MN and carries the bonding and insurance an association is going to ask about.
Permits and inspection in Kent
The City of Kent does not issue electrical permits. Electrical permitting and inspection inside Kent city limits runs through the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries, which is a detail that trips up owners who go looking on the city website and find nothing.
Your contractor pulls the permit. Under Washington law an electrical contractor has to purchase their own permit for work they perform on your property, so an installer who suggests you pull an owner permit to save money is asking you to do something you should not do.
Association approval and the L&I permit are two separate approvals, and neither substitutes for the other. Get the board’s written approval first. A permit does not override a covenant, and a covenant does not override the electrical code.
What counts as a reasonable restriction
The statute defines it: a restriction that does not significantly increase the cost of the charging station or significantly decrease its efficiency or specified performance.
That definition does real work. A rule that the charger be mounted inside the garage rather than on a street-facing wall is probably fine. A rule that conduit on a common wall be painted to match, fine. A rule requiring a specific low-amperage charger that doubles your charging time, or a required routing that triples the conductor run, starts looking like something a board would have trouble defending.
When a board stalls anyway
Some do. The statute has teeth for that situation. An association that willfully violates the section is liable to the owner for actual damages plus a civil penalty of up to $1,000, and in an action to enforce compliance the court is directed to award reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs to a prevailing owner.
Most boards do not want to be there. In our experience the thing that resolves these is not a threat, it is a complete application: a wiring plan, the contractor’s license and insurance, a metering approach, and a clear statement of which parking space is involved. Boards stall when they cannot picture the finished job.
Common questions
Can my Kent HOA ban EV chargers outright? No. Under RCW 64.90.513 an association may not adopt or enforce a provision that prohibits or unreasonably restricts installation for personal noncommercial use within your unit boundaries or a designated parking space. Reasonable restrictions are still permitted.
How long does the board have to respond? If approval is required, the association has 60 days from receipt to deny the application in writing. Past that, the application is deemed approved, unless the delay came from a reasonable request for more information.
Does my assigned carport space count? Most likely. The statute’s definition of designated parking space includes a garage, a deeded space, and a space in a limited common element restricted to one or more owners.
Who pays for the installation? You do, unless you have a written contract with the association saying otherwise. Removable equipment you paid for can be removed at your cost when you leave.
What if my townhome parking is on the association’s meter? Then board approval is required, because you are connecting to a common electrical power supply, and you will need a way to pay for the electricity you use. A submeter or a networked charger that reports usage both solve it.
Do I need a permit in Kent? Yes. Electrical permits and inspections in Kent go through Washington L&I, and your electrical contractor purchases the permit for the work they perform.
My panel is only 100 amps. Am I out of options? Usually not. Load management often lets a smaller service carry a Level 2 charger. If it does not, a service upgrade is the next step, which in a townhome requires association involvement because the service equipment is typically a common element.
Get a straight answer about your unit
We install EV chargers across Kent, from the valley floor up through East Hill and out past Lake Meridian, including townhomes and HOA communities where the board is part of the process. We will look at your panel, run the load calculation, and give you a written scope you can hand to your board.
ElectON Enterprise 1609 Central Ave S Suite E, Kent, WA 98032 (253) 508-7529 Washington electrical contractor license ELECTEL765MN Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with 24/7 emergency service
Request a free estimate or read more about our electrical work in Kent.
Related reading: what an EV charger install costs in Kent, itemized from five real quotes and how long an install actually takes.