Tenant moved in cannot locate owner

I am a board member of our HOA. Resently a condominium was was occupied by tenants or people who aquired the keys, that had be vacant for some time. The owner of the unit cannot be found, has declared BK, and owes the HOA more than $10K. The unit is being forclosed on by the bank.
What recourse options does the HOA have?
How does the HOA enforse the CC&Rs and R&Rs when the owner cannot be located?
Is there anyway to recoup any of the HOA fees that are owed from the tenants. The tanants are using HOA provided water, hot water, trash service, and the common area amenities and services that do not require an ekey passcard (we have turned that off).

The HOA should have the Lot # for the property. They can go to the Tax Assessor's officer to find last owner. However, you mentioned it being foreclosed on. How do you know this information? Foreclosures are published in the newspaper under the Legals sections in the classifieds. Some papers only publish the legals section a few times a week.

It's not too late to file the lien on the property as long as the bank foreclosure isn't complete. A lawyer isn't necessary to file a lien but you may want one this time around. The legal fees can be added to the lien amount owed.

I will warn you that don't expect getting the money owed. The best you can hope for is the bank to take over and eventually they may catch up on the dues owed during their ownership period when they finally sell the property. That is because the Bank ALWAYS gets paid FIRST and whatever (if any) funds is leftover is divied up to the debtors. Plus the process and waiting for the bank to sell can take up to a year or more. However, once it's done you may have a better owner who pays their bills.

The owner is responsible for their tenants NOT the HOA. Not much you can do about who lives there if they aren't the owner. Just try to find out who the owner is. It's the owner who's responsible to make sure their tenants abide to the HOA rules. If they don't, the HOA can come after the owner in addition.

Hi Mike:

It potentially appears that via Davis-Stirling you can deny privileges for non-payment of dues. The tenant can then potentially go after the owner to pay HOA fees to get privileges restored. The privileges are for in essence each unit as probably described in your documents, not for individuals/tenants. Be interesting to see how this goes.

Thank you all for your comments, as this issue progresses I will make up dates. at present our HOA manager is trying to obtain a rental/lease agreement from the so called owner's manager.