I’m going to slip into the religion zone for just a minute. But for you non-believers, just wait. It’s for you too.
When Jesus was asked about the most important commandments, the first was “Love your God with all your heart.”
When asked about the second he said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself. There are no greater commandments than those.” He actually said that!
Sooo, let’s go full circle and jump forward a couple thousand years to a scientific study of more than 5000 people and their health and general well-being. It seems like there’s a pretty solid connection between heart health and the amount of strife with neighbors.
Why should you care about continued construction of HOAs, even if you do not live in one?
City and County planning boards love HOAs because they increase the property tax base, while requiring very few, if any, additional services to be provided within the boundaries of these communities. In theory, HOA residents pay assessments for their own services – which can include road maintenance, storm water system maintenance, security, and the like, as well as maintenance of common areas and multifamily (attached) housing structures. In other words, HOA owners pay more of their property tax dollars for a lower level of city or county service. That means higher net tax revenues for cities and counties. Or does it?
How dare Susan French (lead ‘editor,’ of the 2000 Restatement of Servitudes, 3rd; co-author of Community Associations Law (1998 & 2008) with Wayne Hyatt, CAI national leader) take the attitude, accepted by the publisher, ALI, that this treatise is geared toward private governments because that’s what the people want. Did any group have her ear? (The Restatement is the common law treatise used by the courts when statutory law is silent.)
Community Associations Institute (CAI) presents the “Verdict: Americans Grade their Associations, Board Members, and Community Managers,” a 2014 survey of CIC residents, as evidence of “overwhelming” CIC resident satisfaction. CIC is an acronym for Common Interest Communities, industry-speak for homeowners’ and condominium associations, cooperatives, and variations such as planned communities, property owners’ associations, and other marketing catch-all phrases. I have blogged before about the results of this biannual survey, but, honestly, one has to take any market “research” conducted by an organization for its own benefit with more than a grain of salt. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the validity and reliability of the statistics CAI presents to the media, and good reason to doubt the ability to generalize conclusions drawn by CAI to over 64 million people.
Property values in Western Florida are in the gutter. So it’s not unsurprising that some low testosterone creep would complain that West Dunedin neighborhood values were down because a little boy was operating a little lemonade stand. Lots of neighbors support this kid, to no avail. He’s been ordered to take it down
Here’s another weird one. A friend of mine sells my book, Neighbors At War, from his packaging store. His last one sold just yesterday. Seems an angry customer was sending off a $1000 certified check to his HOA to pay for a garage door that was inadvertently left open.
