Category Archives: Duck Dynasty

HOAs and Owner Involvement: An Oxymoron? (part 3 of 3)

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Guest blog by Deborah Goonan

Exploring Solutions and Empowering HOA Residents

CAI proposes the following in Community Association Living:

“… the board has an obligation to listen to the owners’ concerns and to take those concerns into consideration in making its decisions. Formal means for obtaining owner input include the:

Resident/owner forum at board meetings
Participation of owners on committees
Annual membership meeting

Other means of owner input include owner surveys and letters and suggestions from owners. Just as a board has the responsibility to encourage owner input via these means, owners have the responsibility to use them to make their views known.”

Sounds good in theory, right? Put the onus on the owners to speak up and be heard!

But, suppose the Board does not care to listen, and resists serving the interest of HOA residents?

The truth is, the person who comes forward with ideas or suggestions is often ignored or rebuked by the Board. That has been my personal experience, and one frequently recounted by many other HOA residents. How often have we experienced or heard accounts of the following?

Owners sit through 2-hour long meetings, only to be told that there is “no more time” for comments at the end of the meeting.
Owners are told to sit down and “shut up.” Some meetings even result in physical altercations, or police or security escorting owners out of the meeting.
Meetings are adjourned prematurely to prevent input.
The Board avoids meetings altogether. If there are no open meetings, how can there be owner participation?
Meetings are not openly announced, or are held in secret.

Bottom line: HOA governance structure must be legally modified to comply with Federal and State democratic processes. Additionally, States must enforce these processes by allowing members to legally challenge non-compliant governance without having to file a civil suit and pay out of their own pockets, while also paying for the HOA to defend its actions.

Unless fundamental Constitutional rights are incorporated into their governance structures, HOAs will continue to operate as closely held corporations and/or de facto oligarchies.

(Link to CAI’s publication, Community Association Living)

HOAs and Owner Involvement: An Oxymoron? (part 2 of 3)

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

Debunking the myth that owners can actually change their HOAs

CAI’s educational booklet makes the assumption that owners elect their Board. In reality, the Developer appoints the Board – or at least one or more members of the Board – for several years, or even decades during construction. When the developer still controls the Board and possesses weighted voting rights, isn’t owner participation essentially a moot point?

Have HOA proponents, and CAI in particular, ever considered that a homeowner, having had no opportunity to elect the Board or amend documents during many years of developer control, is unlikely to ever make a successful transition to widespread participation in voting? And by the time it is no longer developer-appointed, what if the Board is still controlled by a small minority of investors or developer affiliates, who hold the majority of voting rights? This situation is far more common than CAI industry professionals would lead us to believe.

Vote the bums out!

As for CAI’s oft-prescribed solution to dissatisfaction – electing a new Board – is it really that simple? Not really. Post-turnover election procedures are based upon written provisions of the governing documents, possibly subject to limited statutory guidelines. The fact is, HOA governing documents are not reviewed and approved for compliance with constitutional voting procedures. Therefore voting systems are generally built upon the following components:

–Inequitable allocation of voting rights (votes allocated by number of units owned or proportional share of ownership)

–Voting processes that often involve proxies and/or representative voting systems that disenfranchise residents

–Typically, tenants cannot vote

–Members can have their voting rights revoked as a result of an alleged violation or dispute, or for being delinquent on assessments. (If you were told you could not vote at the polls as a result of being delinquent on your property taxes, would you accept that?)

Although laws in some states address a few of these issues individually, no statute addresses all of them, most notably equitable allocation of voting rights. Some states mandate ballot election for Board members, but not for amending governing documents.

Quite often, loopholes allow existing HOAs to avoid compliance with applicable statutes, with the qualifying phrase “unless otherwise stated in the governing documents” inserted before election and voting provisions. And because there is no national standard, the relative fairness of elections and voting varies considerably from state to state and from one Association to another. Obviously, more realistic solutions are needed.

See Part 3: Exploring Solutions

Link to CAI’s publication, Community Association Living

Something Has To Be Done!

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We really do need to get national legislation, at least against some of the most outrageous HOA actions. The case linked below is actually a rather common problem in HOA Amerika… keeping a homeowner locked out of his gated neighborhood if he’s violated some minor covenant.

Jim Bartels of Fairview, North Carolina got into some kind of dispute with his HOA. The result? They installed a gate and wouldn’t give Bartels a gate code. The HOA board claims they can do that because he’s ‘not in good standing’ in the neighborhood.

A while back I blogged about a different case in Florida where a single mom was locked out of her neighborhood. She had to have someone drive to the gate and physically let her in. At the time I mulled over potential family emergencies and whether the whole neighborhood could possibly face a massive negligence and outrageous conduct lawsuit.

A lot of actions by HOA boards are outrageous. Some actions are despicable.

(link to WLOS News)

Stupid, Stupid HOA Board Members! Just Stupid!

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The four board members of the Twin Creek South Estate Homeowners Association may be among the stupidest people on Planet Earth. These knuckle dragging hominids in San Ramon, California might even qualify for the infamous annual “Darwin Award.” Their collective IQ points could easily be totaled up on one hand.

California is in the midst of a drought so bad that smaller communities are now running completely out of water. Many Californians are paying big sums of money for water brought in by truck from other states. Reservoirs are bone dry. Aquifers are drying up or becoming too saline to use. The collective weight of trillions of gallons of missing water has actually caused land along the San Andreas Fault to rise significantly triggering swarms of thousands of mini-earthquakes. The Legislature and Governor have had to enact a law forbidding Homeowners Associations from fining residents who don’t keep their lawns green. More food crops are grown in California than in any other state, but those crops are no longer being shipped to the nation’s grocery stores. That’s why you’re seeing record prices on store shelves across the country.

Yet the Twin Creek South HOA board members have the unmitigated gall to assess monthly fines against a homeowner who tried to create a drought resistant lawn.

When a KGO-ABC news crew tried to talk to these board members they refused to comment.

Of course they did. They’re too stupid to put three words together in a coherent sentence.

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.” -Robert A. Heinlein

(link to KGO news story on HOA fines)

Damn That Old Timed Religion!

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There’s nothing that angers an HOA board or management company more than the discovery that a homeowner believes in Jesus or the Virgin Mary. Well, I take it back, any expression of belief in Judaism also pops their gaskets.

Enock and Ines Berluche, a couple in the Shingle Creek Reserve in Kissimmee, Florida have been battling their HOA over the past year because the HOA says it doesn’t allow yard statuary. You couldn’t tell that by driving through the neighborhood, of course. Lots of homeowners violate the “no yard art” rule with garden frogs, cherubs and statues of Greek goddesses showing (can I say it?) bare boobs. There was even an ‘illegal’ fountain on the lawn of the HOA president.

But when a new homeowner requested permission to put up small statues of The Virgin Mary and Jesus they were denied.

After media publicity and threats of discrimination lawsuits the Shingle Creek Reserve board finally got religion. They reversed themselves and allowed Mary and Jesus to stay. The only tragic part of the story is that the couple had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees just to assert their rights. But that’s the story with most HOAs. It’s not about the rules or rights. It’s all about harrassment and humiliation of homeowners who don’t toe the line.