In a letter dated Tuesday, Dec. 7, U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-10-VA) reached out to Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, about the informal complaint filed by lawyers on behalf of the 1,117 residents of Southern Walk at Broadlands and its homeowners association. The residents first reached out to Wolf's office in the fall, and have been in communication with him regarding their concerns and their legal efforts since that time.
Wolf's letter states that the concerns of a residents "merit serious consideration" by the commission. "The complaint raises serious concerns about the fairness of a developer committing my constituents to a multi-generational obligation with a pre-selected communications provider," the letter reads.
Leesburg Today has the rest of the story.
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There is a way to avoid these kinds of locked in deals. Developers can build open access fiber networks owned by the homeowners rather than a private vendor. Apparently the developer of the HOA involved here didn't go that route -- most likely because there was more money for the developer in having a for profit company provide the service. Another example of why privatizing local government is poor public policy.
5 comments:
HOAs have been used for quite some time to compel homeowners (under threat of fine and foreclosure on their home) to purchase products and services from specific vendors.
These should be antitrust cases. Telecom is just one example. What do you think the prohibition against satellite dishes was really about - ensuring cable a monopoly in these subdivisions. HOAs are doing this with poorly regulated and economically unregulated services including water, gas, internet, telephone, video services, and now electricity.
When you say "owned by the homeowners" do you mean owned by an HOA corporation that the homeowners have no choice but to be members of or do you mean actually have a percentage ownership in directly?
> There is a way to avoid this kinds of locked in deals.
Or, we could just ban HOAs.
"When you say "owned by the homeowners" do you mean owned by an HOA corporation that the homeowners have no choice but to be members of or do you mean actually have a percentage ownership in directly?"
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The latter. The owners can manage the telecom infrastructure without the need for a full blown HOA under a number of different mechanisms depending on local state law. For example, in my own community, I formed a telecommunications consumer cooperative corporation.
> The owners can manage the telecom infrastructure
> without the need for a full blown HOA
> under a number of different mechanisms
Fred,
Homeowners can manage anything without the need for a full blown HOA, and all the perverse incentives the existence of an HOA union creates.
Things like swimming pools, tennis courts, clubhouses, etc., can be co-op and/or per-use fee. If they can't generate enough revenue without being able to compel payments, such privatized "amenities" should not exist. [The conservative/libertarian apologists for corporate communism have no faith in the market, and prefer government-mandated membership in HOA unions to provide for and enforce a sense of communisty.]
Even deed restrictions don't require an HOA corporation. If a homeowner is violating a deed restriction, other homeowners can still take the alleged violator to court. The difference is that the plaintiff(s) would have to bear the initial cost themselves, rather than using the defendant's money against him. This would cut down on the frivolous litigation for petty disputes. [The conservative/libertarian proponents of tort reform only want to prevent individuals from suing corporations, not the other way around. *]
While there are real collective interests with townhomes and condos that don't exist with single family housing, I think there is a growing consensus among readers of this blog that (1) the current condo regimes are unsustainable, and (2) the co-op model is vastly preferable.
As long as HOA corporations exist in their current form -- a form that can only be sustained by heavy-handed authoritarianism violating individual homeowners' private property rights -- their proponents will continue to convince the courts and legislators that HOA unions require favorable treatment because they are Too Important Too Fail(tm).
* As a test of my hypothesis, try to find HOA related stories at Overlawyered.com
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