Saturday, August 13, 2011

The Horror of Homeowners’ Associations

Homeowners' associations were supposedly created by Real Estate God to fundraise for and oversee neighborhood maintenance, and to help developers to efficiently manage and market their properties. But it often seems that their true purpose in life is to drive homeowners insane. Governed by boards of directors—homeowners ostensibly chosen by their peers to represent the interests of their communities—HOAs are organizations that have become somewhat infamous for imposing arbitrary fines and liens on unpopular or "rogue" homeowners, making shit up as they go along, treating people unfairly, enforcing strict adherence to their rules, collecting fees, and acting irrationally or illegally. The people who sit on their boards are often petty, vindictive, utterly incompetent, and/or control-freakish.
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The horror...the horror. HOA Apocalypse Now!

4 comments:

The Right To Own Your Own Home said...

One of the horror stories is about Jim Lane of Huntersville, North Carolina, which was published 9 days ago.

"The trouble started when Lane planted flowers in the corner of a small park within his neighborhood, a violation of his homeowners association rules. He felt the flowers would spruce up the park, which he viewed as unsightly and unkempt. But the board of the association disagreed and fined Lane $100 with a $100-a-day late penalty…That initial fine blossomed into a bill of more than $9,000, including attorney’s fees when the homeowner’s association placed a lien on his home for not paying the fine."

The H.O.A. began foreclosure proceedings, and Mr. Lane ended up paying the fine to avoid losing his house.

A quick search of various conservative and libertarian web sites reveals that this story, like Walter Duranty's non-coverage of the Ukranian famine, has been ignored.

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Areason.com
The Bioethanol Binge - Reason Magazine
Sep 21, 2010 – Aberdeen, South Dakota—“I've always wanted to know, can you drink what you guys make?,” I asked, sitting in Jim Lane's office at the ...

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Afoxnews.com
(some stories from 2006 about somebody else named Jim Lane, but nothing about this incident)

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Apajamasmedia.com
Your search - "jim lane" site:pajamasmedia.com - did not match any documents.

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Aoverlawyered.com
Your search - "jim lane" site:overlawyered.com - did not match any documents.
(funny how Walter Olson and Ted Frank have given H.O.A. lawyers a free pass over the years)

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Ai2i.org
Your search - "jim lane" site:i2i.org - did not match any documents.

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+site%3Awsj.com
(some stories from 2008 and 2009 about somebody else named Jim Lane, but nothing about this incident)


To paraphrase libertarian blogger Glenn Reynolds's (InstaPundit.com) comments about anti-war activists who claimed to "support the troops", the conservatives and libertarians who were self-righteously angry about the theft of Susette Kelo's house back in 2005 don't really give a damn about the rights of individual American home owners. They're just on the other side.

These people need to do some serious soul-searching.

It's not as though the left-wing has done any better, eg

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+%22HOA%22+site:huffingtonpost.com
Your search - "jim lane" "HOA" site:huffingtonpost.com - did not match any documents.

www.google.com/search?q=%22jim+lane%22+%22HOA%22+site:msnbc.com
Your search - "jim lane" "HOA" site:msnbc.com - did not match any documents.

but I don't recall a lot of self-righteous anger from the Left about Kelo.

Anonymous said...

"I personally know several members of my HOA board, they all work, they all have lives, and they do not delight in fining others. However, I am exceedingly glad fines may be issued."

-libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
response to "Is a Homeowners' Association a Contract?"
Colorado Freedom Report
February 26, 2003

Another example of a glibertarian who is as clueless about the real world consequences of his socio-economic-political theories as your typical college campus leftist wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt driving around in a Prius sporting a "Hope And Change" bumper sticker.

Libertarians are not opposed to the abuse of power, as long as power is abused privately.

Anonymous said...

In a follow-up opinion piece a few months later, libertarian activist Ari Armstrong wrote:

Johnson is simply mistaken that HOAs are not subject to the courts (barring state-imposed bans). Indeed, if I were him I would contact a lawyer. All contracts are subject to judicial advisement. At the same time, not all contracts are accepted as valid by the courts; a number of issues might cause a court to declare a contract (or part of it) invalid. Certainly the courts would invalidate the extreme sorts of injustices about which Johnson hypothesizes. Of course, it also pays to investigate one's contracts prior to signing them. On the market, people would come up with a wide range of HOA agreements to meet specific needs. For instance, a condo complex needs a unique set of rules.

Johnson's suggestion that HOAs are somehow more inherently capricious than are state (city, county, state, federal) governments is absurd. It is precisely the state that generally imposes arbitrary, unjust rules.

"Johnson, Armstrong Debate HOAs, Gambling"
Colorado Freedom Report
September 29, 2003

The word "clueless" fails to begin to describe Ari Armstrong.

Anonymous said...

"Johnson is simply mistaken that HOAs are not subject to the courts (barring state-imposed bans). Indeed, if I were him I would contact a lawyer. All contracts are subject to judicial advisement."

Ari Armstrong is unaware that while HOAs are subject to the courts, the obligations on the two parties is completely unequal. This results in an oppressive system of perverse incentives and moral hazards.

If a homeowner commits a "breach of contract," no matter how slight or subjective, he can be fined without limit, and eventually lose his house. Armstrong thinks this is a good thing.

If the HOA commits a breach of contract, the contract does not impose any penalty on the HOA. And frequently, neither do state laws.

HOAs have no incentive to follow the law, and frequently every incentive to break it. The opportunities for profit are great, and the risk of being punished are infinitesimal and penalties negligible.

As Lucias Day wrote in response to a blog post by an HOA law firm back in 2006:

>>"...we in Colorado should feel fortunate that our legislature still has trust in our state's board members to comply with the new requirement..."<<
That's strange. We don't "trust" the states motorists to observe the speed limit in school zones or to stop for stop signs unless they know there is a good possbility of being ticketed. Why should there be any expectation board members will comply with any requirements that are inconvenient or frustrating.