It wasn’t a firing from the board, it was a firing of the committee that handles approvals of such things; so this suggests that the bylaws are such that the membership of specific committees/workgroups is at the pleasure of the President. Which is giving too much power to a single person in what is supposed to be a collective organization.
Now, Condo boards laying down the law, I’m cool with – after all, when it’s a condo or coop it’s clear that you are going into a Joint Venture… I’ll reserve my :dubious: for “Neighborhood Associations” that exert legislative power over what most people would consider completely private properties.
In general HOAs are created by pre-established covenants that developers who build subdivisions draw up. These HOA agreements/contracts have to be signed by anyone buying the property, and are typically permanently attached to the property, so if you sell it to someone, they have to sign the agreement as well. So if you’ve gone through the process of buying a property that is governed by a HOA, you pretty much know what you are getting in to. Ultimately HOAs are attempts to create a cooperative situation as well, even though the properties are privately owned.
HOAs aren’t entirely bad, they can keep a neighborhood environmentally attractive and keep property values up by prohibiting people from putting a rusted out camaro on the front lawn and etc. However because of the negatives I view with them I’d never buy a property to live in where I’d have to be subject to a HOA. Aesthetically they also tend to promote houses which are uniformly the same, which isn’t something I like either.
Yes, this is a common problem. You get a Board President, who is elected as most of the dudes don’t even bother to vote. The President proceeds to run things like a Tyrant. Pretty much, he can do anything. You have no rights, you’re in a Condo. You maybe can’t even sell, as they can make it almost impossible to sell.
Condos- a combo of all the worst stuff from renting and owning your own home.
Jensen is fucked- if she actually sues, she’ll lose. Una & Martin are right.
I don’t like that kind of a neighborhood, either. I remember when my brother bought his house, he was telling us about the HOA, and that there are only 3 or 4 approved colors for the houses. I laughed later with my husband that this perfectly illustrated the difference between my brother and me…he thinks this is a “great thing,” because “no one can paint their house some obnoxious color that you have to look at.” I, on the other hand, get hives just thinking about looking at all those houses that look exactly the same, in nice, pleasant, neutral colors. EEK! My brother is a nice guy, but far too much of a conformist!
As far as the OP is concerned, I think those folks are out of luck. You agree to the rules, you have to play by the rules.
I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion plus five bucks will get you a coffee at Starbucks. But I think there are certain rights that you cannot sign away or take from others. If actions were taken or would have been taken against all signs it would be one thing- but seeing how the motivation was that the signs were backing the “wrong” candidate makes it quite another.
Political free speech isn’t one of them. Any number of situations can govern that - employers can, and do, regulate your political free speech on their premises (or in uniform as any soldier can tell you ), private enterprises in general can do so in any number of ways, try going to the airport w/a T-shirt announcing that you’re not a terrorist and see how far you get.
Yes, you can’t sign a contract waiving your right to life, liberty, and etc. But you can certainly sign away a great deal of your expressive rights via contract. Some homeowners associations don’t allow public signage of any kind whatsoever, for example.
Most of this has all been supported many times round in court decisions concerning HOAs.
Eventually I do think state and local legislation will reign in some of the worst aspects of HOAs, but until that time strictly speaking most HOA contracts will withstand the scrutiny of the court system.
Strictly speaking it would be hard to get the HOA on some sort of discrimination, because it’s probably likely that the HOA prohibits political signage or “disruptive” signage, and to be “disruptive” there only has to be evidence that people complained about it. In that case it is easy for a HOA President to prove they were simply seeking the removal of disruptive signage, as is allowed under the broad discretionary powers in many HOA contracts.
AFAIK that case was Committee for a Better Twin Rivers v. Twin Rivers Homeowners’ Association concerning the regulation of political signage by a HOA. The trial court in New Jersey sided with the HOA, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court later sided against the HOA (at least on that aspect of the case, the decisions in favor of the HOA on other aspects of the case were upheld on appeal) and AFAIK the case is currently still waiting on a decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court. So it’s still a state court matter and not a Federal one.
Unless new developments have come about in that case since that time, which is entirely possible as it’s been almost 10 months.
I hadn’t heard about this one. Great, my chance to be pissed off about another New Jersey court ruling. As much as the case in the OP pisses me off (and others like it) the government should not be involved at all.
One of the reasons I always tell people who are buying a home to think twice about HOAs, Condos, and Townhouse Associations is that the peole elected to run them are generally people who don’t have real lives. People who have real lives generally don’t want to invest their precious time policing their neighbors’ activities. On the other hand, I have known responsible, reasonable people on those boards, but on those occasions they haven’t lasted long.
When you buy a home in one of these organizations you are buying into a little community, and it is often impossible to find out what that community is really like before you buy. I doubt that a seller would be required to tell a prospective buyer that the board is run by nazis (or as we call them around here, “the picnic police,” from an incident involving disallowed draping of wet towels on a picnic table near a swimming area).
Well, um, who cares what they believe? If one resident believe gravity has been repealed, is President Kearns going to launsch the neighborhood into space? No. Because nutjob claims should not drive good policy. The symbolism of the peace symbol, and wreaths at this time of year, is well-established and well-understood.
You know, suddenly I believe these people are witches. Burn them! What, a basis for my belief? President Kearns doesn’t regard that as relevant, apparently. If they can make an absurdist claim, I can, too. To the stake with all of them!
One shouldn’t try and bring ideas about good policy in to a discussion about HOAs.
I have not seen that governing contract for this particular HOA, but I would not be surprised if it said that the architectural committee had the right to prohibit “disruptive” signage. That is such an ambiguous word that it can easily translate to “if someone complains, it’s disruptive.”
That’s just it…the reason some people LIKE HOAs is because they want to be able to complain about any asinine thing they feel like, and make people comply with what they want. Logic and open-mindedness don’t tend to enter into it at all.
Yeah, it’s like the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is running for the condo presidency and a scandal breaks out because he was in the pool house with his shoes off, or something. Kramer questions why that’s a big deal, and Jerry explains to him that the people living there dream their whole lies about retiring to a community where they get to enforce their petty little rules.
FWIW the “best” HOAs I’m aware of are the ones that are so informal as to barely even be noticed by its residents. My mother lives in a rural subdivision with such an HOA. There’s no rules about uniformity in house appearance, all of the homes weren’t built by the same developer, but the HOA was rather formed voluntarily long after the homes had been built. About the most notice anyone ever pays to the HOA is when this little old lady who has been its treasurer for years comes by once every year to collect money for the road fund, which periodically has the roads repaved and pays to have them salted in the winter.
Aside from that there are only the barest of regulations, and most of them I agree with. This particular subdivision is in a county that has very little property regulations, for example its a county famed for having mansions next to mobile homes. Within the subdivision a few very basic rules (no livestock, no abandoned automobiles and etc.) help to set the subdivision apart from the surrounding county and keep property values high and the neighborhood looking nice.
However, while I can see the obvious “good” to such an organization, I really think there needs to be more regulation and a more proactive stance on HOAs from state and local government to avoid the situations where HOAs are taken over by petty little fascists who fine you for having your garage door open for 1 minute too long.
Why do I get the feeling that the pissed-off president of the HOA is really distraught over the Republicans’ “thumpin’” a few weeks ago, and decided to emulate his hero in consolidating his executive powers?
good grief. Is nothing safe from this? I would believe that this same scenario would have happened last year w/no election, two years ago w/Repubs winning. LIttle men in their little fiefdoms don’t recognize the outside world. Please, for all of our sakes, give it a mother fucking rest already.
