Once again, did you see the link in the OP?
Yup. I did.
Would you say that your solution(s) would have helped the person in the article?
Yup.
Three people took over the board (it is a three person board) per your story and started this.
Take it back.
How does he do that, considering the near impossibility of gathering enough people at one time to have a meeting, let alone a quorum?
What’s the alternative? Some people get to skip the rules when they decide the rules are inconvenient to them? Rules they actually agreed to (in a legal document no less). How does that work?
The mechanism is there to change things. That people can’t be arsed to participate in the things that govern them is their problem. It is not a fault of the system.
That isn’t an answer to the question I actually asked, but it does remind of a saying:
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
My city’s municipal code used to require that garbage cans be kept where they are not visible from the street. They also required that downspouts be directed to the front or rear of the property, instead of towards one’s neighbors. Both provisions reflected my preference.
A short while back - with no notice either my wife or I noticed, the municipal code was amended and both such provisions were removed. So shit happens that an individual might disagree with, whether there is an HOA or not.
And I might find it difficult/impossible to change the municipal code in a manner that reflects my wishes, to unseat the members of local government, or even to get local government to enforce the clear and unambiguous language of the code. Sucks to live in a society, no?
I would never advise someone to buy in a development where they don’t like the rules. But I think the idea of “rules can be changed” is in response to a different situation. I have no desire to live in a place with an HOA and if I ever do, it will be because I move to a place where one is a necessity (co-op, condo, a place with amenities not available otherwise). But I know that just because I don’t care about cars parked on the street doesn’t mean my neighbors don’t care. And maybe if I can’t get enough people on my side to change the rule to allow street parking , that might mean that most of my neighbors either don’t want street parking to be allowed, or maybe they just don’t want it enough to do anything to change it. Maybe I can’t get the rule changed under any circumstances, because only a tiny minority agree with me. Maybe I want the rule changed and 50% is a quorum but when 50 of the 100 homeowners show up for a meeting and 26 vote against me, the rule isn’t getting changed.
That’s the problem I think I have with regulations - how do you do it? If its going to regulate what constitutes a quorum and how many votes it takes to change a rule and that sort of thing, that’s fine- although it still may take going to court to enforce it. If you are going to regulate what rules the HOA can have, I’m not sure more people will be happier. Different people will be happy but not necessarily more.
Pot, meet kettle.
Your article said this is the result of three people elected to the three person HOA board. That, to me, suggests an obvious way to solve this problem.
That might make sense if I had proposed a solution myself.
But I didn’t, so it doesn’t. Why don’t you go right ahead and tell us the solution instead of hinting.
The only thing your case has to do with the case I linked to (Andrea’s story) is … garbage cans.
I did.
If you think about Andrea’s situation, though … were this NOT an HOA community, the overwhelming likelihood is that – had it somehow become a Code Enforcement issue – she’d have been dealing with the proverbial faceless bureaucrat without the knowledge or involvement of all of her neighbors.
[And that’s setting aside for the moment the overwhelming likelihood that her reasonable accommodation would have been granted]
I have a dear friend who, early, joined NextDoor. Her impression – formed very quickly – was that “most of her neighbors seemed like sanctimonious douchebags.”
When a resident tries to get something done via the HOA, it’s entirely too common that everybody in the neighborhood knows about it – having heard a one-sided version of events – with broadband speed.
Which triggers that “Lord of the Flies” dynamic that’s all too common.
Again: when you’re dealing with the City, this is overwhelmingly less likely to ever happen in the first place.
Ask your municipality what notice is legally required in your state and how they’re complying with it.
They probably aren’t required to notify everybody in the municipality by letter or phone (and I doubt you’d want to pay the tax increase if they were.) But they probably are required to post and/or publish proposed changes in specified places. Find out what those places are, and check them at the required intervals; then you’ll have an idea of what’s going on. There may well be public hearings involved; and there’s certainly a way of contacting the members of the relevant boards.
– I’m repeating myself, I think: but a reasonable HOA agreement doesn’t allow for its being changed without reasonable notice and a vote by some reasonable amount of the members who can be bothered to vote. It seems to me that the place of the State would be in requiring agreements to be so written.
I’m not sure. I don’t regularly attend city meetings, or regularly review the code. But I have looked at it when I wondered if certain activities were permitted/prohibited. And my wife and I are both attorneys who regularly read mailings we receive from the city. I guarantee we are more attuned to such matters than a majority of residents - yet we had no warning of or say into this change.
I was observing that one need not live in an HOA to not be thrilled with every regulation, and to feel one has little say into regulatory changes and enforcement. But some enlightened participants in this thread think all I was talking about was garbage cans. 
This was a good post for a few reasons, one of which is it highlighted for me what I think might be causing all the back-and-forth in the thread, namely, exactly what do people mean by regulation?
Speaking for myself (but I suspect others) the sort of regulations I’d envision are like the one you mentioned. You have to provide certain notice, limits on quorum and majority requirements, perhaps a requirement for appeals and arbitration processes, etc.
Nothing, in my mind at least, that would be overbearing or that would destroy the HOA model. Common sense, unobjectionable stuff (acknowledging that some people will object to anything). Requirements that would make it difficult for martinets to get a foothold, but that most people would find reasonable. If the majority of HOA’s are benign and well run, should have virtually no impact on them.
Seems really solvable, to me at least.
Particularly when the industry says that 75,000,000 Americans live in HOA communities.
As we all said during COVID, a small fraction of a large number is still a large number.
Especially if you’re in one of the 11% baddies.
And extra-especially if you are out of some petty minds idea of compliance.
I can see they wouldn’t want you to rent out an extra room over the garage to just some random person.
If you move granny in or your graduated college student comes home while looking for a job there should be ways to have this privilege in your own home without the Nazi interrogation and showing every document but your library card.
Call up City Hall and ask them.