They may be unenforceable but they still exist. I posted before about discovering that many HOAs in my area still had covenants forbidding the sale and ownership by “colored, Jews, gypsies, eastern Europeans, orientals, Mexicans, Spanish, arabs…” the list went on, like something out of Blazing Saddles. And as I posted before, when the local news asked one prominent HOA’s officers why they didn’t remove the covenants, they claimed, off-camera, that “all changes like that need a 2/3 majority to pass on a secret ballot, and we think if we put it to a vote most residents would vote to keep the restrictions.” :rolleyes:
At our local County Museum there was a whole exhibit on HOAs and their role in institutionalizing racism, something which went on for the better part of a century. IMO HOAs feed off of this aura of only being for the “beautiful white people”, and the gated communities we have now packed with middle-managers at work and helicopter moms at home remind me of upscale South African whites-only enclaves. No matter how nice people believe they are, are almost like the fruit of the poison tree.
Read into it whatever you wish. The judge was annoyed at him for filing a suit against the HOA (and possibly for filing other lawsuits: don’t know, wasn’t there). The guy was and is a fuckwad of the first order, a drunk and a wife abuser who routinely filed spurious lawsuits against other homeowners and the HOA, including one against his elderly neighbors because they removed a diseased tree from their property, part of which hung over onto his property. The guy came at me because of some bullshit he saw as a property line problem (it’s a five-plex townhouse, for cripes’ sake: I didn’t build it, I just lived in it), and I told him I’d rather just fucking shoot him rather than have to deal with him, which ended our tenuous relationship immediately.
I did some searching on the HOAs in Calgary and it seems they collect a small fee (usually about $250 a year?) to maintain common areas and community facilities and parks. As you mention, the city bylaws allow them to deal with REAL nuisances. However, the one I read more about either is remarkably non-anal for a bunch of petty Napoleons (who tend to dominate this sort of organization) or they have no such power. They had “recommended” colours for the back fence (facing the main road) and asked people to use those but you were allowed to use any clour. The City bylaw only said you had to keep your fence (all your property) in good repair. It appears the HOAs in Calgary are significantly less powerful than those mentioned in this thread. it said nothing about forcing you to use certain colours on your house exterior or any other architectural standards.
(A fellow I worked for in the COnservative party years ago grew up in Sweden - that was his example of socialism - the government even told you what colour to paint your house… )
What I see is that America, land of the free, the towns have absolved themselves of any responsibility for the jobs municipalities are supposed to do. They leave items like bylaw enforcement, roads, snow plowing and other common area maintenance, and building standards to a bunch of petty local tyrants.
My wife gets annoyed because our neighbour parks his car 24-7 on our side of the street. I imagine these sorts of petty grivances festering in the minds of interfering busy-bodies with no sense of fairness and none of the restraints of established government, and I can see where in some places this could be a burden. That’s another key - if a government did some of these things, then constitutionality comes into play; but for a cooperative association the government uses the excuse it’s “voluntary” even though that is only in the most minimal sense of the word.* If you wanted to be in a gated community and expected teh whole area to be “private property”, Ok. But to cede your entire house right down to the wiring to be managed by some neighbourhood busybody? Sad!
*IANAL - There’s the concept where a deal is “unfair” if one side has all the power and the other only has the option “take it or leave it”, especially if “leave it” is not a great choice either. If you essentially have no choice but to agree, then it is NOT fair. When the majority of homes are in HOA communities, saying “you have a choice” is not really true.
But unless the demand is VERY strong for non-HOA, there is an alternate motivater. The municipality tells the developer “we will not maintain those miles of new roads, cut the boulevard grass, or plow the snow - so you better set up something to take care of it.” The town can advertise its wonderful low taxes, ignoring the compulsory hidden additional fees or those residents. The developer can get the permits to build. If the HOA turns out badly, well, who cares? The homeowner blames their neighbours the dicks, not the mayor and council or some stupid town bylaws. The developer is off living in Palm Springs.
But really, unless it is a true condominium setup isn’t the HOA doing exactly what the town should be doing?
My point was the guy may be super-jerk but he was protecting his legal rights and the judge thought his suit wasn’t spurious since he won. While the HOA and residents can think what they want but what THE JUDGE did was inappropriate - at least in this case.
Or was the judge simply ticked off by his behaviour and demeanor in court. The judge then was correct to a fault - “Mr. Smith, you win because you’re right this tiem, but you test the patience of this court with your behaviour.” If the guy was a dick, then odds are he proved it to the judge over the course of hours or days. The judge was honest enough to gie the guy his due, but cared enough about courtroom decorum to chew the guy out? Or was he exasperated that a stupid dispute ended up in a full-blown legal battle?
That would be my guess from the limited information. The court does not want to be dragged into dispute over your shed or where your dog dumps or a $23 cable bill, but if two sides are going to be dicks then it is dragged into it. The judge can reasonably tell people to smarten up. What he cannot (or rather should not, but many do anyway) is give an incorrect ruling because he takes a personal dislike to one party.
True enough, I have to admit. The guy is late 50s and is an engineer, a degree he attained after flunking out of law school. Apparently he learned enough in law school to understand the rudiments of building a case and how suits work, and attempts to apply that knowledge at every opportunity, if the stories from his previous community are to be believed. I think he moved at the behest of his wife, who probably was frightened by the hostility of the neighbors. Unfortunately, the guy created the same atmosphere in his new neighborhood almost immediately. I’m glad we don’t live there any longer, as he owned a unit in my building and it was only going to be a matter of time before he screwed up the courage to come at me again about something. What a prick. Sorry about the hijack.
That’s funny; I didn’t think any of these were insane. I thought most of them sounded like people trying to get around the rules for everyone because of their “special” circumstances.
As an aside, I am definitely in the camp with those who will never ever belong to an HOA. I like to at least imagine that I can do whatever I want with my house, and I certainly didn’t buy it with property values in mind. HOAs are pretty uncommon in New England, and I would like to think that we in NH really mean it when we say “Live Free or Die”
Anyway, I wanted to chime in on those who argue that HOAs are optional and driven by market forces. There was a story on NPR about a year ago which talked about some lawsuits that have been moving forward because of counties and municipalities requiring HOAs before they would approve new building projects. These local governments apparently realized that they could collect the same taxes from the property owners, but force the developers to install HOAs which then have to assume some of the responsibilities (i.e., snow plowing) that the municipality would otherwise have to cover.
The argument, and it seems reasonable to me, is that this actually does create an illegitamite de facto government because it leaves purchasers no other option. Taken to a logical extreme, for instance, a local government could require that the HOA cover routine traffic enforcement in the same manner an office complex would hire a security company to patrol its parking lot, and the police would only arrive when called for something more serious than a run stop sign.
The rules themselves aren’t insane, but fanatic enforcement of the rules without regard to what are truly special circumstances is insane. Some of the cases are arguable but a couple did strike me as unfair.
Prohibition of a “for sale” sign is just ridiculous. It’s reasonable and a universally accepted practice. Did you read the source article? The builder is still selling new homes in the neighborhood, and they display “for sale” and “sold” signs. The rule appears to simply prevent homeowners from competing against the builder until they sell out.
Using a rule against “under 55” residents to keep a couple of becoming the guardian of their granddaughter shows a lack of compassion. Sure, it’s the rule and they agreed to it, blah, blah, but this is a truly special circumstance. The HOA should be working with this couple to help them figure out a solution that is good for everyone but instead they are just bulldozing them with the rules.
Really now. I thought each and every one of them was insane. But I do agree that once someone is dumb enough or negligent enough to get into an HOA whose rules they don’t intend to follow, they should be held to the letter of the law, rather than trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Likewise, when an HOA illegally tries to enforce a rule, they should be cracked down on hard, with civil and criminal penalties for the individual board members. If they want to put on their Napoleon hats and play dictator, then they need to realize that trying to prevent someone from putting up an HD antenna could be their Waterloo.
Regarding the “for sale” stuff … some HOAs have bylaws that specify no signs of any kind can be displayed on your lawn, etc. Some even specify that if you’re selling a home, you can have X number of signs (usually, one) of such-and-such size placed only in such-and-such location (usually, a front window). Again, the goal is to maintain consistent appearance across the community.
How you feel about that goal is up to you. I’m not necessarily defending it - just saying, them’s the rules. In some places. Not in others.
To my mind, the whole point of owning property is that you can do more or less as you will with it. I trust my neighbours not to go crazy and plant their lawns with piles of garbage, and they trust me.
A HOA runs contrary to that. I’d never buy a house in one.
The simple requirements- like no piles of garbage - can usually be handled by city bylaws. The more extreme ones - no “for sale” signs, what colour to paint the house, etc - are things no city government would get away with, yet they allow quasi-governmental agencies to do this for them.
If the city or county requires an HOA then it’s not a stretch to argue it is a creature and extension of the government and must abide by the same restrictions governments face.
Even if the city requires an HOA which distorts free-market preferences, the particular HOA restrictions that don’t overlap with typical city functions still have be to voted and agreed upon by the residents.
For example, if somebody wanted to add a clause to the HOA specifying, “no children shall be allowed to play in the streets with untied shoelaces”, you still have to convince a high % of your neighbors to approve such a ridiculous rule.
That’s one point of owning property, but not the whole point. For me, the point in owning property is getting to the point where I don’t have to pay rent – or a mortgage either (my condo is paid off). True, I have to pay HOA fees but in total that’s not more than I’d have to pay for maintainance anyway, if I did exterior maintainance. Being able to get to a point where I could live without a house payment is the main reason I bought a house.
Probably not. HOAs are started by the developers who write the bylaws and then you need the 2/3 vote to overturn it. Now throw in a chair that abuses/does not know Robert’s Rules (pop quiz: can a majority close the nominations for officers? what happens when a member “calls for the question” by yelling out “Question!” during debate) and it is near impossible.
Let me ask you this, would residents vote to pay an extra $100/mo to pay for the developers other project? If not, why does a motion never get passed to recscind it (Hint: imagine a board member physically dragging a child out of the community pool and taking pictures of them thereby embarrassing them.)
Well, yeah, there are other points to property ownership to be sure, but they are mostly financial - another biggie is that mortgage payments act as a huge forced savings.
To me, the major difference between owning and renting is that the house is mine and by mine I mean ‘assuming I’m behaving sanely and safely with it, not breaking any laws and stuff, I can do with it and on it as I please’. In contrast, if I rent, I’m using someone elses’ property and they have the say.
If that’s the case, giving other people a say in restricting the minutae of how you use your own property means it really isn’t totally yours. They have taken away some of that bundle of rights that goes with describing something as “yours”. Sure, you have done it ‘volunarily’, but it still sucks (IMO) because a big part of the reason I would wish to buy, rather than rent, is to be free of such restrictions - even though I’ve no intention of painting my house pink with poka-dots or the like.
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