Our HOA is having a civil war, grab some popcorn

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

What is it with HOAs and attracting the crazy?

We just moved into a group of new townhouses here in Taiwan. The small, 23-unit complex was developed last year and we moved in in February. One of our friends “Don” is tight with the developer, and got us a great deal, even better than he got for himself.

Last November, all the new owners got together to elect an HOA committee. Pretty routine, with five members: the Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, and two other members. Several of the owners are highly opinionated, and everyone made the rookie mistake of electing them to the committee. Serious mistake here.

Don was elected the chair. The vice chair went to a nice guy, but a real whacko got elected to be the treasurer and complex’s busybody’s husband got on the committee as well. A reporter was also elected.

Less than six months later, the committee has erupted into a open war. The treasurer and his wife “The Crazy” have threatened to sue the Chair. Don, in turn, tells everyone that the Treasurer can’t be trusted with the money. The Crazy is attempting to unilaterally make up rules on the spot and nags the reporter to enforce them.

A month ago, the committee met and the Treasurer, the Busybody’s Husband and the Vice Chair attempted a putsch by suddenly springing an election for the committee member assignments by claiming that one of the rules allowed them to do this. The Chair left the meeting, and the remaining committee elected the Busy-body’s husband to be the new chair in a three to one vote.

The next day, some of us residents heard the news and confronted Busybody’s husband who was unable to explain why the attempted putsch was necessary. I got in his face and he got sufficiently pissed off enough that he stormed off to his apartment, wrote up a letter of resignation from the committee and turned it in to Don, the old (current?) chair.

The Treasurer and the Crazy wrote a 16-page email (in RED and Bold) blaming everything except climate change on Don, followed up by a 31-page memo. Busybody wrote a manifest on why she was the real power and since her husband resigned, she’ll just take his place :dubious:

We’ve had a couple of meetings, the last of which the three plotters spent two hours repeating why Don is a evil creature. Everyone else just wanted them to shut up and go, but no one says anything. I don’t speak Chinese and my wife doesn’t want to draw enemy fire.

There had been a Regular Guy who was acting as a temporary clearing house for information as the committee is in open war. The Gang of Three cornered him and intimidated him into backing off.

My first instinct is to fight, but my wife wisely suggested that we shut up and give the conspirators enough rope to hang themselves. People are pretty tired of their antics.

There is yet another meeting this Saturday. Sensing loss, the Crazy and her friends are threatening a boycott, which is fine. We’ll replace everyone as start over again.

This is just way too much time and energy for a little HOA. What gives? Why to the Crazy love these things?

2

Are there any actual issues at the heart of all this; parking spaces 10-centimeters too narrow, rain gutters an unfashionable shade of taupe, anything like that? What are they fighting over, what evil has Don supposedly done?

It sounds like it probably doesn’t matter any more, and who knows if anyone even remembers, but I’m just curious.

3

It sounds, to me, like they thrive on drama. Wow.

4

Yeah, but think of all the good the HOA has done for the community!

Like…

Umm…

5

(sung in a thick working-class New York accent): “Walkin’ down Canal Street, knockin’ every door…”

Seriously, what on God’s green Earth is a HOA?

ETA: Never mind --I’m guessing it’s “Homeowner’s Association,” with a gratuitously inserted “O.”

6

Our neighbor/best friend in the neighborhood is the president of the HOA. My girlfriend is the secretary. We plan on ruling with an iron fist.

7

I’m amused to see that the insanity of HOAs occurs outside the US.

8

Oh yes, we have HOAs in South Africa as well, although we call them “bodies corporate”. Mostly in blocks of flats where the flats are individually owned, and in new suburban developments where the whole neighbourhood was built by a developer. You don’t tend to see them in old suburbs.

I became chairman of my building’s trustees one year because the rest of the owners were engaged in a civil war with two equally-matched sides. I was new and hence the only person that both sides would accept. I won’t be making that mistake again… :smack:

9

Same principle applies to school boards.

The opportunity to wield and abuse pissant power is irresistible to a certain type of nitwit.

10

While you got that popcorn out, you might wanna sit back and watch some X-files - Arcadia in particular.

11

HOAs are the perfect illustration of Sayre’s Law in effect.

12

I live in a condo complex of 14 units. Our HOA has had epic fights over the years I’ve lived there. Police have been called. One resident has tried to shut the gate on another person’s car. All sorts of crazy.

13

Actually, that’s very true in the US as well; the older suburbs don’t, generally, have HOAs but newly built ones do.

14

There should be a corollary to the old adage, “I wouldn’t belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

Something along the lines of, “people who WANT to serve on the HOA board are the last people who should.”

My father is president of his HOA.

15

HOAs are like so many other civilian bodies - PTAs, Little League, town committees - in that the people attracted to them are both the least suited to serve and the most overbearing and uncontrollable when they do. They all seem to be the kind that got their discharge as a PFC or other bottom-level grunt and By God they are going to Be In Charge. That is, they don’t have anything like the power they think they deserve in the real world, so give them a tiny lever in a fishbowl and it’s instant insanity.

It’s bad enough when nothing more than the color theme for the Flower Parade is at stake; put kids, organized sport or home ownership in the pot and you get total, entrenched insanity.

16

Is that a wrought iron fist? What size, weight and style? Refer to page 15 paragraph 3 to see if your fist meets the HOA regulations. Failure to follow HOA standards can have severe consequences, up to and including removal of said fist.

We have standards here.

Capt

17

The Crazies say that Don is “too close” to the developer, that he’s not “confrontational” enough with them. Ms. Busybody and husband gave lots of generalities with very few specifics.

At the last meeting they had two, count them, two minor issues with the developer which they are pissed that Don didn’t use the nuclear option in the negotiations. One issue is that the driveway to the underground parking is slippery when wet (who would have imagined?) and one of the grandmas fell down on her scooter. The developer made some cuts into the center of the driveway to let the water run off and solve the problem. Don and others think that is OK, the Gang of Three want ah, we’re not sure. But the developer is evil as well, so Don and the developer should both rot in hell. Or something like that. My wife got tired of translating the rant.

The other is some minor leaks into the underground parking and after the developer fixes it, that they should give a three-year warranty instead of one-year. Ho hum.

Ms. Bubybody’s MIL lives with them and reports that the treasurer calls the couple over so he can have an audience for his harangues.

The committee is supposed to do a final check off for the project and then the developer will give us some money. Not a lot, I want to say $15,000. With no functioning committee that is all up in the air.

At the initial meeting, the Treasurer convinced people to agree to more uniformity on any modifications to the exterior units. Little did we know that they would run with it and to interpret that to mean they can unilaterally makeup rules. One of our goals is to roll that back.

On rainy days, I would sometimes let my 5 and 3-year-old kids ride their bicycles in the underground parking while I watched to make sure they would move to the side whenever anyone came. Part of the 31-page memo was printouts of repeated texts from Ms. Crazy to Don telling him to have me stop that because, er, we’re not sure. Oh, maybe it’s dangerous and what if they hit our kids? Don wouldn’t stop me and that pissed them off. That kind of shit.

The Putsch Plotters are telling everyone that the meeting is “against the rules,” but as it stands, it’s mostly likely that we will have a majority of owners attend the meeting. (About a third live in Taipei and this is a second home for them.) With a simple majority of people at the meeting, we can change whatever we want.

At the last meeting, my three-year-old son fell down and cut his head, requiring us to leave the meeting, drive to a hospital, have stitches, go get ice cream for being a good kid and only screaming for five minutes and get back to the meeting where they were still ranting about Don. I bought my son another ice cream in gratitude.

This is insane. Fortunately, my wife threatened me with no sex for the next 15 years unless I shut up in the meeting, which has forced me to just relax and enjoy it.

18

Keep in mind that you live in a country where the national parliament repeatedly breaks up into fisticuffs, where legislators once engaged in a food fight, and where a representative once tried to halt the passage of a bill by eating it, until she was thwarted by opposition members who pulled her hair. (Here).

The people in your HOA are simply laying the groundwork for a political career.

19

Our HOA actually has very little power. These are high end individually owned homes. What you do with your property is governed by local zoning not the HOA. The HOA mostly concerns itself with the upkeep of some common areas. The fees are low and it is not intrusive.

20

It always amazes me how you can have a group of 100 mostly normal people living in a housing complex and yet have an HOA board consisting of Captain Queeg, Colonel Klink, and Emily Littella.