iBeth: Life in Privatopia

We have a homeowners association (hoa). For some reason, many people think hoas are some kind of grassroots system that protects property values. They couldn't be more wrong.

Homeowners associations are designed to protect the interests of the developer. Rules are created to keep all the homes looking as similar as possible so that the developer can more easily sell the product. (Privatopia tells the whole sordid tale. The Privatopia Papers has more.) Most hoa rules aren't written for a specific community; they're photocopied and passed from place to place. The regulations of our subdivision, for example, name more than one builder, and none of the builders named had anything to do with our development.

What's worse, many of the hoa rules interfere with neighborliness. For example, our hoa mandates 6' tall "privacy fences" in backyards; as a consequence, it is rare to see a neighbor. Due to front-porch-less architecture, some neighbors spend their evenings sitting in lawn chairs in their garages, but it's not uncommon for hoas to forbid this practice (claiming that it's "unsightly"). Same thing goes for ornamentation to express personality. A neighbor has a neat front yard collection of frog statues and spinning windmills; former board members have complained regularly that we're not trying to make her remove them. No WAY do I want them gone--my kids LOVE them.

When I hear people say things like, "Homeowners must like these associations because they buy into hoa communities" or "if you don't like it, don't buy there," nothing sends my blood pressure up faster. WE DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE. I'd wager that every new home community in my city for at least the past 15 years has been an hoa community. And why not? If I were a developer, I'd control my McNeighborhood in any way possible. And in a rapidly growing city like this one, there aren't too many pre-hoa homes to be found. [I've since learned that municipalities require new developments to establish hoas because hoas ease the burden on public services. With hoas, the tax base can be increased at a lower cost.]

Despite all the protections they get from hoas, developers still put the very bare minimum into their subdivisions. For example, before we improved it, our playground had one set of metal swings and a metal slide plunked onto some very hard ground with a shallow covering of landscapers mulch (not the softer playground mulch). The developer installed a picturesque gazebo nearby--the gazebo crumbled to nothing within a year (and collected used condoms like nobody's business). Yet the playground has no sidewalk leading to it (try rolling a stroller over yards and yards of uneven grass!), and it's tucked away on a patch of ground so inaccessible many residents cannot even find it. Our neighborhood had very few trees, except for those landscaped near the model homes. And the puny hoa fee structure that the developer established leaves us with no reserves to repair damage from hurricanes or vandals. Production home builders are practically printing money--I wish they would give more thought to what it's like to live in these homes after they sell the models and leave.

Here are just a couple of hoa horror stories:

A Tampa, FL, woman thought her attorney had paid all of her delinquent HOA fees of more than $4,000, but she was wrong by $497. It cost her the house. The HOA foreclosed and held a court auction. A property company snapped up the house for $4,651, the price of the HOA's legal fees, then sold it for $88,000.
A family that cares for foster children in Port Richey, FL, was threatened with eviction from their residential development. The association considered having foster kids a business because the state paid $2,028 a month to care for the children. Having a business in the home was against HOA rules.

(More horror stories are here and here, along with some helpful links for people threatened with similar fates.) In fact, horror stories are so common that Florida's governor Jeb Bush (a more pro-developer politician can scarcely be imagined) actually appointed a task force to limit their powers!

All of this explains why my husband is now president of our homeowners association, and why I will probably run for office when his term expires.

First, we don't want a bunch of power-hungry tinpot despots--or even well-meaning rule enforcers--trying to fine us because our mailbox is the wrong color. I'm not making that up--the former hoa board DID try to fine us because our mailbox was the wrong color, but nothing in the hoa rules specified a color! When David attended a board meeting to complain, he told them as much; one of the more obnoxious board members demanded, "Where did you get those rules? *I've* never seen them!" And who ever heard of someone's property values declining because the mailbox was black instead of white? [update: I still think the previous board was wrong about mailbox fines, but now that I've had the opportunity to serve on the board awhile, I have a lot more sympathy for them.]

We also don't want a board to put us in danger of being sued, either, which is what will happen if they go around trying to enforce rules that don't exist. Even some current board members like the idea that they can FINE people for various infractions, despite the fact that we don't have enough volunteers to set up a system whereby fining would be legal. Even if we could legally fine people, the only way to collect would be to sue them. So let's say we sue someone to pay a $50 mailbox fine and right before we go to court, he pays the $50. We're out all the atty fees. Not a smart move.

Also, I keep hoping that even though the hoa is not particularly well-designed for building community, we can still reverse-hack it to build a community. Tree planting days are one example--a surprising number of neighbors have turned out to plant the streetside trees the county is giving us. We had a very successful planting last Saturday (76 trees planted in less than 2 hours), another scheduled for tomorrow, and a third a couple of weeks from now.

We're thinking our next project might be "mailbox post painting." Our mailbox posts were donated by the developer, and they're looking pretty shabby. Rather than sending nasty letters to people telling them to paint their mailbox posts, we're considering buying some gallons of paint and enlisting volunteers to go from house to house, painting the shabby-looking mailboxes. Most likely, buying paint would be cheaper than nasty letters anyway, and a volunteer work team would undoubtedly be more effective.

These projects take a lot of patience. Some days, the more I talk with my neighbors, the less I like them! I had calls tonight refusing the trees that people had signed an agreement to adopt, that the county has purchased and has already loaded onto a delivery truck for them. And the phone calls were crabby, too, like I was imposing on them by getting them the tree they asked for. e.g., "We don't want that ugly tree." (When it comes to planting the trees, however, I have been really impressed with the generosity of many neighbors.) The other night someone called to complain to me about our hoa annual fee rising from $210 to $230. (The money pays for things like landscape maintenance, playground repairs, required water testing.) I told him I had nothing to do with it (which I don't--he got my number off a tree flyer) but I wanted to tell him, "If you can't afford to pay $230/year, don't buy a house." And people are always stopping my husband to complain about this neighbor having too many cars or that neighbor not mowing the lawn or the other neighbor not repairing a screen or the alligator living in the retention pond, but do any of them volunteer to serve on a neighborhood watch committee? Noooooooo. They're all "too busy."

Somewhere back at the beginning of this post, I had a point but I think I have rambled past it. Thanks for reading this far!

Comments

Just a thought (don't know if it would be more productive or just make people more crabby) if your community is predominantly young-to-medium-age (the mental image I have of it because of the talk about playgrounds and kids), would it possibly be beneficial to have a hoa website where people can get information and submit comments in a more non-confrontational way? Probably a crappy idea. :) But I like to think the web is a uniting power.

Posted by: sara | December 18, 2004 at 04:05 PM

Our old neighborhood had a HOA. I only WISHED that they would have enforced things.

Your grass hasn't been cut in 10 months? No problem! Park your car in the middle of the street and leave trash cans, boxes and trash in the middle of your yard? Great!

I was "that person." That person who called to get things taken care of. Never worked. Where I live now? The entire city is one big HOA. If you don't cut your grass.....you get a nasty letter. Same with anything else that goes against the rules.

But know what? I enjoy fun neighborhoods as long as they keep things nice and clean. But when you get cars in your yard....I will take a HOA any day.

Posted by: Sarcastic Journalist | December 18, 2004 at 05:03 PM