Ĭhrista Colquhoun, a resident of the Stone Oak development, built a white picket fence (the stuff of homeowner dreams!) on her property to prevent her five-year-old autistic son from hurting himself by running out of the yard and into the street. Some Loma Linda residents apparently believed the wreath was "a protest of the Iraq war" or "a symbol of Satan." The Internet heard about this situation and called for a protest against the HOA, prompting the HOA to back off and drop the fines. In 2006, the Loma Linda Homeowners Association threatened to fine a homeowner $25 per day because she hung a "divisive" Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign on her home. With that in mind, here are 22 shocking tales about HOAs gone nuts: Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private GovernmentĪnd so you have chaos. "There's no training or actual requirements" for board positions, McKenzie adds, which means that the people in charge often don't understand the most basic requirements of the law. "But today, encouraged by a new industry of lawyers and consultants, boards are increasingly foreclosing on people 60 days past due on association fees."Įvan McKenzie, a University of Illinois-Chicago political science professor and author of the book Beyond Privatopia: Rethinking Residential Private Government, recently explained to me that a complicating aspect of HOA disputes is that they often become personalized, "so you can't even resolve them." When board members interpret the rules to suit their own ends, homeowners often must look to the courts to enforce basic standards of accountability-and that can get expensive. He's also founded a statewide coalition to help other homeowners in his state fight back against their HOAs.ĭon't think Lane's HOA "couldn't possibly" take his house just because he didn't pay their fines, because they totally could: "Before now, associations rarely, if ever, foreclosed on homeowners," reports AP. In the interest of avoiding foreclosure, Lane paid the fine-but he's now suing the HOA for $800,000 for abuse of process and other things. Then, when he refused to pay, the HOA placed a lien on his house. For committing his act of botanical goodwill, the Gilead Ridge Homeowners Association fined him. He "felt the flowers would spruce up the park, which he viewed as unsightly and unkempt," reports the Huntersville Herald. Lane's a North Carolina man who's caught up in a dispute with his HOA because he planted some pansies in a community common area. We don't fly Old Glory in our front yard because we don't have a front yard, we… Just Let This Veteran Fly His American Flag Already You can try to look for an HOA whose culture, rules, and members appeal to you-but then again, if just one or two board members quit or are replaced, your HOA's culture and rules might become completely different/personally unbearable to you.Īnd if you somehow end up on the board's bad side by, say, planting an unauthorized flower, or flying your flag on the wrong type of pole, it's likely that your HOA will fine you, lien you, and threaten you with foreclosure-just like Jim Lane's HOA did. More than 80 percent of newly built homes belong to association communities, reports the Associated Press 24.4 million homes, or 20 percent of all homes in America, are represented by HOAs, with concentrations higher in some states. Sure, you can decide against moving into a HOA-governed development-except that in many parts of the country, doing so has become increasingly difficult. Regardless, anyone who wants to move into a housing development ruled by an HOA has to agree to follow the HOA's rules-which can prove troublesome for anyone who's even slightly individualistic, or simply laissez-faire about the color of their neighbors' driveways. The people who sit on their boards are often petty, vindictive, utterly incompetent, and/or control-freakish. Governed by boards of directors-homeowners ostensibly chosen by their peers to represent the interests of their communities-HOAs are organizations that have become somewhat infamous for imposing arbitrary fines and liens on unpopular or "rogue" homeowners, making shit up as they go along, treating people unfairly, enforcing strict adherence to their rules, collecting fees, and acting irrationally or illegally. But it often seems that their true purpose in life is to drive homeowners insane. Homeowners' associations were supposedly created by Real Estate God to fundraise for and oversee neighborhood maintenance, and to help developers to efficiently manage and market their properties.
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