What individual rights, as are recognized by the law and our government, exist in the HOA contractual government? None. Read your CC&Rs, which do not specify any rights except the right to the use of amenities under restrictive conditions. And, if you are behind in your monetary obligations to the HOA, like a common criminal in our society, the homeowner is disenfranchised and that right is lost. The HOA contractual government is a blot, a hugh stain, on the American system of government.
The proponents of planned communities, from their very existence with the HUD/ULI/FHA backed Homes Association Handbook of the 1960s, not only preferred it that way, but quickly learned that mandatory membership and compulsory dues under a private contract, to remove the application of the 14th Amendment protections, was necessary to make planned communities work. They then spent their efforts to convince government officials, public policy makers, the media and the public on what a great and grandiose innovation they were promoting. See the ULI and CAI funded book, Community Associations: The Emergence and Acceptance of a Quiet Innovation in Housing, Donald R. Stabile (Greenwood Press 2000).
The principles of American government never really concerned them — it was a profit making endeavor, not the creation of a better community as was, at least, the ideals of the Progressive Movement of the early 1900s. “They [CAs] exhibit a combination of traits in keeping with a consumer product sold by a profit-seeking firm, a legal device, a corporation reliant on both coercive and voluntary cooperation … “(pp. 102 -104). “Of these alternate forms of association, TB50 [the Homes Association Handbook] highlighted the automatic-membership under CC&Rs as the most effective” (p.93).
This Handbook is over 40 years old, and sadly, the truth of its statements stand today. Why isn’t our government demanding that the governance of planned communities provide for the protection of homeowner rights as the homeowner would have if not living in an HOA? Why aren’t our legislators standing by the US and state constitutions and upholding our individual rights guaranteed by these constitutions?
HOA Constitutional Government 