Middletown (Ohio) Journal letter
Letters to the Editor for March 31, 2006
I’d like to congratulate the Middletown Journal for its series on homeowner associations, because it tells the public about life in an HOA.
However, let me give you some observations concerning the content of the series. Basically, you are revealing that buyers choose HOAs for aesthetic reasons (“looks nice”) and for a preservation of property values. You are also revealing, as indicated by my comments in the series, that people are willing to trade a loss of rights and protections in order to attain their stated goals. The problem comes, however, when these rights are trampled on by the board at some time, any time, in the future, and the homeowner finds that he has limited or no protections, and that it’s too late to change anything. So he must either conform and accept the injustice, or move out.
People should ask why they are not being told about this loss of rights and protections that are not mentioned in any of the required disclosure documents. If HOAs are all that good, why is there this silence on the part of the government’s consumer protection agencies, as well as generally in the media?
HOA Constitutional Government 