Understanding life in an HOA: you are treated just like any other employee

Unfortunately, living in an HOA is like being an employee in a business.  You may not like the way it’s run, or find the managers, bosses, or fellow employees pretty bad at doing their jobs.  You may not like the way they do things, the jobs given or not given you, or how a committee that you are on is performing. What are your recourses there? Well, you got the same in the HOA corporation, owner or not. 

Your HOA board director is not at all like an elected public representative, nor is he bound by the same laws and understandings as are public officials. Rather, he is a director of a corporation with responsibilities to the corporation, and not to individual owners.  Keep that in mind!  The courts and legislators somehow assume that the directors are your elected representatives, and that they have your consent in every decision they make.  This is an assumption that legislators, as elected representatives, well know is NOT true

BIG EXCEPTIONS: 

1. Under an adhesion “contract” and state laws granting financial penalties and loss of your home, you must make those compulsory payments and cannot leave the mandatory association unless you move.  Your home is, in reality, collateral for life for the inept performance of your HOA board so the HOA can survive.

2. While there are employee and labor laws to protect employees, there are no  laws to protect you and your rights as a mandatory member of an HOA under compulsory assessments.

As a homeowner friendly attorney stated before an Arizona legislative committee, “HOAs are the largest unregulated business in the Unitized States”.

GET INVOLVED AT YOUR LEGISLATURE!   YOUR LEGISLATORS WILL DO NOTHING UNLESS DEMANDED BY NUMEROUS COMPLAINTS, WITH DETAILS, ABOUT HOA ABUSE OR VIOLATIONS OF STATE LAWS  OR THE GOVERNING DOCUMENTS.