Political dynamics at play in HOA-Land

“In order to succeed you must accept the world as it is and rise above it”

Historians have referred to the American Revolution as the “American Experiment” because it introduced a modern, as of that time, form of a democratic republic.  Would such a government based on the principles, beliefs and values of our Founding fathers survive the passage of time?  However, over the past century there has been a slow but steady erosion of the American Experiment. 

Simply stated, the following questions remain unanswered by state legislatures or HOA special interests, first asked in 2005:

1.     Can a legislature delegate its functions, not government services but functions, to private entities without oversight or compliance with the Constitution, as required of all government entities?
2.      Can private parties enter into contractual arrangements using adhesion contracts and a constructive notice consent, which serves to regulate and control the people within a territory (an HOA), to circumvent the application of the Constitution?

(Why Homeowners Associations (HOAs) should and must be made political subdivisions) (2012).

Failing to address these fundamental questions has permitted HOAs to exist as de facto governments functioning as a second form of political government within the US. HOAs reject the US Constitution by their actions — forget the words.  In 1964, with the publication of the Homes Association Handbook, Technical Bulletin #50, by the Urban Land Institute, and with the support and funding of private interests and federal agencies, the birth of the Second American Experiment went largely unnoticed.  

“The special interest promoters have described this second Experiment, boastfully, not as a revolution, but as “The Emergence and Acceptance of a Quiet Innovation in Housing”.  This second experiment was not a strengthening of democracy, but one that promoted and established, with the support and cooperation of the state legislatures, private, contractual, authoritarian government regimes.”

Homeowners Associations: the Second American Experiment (2008).