Category: Opinion

MSN.COM has recently featured on its web page, if viewed with MS Internet Explorer browser, Debora Vrana’s article, The Runaway Power of Homeowners Associations (see note 1 for viewing information). This article contains a link to the Citizens for Constitutional Local Government web site and quotes its president, George K. Staropoli, as saying,

“No one tells buyers what deep doo-doo they can get into . . . It’s a government outside the U.S. government.”

“Page view” counts of this web site have reached monthly averages in just one day — over 1,400 page views bringing the total web site count to over 50,000. This response to the MSN article reflects a hunger by homeowners and home buyers for the truth about planned community living with its authoritarian, private governments operating outside the US Constitution protections of our liberties and freedoms. HOAs are regarded by the courts as private organizations that are not subject to the same US Bill of Rights as all other public government bodies — federal, state, city and municipal governments.

This jump in the Citizens’ web site viewers is a result of the feature placement of the HOA article warning the public of serious problems with HOA living, and also reflects the fact that no such information is available in the consumer and home buyer by the protection agencies at the state level — nothing by the appropriate state consumer protection agency, Attorney General, real estate department, HOA ombudsman, or other such agency whose mission is consumer protection. Rather, these agency web sites provide links to the industry promoters of HOAs in a blatant one-sided support of these private governments that deny constitutional protections.

Every viewer must demand from their state representatives and agency officials an answer as to why this is allowed to happen, and why the state is participating in hiding the truth from the public.

Note 1. Viewing information

MSN selects items to be featured. If the article is not found by clicking on left-side image ‘next’ until There Goes the Neighborhood image appears, enter the following web address — http://realestate.msn.com/buying/Articlenewhome.aspx?cp-documentid=653570

AOL or others using Netscape must switch to your MS IE browser, which is included on all Windows computers. After connecting with AOL or your browser, just bring up MSIE and then go to Msn.com

In further reaction to bona fide criticism, CAI continues its machinations of using front organizations in a futile attempt to legitimize it, those associations of hired hands, like COCA in Florida and CACM in California, and those illegitimate associations of the management-class HOA boards, like ECHO (Exec. council of Homeowners, which, in reality, is a misnomer and should be ECHOA, the Exec. Council of HOAs), as the voice of the homeowner before legislators and government agencies and commissions.

At no time have any of these industry supporters — the supporters of the fictitious person, the corporate HOA government — been granted any such authority by the homeowners, the employee-class within the corporate HOA business organization; not in the Declaration, nor by any valid vote or referendum on any particular issue by the homeowners. These groups are illegitimate representatives of the people, the homeowners. They act, however, as if they are the legitimate representatives in all political matters, but they are not the duly elected political representatives.

We see the comments by these groups in the July-August issue of CAI’s Common Ground magazine article, “Call & Response.” The comments that assert the right of the HOA, as an authoritarian private government operating outside the protections of the US Constitution, to control and regulate the people within the territory defined by the subdivision, the homeowners.

We see CAI’s attempt to enlist the support of homeowner associations in order to be the legitimate voice of the HOA, and by some far stretch of the imagination, of the people living in the association. As admitted by the CEO of CAI, Tom Skiba, HOAs are a business and not a government, yet in an outright contradiction to this statement, CAI continues to regard the HOA as the legitimate political government of the homeowners. In a clandestine operation, CAI has setup a website, http://www.responsibleneighbors.com/ as a front to appeal directly to California HOAs to support the CAI platform in the legislature.

Unfortunately, the HOA board speaks for the corporate entity, the HOA, and not the people, and have no legitimate authority to speak for the people. The legislators and government officials must clearly accept this fact. These government officials must look to the true homeowner advocates, and not be confused by the CAI attempt to instill confusion by referring to themselves as HOA advocates, for direction on how to proceed.

For important information on the role and purpose of CAI, see the CAI: The National Lobbyist for HOA Principalities Report.

Commentary regarding the CAI Common Ground article on advocates, part 2, “Call & Response” in its July-August issue.

I believe that “the business of HOAs is business” is an accurate paraphrase of the statement made by the CEO of CAI, Mr. Skiba, in CAI’s Welcome to Ungated forum. I must also assume that the business must be directly related to maintaining property values, the prime objective of all HOA Declarations. Just what this business is, Mr. Skiba fails to make clear. Is it a landscaping business? An architectural business? Trash collection? A resorts management company? A hotel management company?

Read the complete commentary

The formation of private HOA governments raises the same concerns of 250 years regarding the legitimacy of the social contract between the members and the community, the bona fide existence of mutual consent, and the protection of individual rights within the community.

. . . .

In spite of the above, supporters and proponents of HOA governance repeatedly use the simplistic argument: If you don’t like it or can’t accept the HOA, move out. That’s equivalent to saying, “If you don’t like the President, then move out of the country”. This argument by the proponents was addressed quite intelligently and with sound reasoning, more than 250 years ago in The Social Contract, where Rousseau states, “After the state is instituted, residence implies consent: to inhabit the territory is to submit to the sovereign”, but cautions in his footnote that,

This should always be understood as . . . [not referring to conditions affecting] family, property, lack of [housing], necessity or violence [that] may keep an inhabitant in the country unwillingly, and then his mere residence no longer implies consent either to the contract or to the violation of the contract.

The complete commentary can be read at Contract.

Expose the illusions of justice and the myths of the equal protection of the laws”

The legislature is the sovereign of a republican form of government, and that it’s the only game in town. Homeowners must attain the power to influence and change the views and attitudes of the legislators.

To accomplish this we must make it clear to the legislators and government officials that they must choose between continued support of private special interests who promote and support laws denying citizens their constitutional protections so they can make a buck; or to abide by their oath of office and support and uphold the US Constitution.

But let’s not be afraid to

1. name names,
2. expose the myths and illusions of justice and fair play,
3. confront those misleading and half-truths from the special interest,
4. challenge the misleading statements and half-truths of the special interests that have gone far too long unchallenged and have now become unquestionably accepted as being true,
5. support our positions with references to published authorities and media statements, and
6. to refrain from being argumentative and to avoid any personal attacks.

Further information on this campaign for victory can be found in this PDF version of a PowerPoint file: Rules of Engagement.