Category: Opinion

CAI and other pro-HOAs promoters have used the misleading argument of affordable housing.  See how the addition of HOA fees deceases the price of your real affordable house according to mortgage loan requirements.

First, understand the following loan requirements and home expenses.

Your salary must meet the following two conditions on FHA loans:

o    The sum of the monthly mortgage and monthly tax payments must be less than 31% of your gross (pre-taxes) monthly salary.

o    The sum of the monthly mortgage, monthly tax and other monthly debt payments must be less than 43% of your gross (pre-taxes) monthly salary.

FHA.com

And,

People who opt for housekeeping shell out an average of $285 a month, while HOA dues ($210) and landscaping ($144) followed behind. A home security system costs $130, slightly more than pool care ($123). Snow removal ($84), septic service ($67) and trash and recycling collection ($55) proved more affordable.

More than meets the mortgage: Survey finds the hidden costs of homeownership

Affordable housing myth is dispelled!

Then click on the link below and use its preset numbers.

Note that Condo/HOA fees are set to zero. Note the highest price you can afford to buy.  Now, click on Edit and add, say $200 as HOA fees. Note the lowered price of a home you can afford to buy.  That’s reality!  CAI slogans are a misrepresentation of affordability!

https://www.realtor.com/mortgage/tools/affordability-calculator#summary

Note, also, that  this Realtor.com page buries HOA fees as separate from monthly expenses, and continues to show monthly expenses the same although HOA fees were added.  Trying to hide something???

In HOA-Land (see definition below), the common good stops at the real estate subdivision or condo.  Has the Evil Empire with its Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda distorted and redefined the traditional meaning of common good? See CAI’s latest PR propaganda, HOAS in 2020.

Author Robert Reich has this to say about our society and the loss of common good.   His view:

Yet the common good seems to have disappeared. The phrase is rarely uttered today, not even by commencement speakers or politicians.

There’s growing evidence of its loss — in CEOs who gouge their customers and loot their corporations; Wall Street bankers who defraud their investors; athletes involved in doping scandals; doctors who do unnecessary procedures to collect fatter fees; and film producers and publicists who choose not to see that a powerful movie mogul they depend on is sexually harassing and abusing women.

We see its loss in politicians who take donations from wealthy donors and corporations and then enact laws their patrons want, or shutter the government when they don’t get the partisan results they seek.

Definition of HOA-LAND:  HOA-Land is a collection of fragmented independent principalities within America, known in general as “HOAs,” that are separate local private governments not subject to the constitution, and that collectively constitute a nation within the United States. For more see, Defining HOA-LAND: what it is.

Robert Reich’s new book, “The Common Good,” is out Feb. 20.

I post this in response to Deborah Goonan’s post on her blog, HOAs, condos, & co-ops much more than ‘contractual communities’.  I congratulate Deborah on her fine work on exposing HOA issues of substance.

First, the Berding article,  Why Community Associations Are Not “Governments,“ was written in January 2012.  At that time there was a detailed and lengthy exchange by several advocates on Privatopia Papers that preceded, and after, Berding’s post.

The issue are HOA governments or contracts was raised by Fred Pilot in a post on Evan McKenzie’s Privatopia Papers blog, HOA convenants not generally regarded as contracts in December 2011. Tyler Berding, and others, responded with several comments.

Evan McKenzie could not resist his replying to Pilot’s post and Berding’s comments, Do Americans consider CC&Rs Contracts, Revisited.  It seems that Berding then posted, on his blog, the above-mentioned article referenced by Deborah. The next day McKenzie posts on Privatopia a  reply comment by Berding , Do owners believe CC&Rs are contracts, part trois…  .  Two days later the replies by Fred Fischer and yours truly are posted:  Fred Fischer on the “Do owners believe CC&Rs are contracts?” debate  and

George Staropoli on the “Do owners believe CC&Rs are contracts?” debate, respectively.

There’s a lot of info contained in these early exchanges.  Read them to get a fuller understanding of the quasi-government issue.  Also, you can see my 2013 views in HOA Common Sense, HOA Governments in fact, No. 9.

In my 17 years involvement in HOA reform legislation, mainly in Arizona and some in other states, I noticed a bill voting pattern that disturbed me. The overwhelming preponderance of the successful decisions — Yea or Nay – for highly controversial HOA bills was a unanimous vote, with some reaching about 90%, and a bare few where the majority was 3 – 7 votes (AZ House has 60 members and the Senate 30 members).

Now for a little statistics. This was unexpected since the legislators are a statistical population and the overall behavior of the legislature, if without external influence as the statisticians would say, would reflect a normal statistical distribution as depicted by the common Bell Curve graph.[1] I have not observed this pattern over the years, leading to the conclusion that the votes of each legislator were not a ‘free’ and random decision.

In November 2008 I wrote at length about this disturbing behavior and concluded that,

For years I believed that the legislators would standup and defend the Constitution and protect the fundamental values, beliefs and principles of our Founding Fathers.  And when they repeatedly failed to do so, preferring to defend HOAs under the flimsy arguments of a constructive notice and “continuing to live” as a consent to be governed, I realized other factors were at work.  Over the past few years my thoughts turned to the influence of political parties and the control they have over the individual legislators, the powerful committee assignments that can kill bills without a hearing, and party positions. The majority party has control over chairmanships and submitting bills for final vote, among other powers.[2]

I quoted from The Second Civil War,

“The political system has evolved to a point where the vast majority of elected officials in each party feel comfortable only in advancing ideas acceptable to their core supporters — their ‘base”.[3]

What is even more disturbing is that, in Arizona, the Democratic Party, for years the minority party, went along with the majority.  It is easily concluded that the external influence over controversial HOA reform legislation extended to both parties, and that the ‘rank and file’ obeyed the ‘bosses’.

The dark side of American democracy is at work in promoting, supporting and defending HOA-Land. And in every state of the union.

In my earlier post, HOA-Land: the product of the decline in democratic institutions in America, I found support for my views, and I wrote the following,

The authors of How Democracies Die provide the “glue” that ties the American decay and decline in democratic norms and institutions to the quiet emergence and acceptance of private government HOA-Land. 

In “Chapter 2, Gatekeeping in America,” the authors make the case that the political parties are the gatekeepers who control the legislature and who determine what is good for the state, regardless of the views of the people.

The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers – our political parties.  Instead of electing local notables as the delegates to the Electoral College, as the Founders had envisioned, each state began to elect party loyalists.  

Until our political parties and elected officials stop speaking of “my job” and “I work 24/7,” which reflects a mental attitude of both employment and not public service, and a responsibility to their boss – the political party that employs them — and not to the public, nothing will change. Until the politicians return to the principles of democratic government as promulgated by The Founding Fathers, and the people demand such a return, HOA reforms of substance will remain elusive.

References

[1] For an explanation see Normal Distribution. Simply stated, when considering the size of the successful votes by the legislators for a number of controversial HOA bills should follow the Bell curve. In general, the size of he votes should run from 0 to 100% of the votes with the most frequently occurring size varying plus or minus from 50%.

[2] Ideological principles, not Constitutional principles, dominate HOA legislation.

[3] The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America, Ronald Brownstein, Penguin Books, 2007.

Over the years I’ve attempted to inform and educate advocates, legislators, the media, home buyers and the public in general about the “emergence and acceptance of a quiet innovation in housing”[1] generally known as HOAs.[2] This “rise of residential private government”[3] could not have occurred without

elected autocrats [and parties who] subvert democracy – packing and ‘weaponizing’ the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents.  Democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy — gradually, subtly, and even legally – to kill it.[4]

The authors of How Democracies Die[5] provide the “glue” that ties the American decay and decline in democratic norms and institutions to the quiet emergence and acceptance of private government HOA-Land.[6]  The above quote can be easily applied to HOA-Land and its Evil Empire and die-hard followers, both affiliated organizations and individual leaders.

They explain that

Democracies may die at the hands . . .  of elected leaders . . . who subvert the very process that brought them to power. . .. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.

as openly confirmed in Community Associations.

How did HOA legal scheme with its rejection of constitutional government come about? The authors explain that: “there is no single moment — no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution – in which the regime obviously ‘crosses the line’ into dictatorship.” The mechanism used by the Evil Empire is described in the above quoted paragraph – by using “the institutions of democracy . . . to kill it.”

 

As for homeowner advocates and others seeking HOA reform legislation, How Democracies Die makes it clear that reforming the HOA legal scheme and state laws is a social and political movement.  Local and fragmented efforts have failed and will continue to fail until the advocates come to accept this reality.

CAI will spread its propaganda that they are the only experts in HOA law and extol the virtues of HOAs as “better landscaping makes better local communities.” Who will present a unified case for HOA reforms in Washington to counter CAI’s flood of conferences and seminars targeted to Congressmen and agency directors?  This is planned for May 8, 2018.  Who?  No one, that’s who!

References

[1] Community Associations: The emergence and acceptance of a quiet innovation in housing, Donald R. Stabile, Greenwood Press, 2000. A self-congratulatory book paid for by ULI and CAI.

[2] Establishing the New America of independent HOA principalities, George K. Staropoli, StarMan Publishing, LLC, 2008.

[3] See, Privatopia: Homeowners Associations and the rise of Residential Private Government, Even McKenzie, Yale University Press, 1994.

[4] How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, Crown Publishing, 2018. Based on their research into democracies, internationally and historically, the authors make the case that the long-term decline in democratic norms and institutions has given rise to demagogic leadership. I make the case that HOA-Land is also a product of this dedline.

[5] Id.

[6] I introduced this term and defined it as, “a collection of fragmented independent principalities within America, known in general as “HOAs,” that are separate local private governments not subject to the constitution, and that collectively constitute a nation within the United States.”