Tag: democracy

Organize, organize, organize, but organize your local HOA

I’ve come to realize that we, including yours truly, have gone about this national association all wrong.  The vast majority of HOA members have grievances against their own HOA and some reach out to broader issues like rights and constitutional protections only in regard to their personal HOA problem.  That is the chief reason for failing to organize at a state or national level. So, let’s face reality and deal with it.

My initial thoughts take me to [My Association] Council of HOA Members that functions in opposition to the board as a true member organization, as a shadow government with certain legal rights.  It would be free of director/officer obligations under state laws and the CC&Rs that favor the HOA board.  HOA directors or officers are not accepted as members. Think in terms of the HOA being a business corporation, like we are being told that they are, and the Council would be equivalent to the member organization in contrast to  management.

They would have legally protected rights to organize, negotiate living conditions (affecting the governing documents, and to propose its own governing document amendments that must be put forth for a vote of all the members. These protections are necessary to get around the HOA attorneys’ “working with the new laws” advice that is designed to avoid the intent of the law – finding loopholes in other words.  It would serve as a check on the abuses of HOA boards.

The HOA could not legally interfere with campaigning for elections or on issues, or with the right to hold meetings on and within HOA facilities, or with the use of the HOA membership lists, etc.  And most importantly, in the event it gets corrupted, the Council can be dissolved by a 2/3 vote without the 20 or 30 year wait period found in the CC&Rs. But the members must stand up and act under the protection of the required new legislation, which must address retaliation against Council supporters.

Of course, legislation would be needed, as was needed to protect workers in the 1930s.  You can call it unionization or the establishment of an HOA “political party.” These Councils would fit the bill.  Of course, a broader state organization would be needed to provide guidance and assistance to the councils – can’t have them running amuck because they do not understand what must be done in order to accomplish their agendas. 

HOAs & state legislatures: rule by the Prince or by the Constitution?

“Where ethical restraint is lacking, there can be no hope of overcoming problems.”[1]

With the banishment of God from government, our “unalienable” rights, which were held by the Founding Fathers to be superior to any rights granted by any government, have been declared null and void by the US Supreme Court. With no substitute standard being announced by the Supremes to guide the people, they are left to flounder. And we have floundered.[2]

In his commentary on Machiavelli’s The Prince,[3] William B. Allen provides Machiavelli’s view of politicians,

Once the obligation to act according to natural or devine standards is removed, the question that remains . . . is how to participate in the management of political appearances to secure their [the politicians’] own interests.[4]

For Machiavelli “the role of morals in politics is mainly to cultivate illusions . . . politics is merely appearance and morality is merely pretense.”[5] 

Understandably, it is not surprising that the Supremes have held that all legislation is presumed to be constitutional, placing the burden on the people to prove the unconstitutionality of a law.  With this legal doctrine, the Supremes, the 9 Men In Black, have declared that “the sovereign can do no wrong.”  But, that is not the fundamental basis of our system of government with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and Bill of Rights.  The Supremes just abdicated their function under the Constitution.  In its place, it has assigned the role of the Protector of the Constitution to the people, the average person. 

Consistent with this doctrine, the Arizona Legislature also presumes all statutes to be constitutional, perhaps because the Legislature provides checks on the constitutionality of a bill before it can be sent to the Governor for signing. (The Arizona Constitution also provides a check on statute constitutionality before signing by the Governor).

However, in spite of statements to the contrary found in the Arizona State Legislature guides for the public, the legislature and individual legislators have failed to protect the people against the violations of the Arizona Constitution as in the case of the unconstitutional SB1454. They have ignored their duties, obligations and rules for the proper functioning of the Legislative Council and the Rules Committee. (See HOA reforms, SB 1454 and the inner workings of the legislature).

In contrast to Machiavelli’s principles of government, Hadley Arkes reminds us that

The founders understood that the principal mission of government was to secure people in their natural rights — to protect them against the lawless private thugs as well as of ill-intentioned legislators (emphasis added).[6]

He quotes US Justice Wilson’s (1798) warning that

The people in sovereign office might well perform unjustified and therefore lawless acts . . . such acts, though vested with ‘legal’ authority could not fully claim nor elicit from the people an obligation to obey.[7]

 

In regard to the HOA amendments surreptitiously placed into SB 1454, Arizona has dropped the ball.  Arizona has fallen off the pedestal.

 

References

[1] Ethics for the New Millennium, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, p. 26, Riverhead Books, 1999.

[2]God is dead, and so, too, are our unalienable rights, HOA Constitutional Government, February 5, 2008

[3] The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli, Yale University, 1997.

[4] Id., Machiavelli and Modernity, W. B. Allen, p. 108.

[5] Id., p. 104.

[6] Supra n 3, Machiavelli and America, Hadley Arkes, p. 145.

[7] Id., p. 128.

send a wake up call to the US Supreme Court on HOA defects

I just read the 23 page US Supreme Court amicus brief[i] for The Cato Institute in Mariner’s Cove v. the United States, No. 12-1453, written by an illustrious group of legal-academic aristocrats. Let me make it quite clear at the start that I am not part of that group, or even an attorney, so I don’t have a built in “good ol’ boy” bias.

Selective citations and quotes were made from a number of cases, journals, and books including those of Evan McKenzie, Paula A. Franzese, and Steven Siegel.  (They wrote a critique of the NJ Supreme Court Twin Rivers decision, and other works, but you wouldn’t know that from the quotes).  Also quoted was Susan French who made that comment, not quoted in the brief,  in the Forward of The Restatement (3rd) of Property: Servitudes that, “Therefore this Restatement is enabling toward private government.”

My activist take on the brief can be summarized quit simply as:

1.         HOAs are growing faster than the rabbit population.

“The number of citizens opting to live in community associations—and the extent of commerce affected by such arrangements—is sure to keep growing, as the majority of new housing built in the past three decades is subject to association arrangements.”

 2.         The people love HOAs. “More and more citizens choose to enter into these property-rights-sharing arrangements because they provide substantial benefits.”

 3.         HOAs and local municipalities have a beneficial symbiotic relationship for the betterment of the community. 

 “Community associations provide a variety of private and public benefits, including increased property values, greater efficiency in the delivery of services, and lower costs to the public.

 “Community associations offer such benefits to local governments that developers are increasingly required [sic] to structure proposed housing developments as community associations as a condition of approval.”

 4.         That it’s only fair for taxpayers to pay the HOA for the loss of income. 

“By shifting a greater burden for paying for such services to the remaining members of the association without compensation, the Government’s taking here presents a textbook case of “forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.

“The constitutional requirement of just compensation derives as much content from the basic equitable principles of fairness, as it does from technical concepts of property law.”

 

Now, from these quotes as a good sampling, the 9 Men in Black cannot help but think that HOAs are the next best thing to heaven on earth. They would have no clue whatsoever that there is “trouble in River City.”  I would venture that they have no knowledge of the happenings and goings-on in HOA-Land, and would have to rely on the self-serving Cato amicus brief.

What is needed is a response showing the other side of HOA-Land that can be obtained from some of the same authors used by Cato, McKenzie, Franzese, Siegel and others. Court cases can be cited like the horrendous Poris decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, and the Wittenberg decision by the California appellate court, to name a few.  Or how about asking the Justices to think about, and asked to explain, The Truth in HOAs Disclosure[ii] as a starting point.

We have an opportunity to be heard by the US Supreme Court!

WHAT IS IMMEDIATELY REQUIRED IS TO INFORM THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES of loss of rights, privileges and immunities of citizens under a despicable argument of a bona fide and legitimate consent to be governed.  I am not a lawyer.  I cannot file an amicus brief!

This is a very good time to act and be heard!

 

Notes

CA CAI opposes fair election protection for homeowners

In last month’s California appellate court decision in Wittenberg v. Beachwalk HOA,[i] the court upheld HOA fair elections procedures.  Homeowners are to be given equal opportunity to express opinions in opposition to those of the board, in and on the same media as used by the board. The common practice in most HOAs is to deny members equal access, which has extended in many cases to the denial of membership records and intimidating members from conducting door-to-door campaigning.

The record shows that Beachwalk had engaged in practices found in many other HOA instances:

1.      Holding multiple elections until the proposed amendment was finally passed,

2.      The ballot and cover letter expressed only the board’s recommendations on the amendment,

3.      The board made exclusive use of the HOA newsletter to promote its views, refusing a request by a member to comment on the election, and

4.      Denying a member the use of a fee paid “renter” room to hold a rally against the amendment.

 

The court explained, my emphasis,

This plain English definition [of advocacy], which we adopt, is consistent with the overall nature and purposes of section 1363.03. Subdivision (a)(1) was part of a bill that sought to “provide substantial new voting protections” to members of homeowner associations designed to “guarantee that basic democratic principles are in place during elections,” which had previously been “contaminated by manipulation, oppression and intimidation of members, as well as outright fraud.” It is thus remedial in nature. “A statute which `is remedial in nature and in the public interest is to be liberally construed to the end of fostering its objectives . . . . `The rule of law in the construction of remedial statutes requires great liberality, and wherever the meaning is doubtful, it must be so construed as to extend the remedy.””

 

The intent of the court is clearly an example of the Enlightenment Movement after some 49 years since the creation of the first HOAs in this country.  While the court upheld California’s HOA fair elections statutes, the California CAI Legislative Action Committee opposed the decision in support of democratic functions in HOAs.[ii]  This position is in conflict with the CAI policy that HOAs are “one of the most representative and responsive forms of democracy in America today.”[iii] Unless, of course, CAI has some distorted view of democracy. In fact, CAI California is seeking support to appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court. 

 Notes

[i] Wittenberg v. Beachwalk HOA,  NO. G046891 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. June 26, 2013).

[ii] “Appeals Court Ensures Equal Access During Elections”, Blog of the Community Associations Institute California Legislative Action Committee, July 9, 2013. (http://caiclac.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/appeals-court-ensures-equal-access-during-elections/).

[iii] “A FORM OF DEMOCRACY. Community associations are one of the most representative and responsive forms of democracy in America today. Residents of a community freely elect neighbors to serve on the board of directors of the community. Numerous other owners or residents  serve on committees and help with special tasks as they arise.”, Section 8 in An Introduction to Community Association Living (2006),  http://www.caionline.org/events/boardmembers/Documents/IntroToCALiving.pdf.

 

The HOA contribution to the decline in civic virtue

Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick, VP of Litigation at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix and nationally recognized constitutional law scholar, expressed their concern for the loss of “basic American values.”  Although presenting their solution to the dysfunctional US immigration policy[i], their concern is well suited to the impact that the defective HOA legal scheme has had on civic virtue.

New US ConstitutionA good part of the failure to provide for education in civic awareness lies in the rapidly growing residential housing industry that requires a governmental body over developers’ subdivisions that contain common elements.  Some entity, if not the local municipality, must govern these common elements and that has fallen to the homeowners association (HOA) legal scheme. . . . There is no civic virtue or civil servants in HOAs, because the HOA legal structure for governance is a corporation.  The equivalent of civics or civil virtue is HOA virtue, which amounts to two simple attitudes:  pay your assessments on time and follow the rules. (See High Noon in HOA-Land: members who permit lawless boards to function).  

Read the complete paper here . . .

 

[i] Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick (Threshold Editions Div. of Simon & Schuster 2013).