Tag: law

The Lament of the CAI against a pro-homeowner bill

Hear the lament of the California CAI LAC about a pro-homeowner bill.

  • AB 2502 would give financial incentives for owners to unfairly manipulate their legal obligation to pay HOA assessments by refusing to pay for approximately one and a half years or up to $3,600 until the association can take appropriate legal action for that owner to pay. This will cause financial havoc for HOA’s. Owners should never be given a right to intentionally stall the payment of debt.
  • Owners should not be given the right to unilaterally change the payment plan that was lawfully entered into by and between the owner and HOA. There would be no reason to enter into a plan if an owner could change it at will.
  • HOA’s must be able to retain counsel or other professionals to assist them in payment plans. The bill permits HOA’s to retain experts IF the owner grants permission to do so. HOA’s, just like owner’s must always be given an ability to retain professional assistance.
  • Creditors, like HOA’s, need to use collection agents periodically. Those agents, like other businesses, require payment. This bill makes it extremely difficult to pay those agents and as a consequence, HOA’s will rarely use them.

 

This is a desperate attempt to turn homeowners against their  own best interests, and to support the oppressive,  authoritarian HOA de facto government!   Hey CAI guys, what about adhesion contracts; “no need to see” constructive notice to bind one to a contract and to surrender one’s rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities; kangaroo court due process procedures; the right to subsequently alter the contract at purchase time without the buyer’s consent; unfair election procedures; and no enforcement against violation by the HOA government?  What about these gross injustices? 

To claim that homebuyers openly and fervently embraced this  treatment by the HOA is an insult to the good people of California.  It is grossly disrespectful and demeaning. 

 

This Grassroots Alert email alert ends with the true objective of CAI:  

Thank you for helping us preserve association solvency!!!  [and our income stream]

Case study: Just how are HOAs independent principalities?

The Arizona Senate Government Institutions Committee failed to pass, for the second consecutive year, a bill reaffirming the civil government’s power and authority over public roadways.  Bowing to pressures from an unincorporated town, Sun City, the legislators accepted the right of a group of private people, who are governed by CC&Rs, to infringe, usurp, and trespass upon local government ordinances.

Why is the Senate committee deferring to private agreements, which ignore constitutional law and its protections of our rights and freedoms?  Why is the legislature agreeing to HOA political government supremacy over public laws, while not recognizing the HOA as a de facto government and holding it accountable as such?  This deference gives the HOA pretty much of a free ride. 

We need to ask on what basis does the Restatement of Servitudes, which offers recommendations to the judicial system by pro-HOA “legal-academic aristocrats”, proclaim: “Although zoning regulations and servitudes are usually compatible in the sense that the more restrictive prevails . . . .”[i]   What does “usually compatible in the sense that the more restrictive prevails” mean?  And, we also need to ask is the current legal doctrine of CC&R supremacy legitimate and constitutionally valid? 

The Arizona Attorney General, in a 2006 Opinion[ii] on this issue, with respect to county fire code authority, cites case law and provides the following conflicting opinions:

  1. In general, when a contract is incompatible with a statute, the statute will control. . . . The exercise of police power to protect the public welfare, such as the enactment of fire codes, may supersede provisions in private contracts like CC&Rs if the government’s actions are reasonable and appropriate to the public purpose.
  2. restrictive covenants cannot avoid obligations imposed by parking ordinance;
  3. municipal ordinance imposing fence requirements supersedes restrictive covenant;
  4. The provisions of these and other fire codes supersede conflicting provisions in CC&Rs.

 

  1.  State or county fire codes supersede CC&Rs when fire code provisions directly conflict with CC&R provisions.
  2. When a fire code provision and a CC&R provision are not in direct conflict, but rather, are both restrictive, the provision that contains the more stringent restriction will control and will establish the permitted use.

 

The first 4 items from the AG’s Opinion are consistent and reflect an unequivocal doctrine that statutes and ordinances supersede CC&Rs.  While item (4) above introduces the issue of “conflict”, it still holds that the ordinance controls even when there is conflict.  Items (5) and (6) above, which are found in the summary section of this short 5-page opinion, are contradictory, and conflict with the first four items taken from the “Analysis” section of this Opinion.. 

We are now faced with the question: what is meant by “direct conflict” as opposed to just “conflict”?   The AG offers no clarification of these terms. This hair-splitting distinction reverses the cited case law and serves to support CC&Rs as controlling over ordinances when the covenant is “more  restrictive.”  

Perhaps, to better understand these words, we can ask: What meaning can be attached to “indirect conflict”? If, for example, a parking ordinance restricts parking from 10:00PM to 6:00AM, is  a covenant restricting parking at any time “more restrictive” or in “direct conflict”?  The pro-HOA quick answer is: obviously it’s more restrictive.  The criterion of  “more restrictive” to grant HOA agreements as controlling is without any rational legal basis to serve as criteria for the denial of legitimate government authority as set forth in the statutes and ordinances.   The only rational basis for a government interest for the surrender of civil authority to a private entity is that “that’s what this private group wants.”  

But the denial of our rights and privileges rises to a constitutional issue, which must requires a more stringent test of “a compelling and necessary government interest”. Those raising the “safe parking” issue in opposition to the have over remedies in law to effectively address their concerns without a wholesale grant of authority to the HOA. . “More restrictive” denies rights belonging to the people by a private organization —  the right, in our example, that the people enjoyed from freedom to park at all other unrestrictive times.  “More restrictive” directly conflicts with the rights belonging to the people.

It should be understood that any such enforcement by the courts could be challenged under the state constitution’s “privileges and immunities” clause, or under the color of law doctrine of 42 U.S.C 1983.

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress . . .

 

Covenants that are unconstitutional, contrary to public policy, unreasonable, or arbitrary and capricious are invalid and unenforceable.  Pro-HOA devotees offer the desperate and misleading argument that “members agreed to be bound by the CC&Rs, raising the issue of “contract interference.” Which leads to a multitude of questions concerning the validity of the consent to have agreed under the requirements for a bona fide contract.  Which leads to the argument that servitudes law with its constructive notice doctrine — homeowners are bound, sight unseen to the CC&Rs — controlling issues of constitutional law.[iii]  Which “turns the Constitution on its head” and leads to questions of a constitutionally valid surrender of one’s rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities. Which, coming full circle, leads to covenants that are unconstitutional, contrary to public opinion, unreasonable, or arbitrary and capricious are invalid and unenforceable.

Notes

[i] Restatement (Third) of Property: Servitudes, § 3.1 cmt. c (2000).

[ii] ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION, Terry Goddard, No. I06-005, (R06-009), November 15, 2006.

[iii] Supra, n. 1, § 3.1, cmt. h. (“The question whether a servitude unreasonably burdens a fundamental constitutional right is determined as a matter of property law, and not constitutional law“).

Government of the people, by the people, for the HOA

 

The following email letter from Mr. Brown to the Arizona legislative leaders reflects his concern about democracy in America.  (For more information on this HOA bill, please see public streets: the battleground for private or public government control).   

hoa constitution
hoa constitution

My dear President Burns, Chairman Tibshraeny, Vice-Chairman Harper, Members of the Senate Government Institutions Committee, Senator Bunch, Representative Barto, Co-Sponsors of HB2153 and Representative Barnes:

“From time to time we read in the newspapers, or hear on the radio, about policies and procedures and practices in the Arizona legislature. Most often that which we read or head is critical of how the legislature goes about its business. Words such as “fair” and “open” and “level playing field” are used, as if to imply that the legislature should operate in a significantly different manner that it does.” Senator Randall Gnant, “From Idea…..To Bill…..To Law, The Legislative Process in Arizona,” February 2000

The Guest Opinion, “Who controls public streets,” Arizona Capitol Times, April 1, 2010, is on-point re the proposed HB2153 legislation as well as the global issues respecting associations’ control of property not owned by an association, associations’ control of the conduct and actions of Arizona citizens clearly not subject to the association’s governing documents and associations’ coveted power and dominion over homeowners subject to the association’s governing documents, the sacrosanct “private contract.”

Association stakeholders opposed to HB2153 regularly blur the lines between their long-held belief in “private contracts” not to be interfered with by federal, state, county and/or municipal governments and certainly not the legislature unless and until it suits the stakeholders and their client associations’ interests as evidenced by associations’ growing reliance on “what can government do for” stakeholders and associations today. (See Community Resource, Issue 1 / 2010, “What Your Local Government Can Do For You,” Community Associations Institute / Central Arizona Chapter, attached)

“Getting a hearing on a bill is a crucial first step for individual citizens, lobbyists, special interest groups and state agencies..in the Senate, bills that receive a hearing have a high likelihood of passing the full Senate. So, while failure to secure a hearing is a virtual disaster for a bill, getting a hearing takes a bill on the longest step towards becoming law.” (Gnant)

Please include HB2153 on the Committee On Government Institutions’ agenda, Consideration of Bills, permitting the peoples’ representatives in the Senate to vote on the bill’s passage as your brethren in the House, the people’s other representatives, did so on February 17, 2010 (43/14/03).

Respectfully,

William M. Brown