Why the hands-off HOAs appeal by Curtis Sproul?

August 17, 2005

Dear SacBee Editor,

Curtis Sproul's letter called for the protection of CIDs as if they were a threat to the national security of California. Save the CID from government legislation and interference with a private association, he seemed to be arguing.

This "hands-off" treatment of CIDs, as if they were principalities with their own private constitutions and laws, ignores the fact that CIDs are undemocratic and are foreign to fundamental American values and principles. Just because a homeowner can vote doesn't make the CID a democracy -- you can vote in Cuba and China. Where are the separation of powers, the checks and balances, and the due process and equal treatment under the law protections of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution? While they apply only to government entities, they do not apply to private contractual governments.

What is the reason why CID special interests oppose the application of the US Constitution protections to homeowners? Surely not for national security reasons. Maybe they realize that a concern for the American belief in individual rights and freedoms, protections that are lacking the declarations and in the CID legal scheme, would result in the loss of the power to coerce and intimidate homeowners into compliance. Such typical devices, sadly sanctioned by the state, are foreclosure and financial ruin through liens for fines.

These 14th Amendment protections must apply to CIDs, and CIDs must accomplish their goals of property value protections under the American system of government.

[unpublished]

Individual Rights & HOA contractual government

What individual rights, as are recognized by the law and our government, exist in the HOA contractual government? None. Read your CC&Rs, which do not specify any rights except the right to the use of amenities under restrictive conditions. And, if you are behind in your monetary obligations to the HOA, like a common criminal in our society, the homeowner is disenfranchised and that right is lost. The HOA contractual government is a blot, a hugh stain, on the American system of government.

The proponents of planned communities, from their very existence with the HUD/ULI/FHA backed Homes Association Handbook of the 1960s, not only preferred it that way, but quickly learned that mandatory membership and compulsory dues under a private contract, to remove the application of the 14th Amendment protections, was necessary to make planned communities work. They then spent their efforts to convince government officials, public policy makers, the media and the public on what a great and grandiose innovation they were promoting. See the ULI and CAI funded book, Community Associations: The Emergence and Acceptance of a Quiet Innovation in Housing, Donald R. Stabile (Greenwood Press 2000).

The principles of American government never really concerned them -- it was a profit making endeavor, not the creation of a better community as was, at least, the ideals of the Progressive Movement of the early 1900s. "They [CAs] exhibit a combination of traits in keeping with a consumer product sold by a profit-seeking firm, a legal device, a corporation reliant on both coercive and voluntary cooperation ... "(pp. 102 -104). "Of these alternate forms of association, TB50 [the Homes Association Handbook] highlighted the automatic-membership under CC&Rs as the most effective" (p.93).

This Handbook is over 40 years old, and sadly, the truth of its statements stand today. Why isn't our government demanding that the governance of planned communities provide for the protection of homeowner rights as the homeowner would have if not living in an HOA? Why aren't our legislators standing by the US and state constitutions and upholding our individual rights guaranteed by these constitutions?

HOA Industry Holds Legislature Hostage

Letter to Arizona Capitol Times, August 5, 2005

In the Arizona Capitol Times article on the homeowner association proxy bill or “ominous bill” if you prefer, about to become law, Rep. Chuck Gray, R-19, responds to my advice that HOAs should come under the municipality laws of the state. In this way, there would be accountability by the HOA boards. [New HOA Law Bans Proxy Votes, Makes It Easier To Oust Board Members, Page 3, July 29]


Rep. Gray says that he does not see that happening. We also know, based on Legislative performance over the past five years with numerous bills in regard to holding HOA boards accountable, that the likelihood of such efforts is nil. The conclusion can only be that the Legislature is being held hostage by the HOA partisans, forcing it to beg and plead with the HOA boards, attorneys and management firms to behave, to obey the law, to stop causing all these problems.

Or perhaps the other explanation is that the Legislature does not give a hoot about homeowner rights.

Given this set of circumstances, the future will remain troublesome, and it will grow as more and more HOAs come into being.

George K. Staropoli

The United HOAs of Arizona

I am happy to see a new crop of political scientists take on the battle against private HOA governments as has Mr. Peirce in his Commentary, “Privatized Neighborhoods – The Future We Want?” (Arizona Capitol Times, July 29, 2005). Having read other exchanges on this topic between Mr. Peirce and Mr. Nelson elsewhere, I feel my comments are in order.

First, as referenced in the Commentary, HOAs are a socialist form of governance, if not a communal form. Socialistic because it is governed by the concern for the "the most good for the most people", an accepted doctrine by Jeremy Bentham and Vilfredo Pareto, both concerned with the efficiency and productivity of government, and not with democratic principles. When this motto becomes the overriding justification for decisions, with the relegation of the fundamental American principles of freedom and individual rights to lesser importance, we have socialism.

To answer the question posed in Peirce's Commentary title, it’s a resounding NO! The future cannot continue the trend to more and more private communities spreading across the state or the country. If the trend were allowed to continue, then Arizona must undergo a change of name to, The United HOAs of Arizona.

For the complete Commentary, see
AZ Capitol Times, or
United HOAS