Do Americans prefer an authoritarian form of government?

Comments on CAI's Common Ground, Jan-Feb 2006 article, Quality of Life, relating to CAI's 2005 survey of HOA satisfaction. (See http://pvtgov.blogspot.com/2005/12/analysis-of-2005-cai-hoa-survey.html for a detailed analysis of the survey).

Common Ground
It's enough to make you wonder about all those screaming headlines regarding abusive, out-of-control HOAs. "Having gone to a lot of [association board] meetings where there is some unhappiness with communities," says Howard A. Goldklang, CPA, the current president of the Foundation, "I was a little surprised that there wasn't some negativism" reflected in the survey.

But Jordan thinks association unrest has been deeply exaggerated. "I think there's a lot of great stuff we know instinctively is true, but it's nice to have it backed up," says Jordan, a partner with the law firm of Powers Phillips, in Denver. "The horror stories we hear are the 2 or 3 percent minority. It just happens to be a loud minority." Likewise, Goldklang calls the satisfaction rate the survey's "most significant" finding. "I've always felt this way without a study-that association living is very positive," says Goldklang, who is president of Goldklang, Cavanaugh & Associates, in Fairfax, Virginia, and also a Common Ground contributing editor. "It provides a lot of structure and it provides a lot of areas where it takes concerns away from the homeowners and provides leadership."

Const. Gov.
Here we go again, the majority is allowed to abuse the rights of the minority in violation of all the principles of the American system of government. The private, authoritarian HOA government has no place for the protection of individual rights as mandatory under the Constitution, nor attempts to establish a separation of powers, or checks and balances doctrine to insure against the tyranny of the government, and to provide for due process of the law.

The survey does not ask those questions of a voluntary surrender of rights, if the homeowners do indeed realize that they surrendered these rights, or that they are not subject to the same protections of homeowner rights as all municipal governments are subject.

A violation of the law is a violation of the law, no matter if just a handful of people are abused. That's a fundamental principle of our system of government, and any deviation for a legitimate de jure government interest, not a private government interest, must be justified under judicial scrutiny. HOAs represent an un-American, controlled from the top, form of government where all the residents must conform and obey the rules/laws for the benefit of the state -- the HOA.


Common Ground
Either way, Nelson(1) thinks the Zogby results offer a striking contrast to political schisms at the national level. "If you take the United States right now [and ask people,] 'Do you think we're headed in the right direction right now?,' half the people would say no," Nelson says. "But a lot more people seem to think their associations are working out pretty well right now than think the United States is working out. People are a lot more happy locally than they are nationally."

Const. Gov.
Nelson also argue for the succession of HOAs from local municipal government, because the privatized HOA will replace the services and functions of municipal governments in the future (See Chapter 20, Neighborhood Succession, in this book).

Note 1. Author of Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government