Mass Selling of HOAs Required Authoritarian Governance

I've written many times about the mass merchandising -- the large-scale promotion and selling -- of HOAs to the public. I've commented on the bible for this program, the Urban Land Institute's Technical Bulletin #50, The Homes Association Handbook of 1964, funded by the special interests and your federal government. (See Part I in, Handbook).

It is clear that the creators of this housing model,

1) desired the mass acceptance of HOAs across the country,

2) realized that they must tie HOAs strongly to equitable servitudes with the favorable protections it offered the developer as the creator of the CC&Rs,

3) that constructive notice rather than a signed contract, was the strong mechanism to allow for the mass selling to average Americans,

4) that other forms or model of housing development -- the business entity known as the housing cooperative where people buy shares in the co-op that owns the real estate -- that relied on contract law would not protect the developers' interests,

5) the obsession for uniformity and conformity to developer created "laws", the covenants running with the land, in order to maintain their obsession as to what makes a beautiful landscape (Levittown with curved roads),

6) that an authoritarian regime, the business corporate form of governance, was necessary, with lip service to democracy, to maintain the developer's plan for larg-scale acceptance of HOAs, and

7) that a different sales pitch was prepared for the different parties: carefree living and property value protection to buyers; profit protection for lenders and developers (forecosure and equitable servitudes); and affordable housing subdivisions at no-cost to the municipality.

A review of the complaints and problems with HOAs can be traced back to one or more items in the above statement. Ask yourself,

1. Why is there an obsession with one set of CC&RS and the acceptance of ex post facto laws, when the US Constitution prohibits them?

2. Why is there the need to foreclose on nonpayment of fines and assessments, if not to punish the homeowner and to preserve the HOA that has very little at risk? In this manner, they could mass sell "protection" to developers and lenders.

3. Why have the special interests, and the leading national lobbyist, CAI, strongly opposed recognition of HOAs as a government, and their insistence on HOAs as a business?

4. Why were no bill of rights included?

5. Why is there a focus on "community" rather than on "business"?

6. On equitable servitudes and not contract law?

7. Do I own, in reality, my home as my private property when my neighbors can control my rights without my approval?

8. Why are the courts still defining what my rights are under the CC&RS, long after I thought I had a "sealed" agreement?


Mass merchandising, like selling appliances, required a nonnegotiable acceptance of terms and conditions that are common in the world of commerce, but has no place when it comes to a person's home and the surrender of civil and constitutional rights. With a person's home, the CC&Rs must be viewed as an adhesion contract that is unconscionable and against public policy.