HOA Perspectives - the Fox & Hounds of HOA Business and Politics

  Welcome to Home Owner Association Perspectives  

Contemporary comments on private government communities

promoting transparency, integrity and property rights, and

exposing abuse of power, fraud, corruption and racketeering.

___________________________________________________

David Feingold, a California attorney with Ragghianti Freitas in San Rafael, Calif., who’s handled association disputes, says they can get heated.

“You’re mixing your home, your money, your family and you’re putting your neighbors in charge of that. So it’s a pretty volatile mix.”

___________________________________________________

James Madison’s warning in the Federalist Papers about laws

also applies to association governing documents:

“so voluminous that they cannot be read,

or so incoherent that they cannot be understood”

 ___________________________________________________

 It’s all about transparency…

Transparency helps to prevent the corruption that inevitably occurs when a select few have access to important information, allowing them to use it for personal gain.

”One of the most attractive components of communication when it comes to uniting people is its ability to achieve transparency in all community association affairs.  Transparency is the full, accurate and timely disclosure in information.  It is to be able to witness – through communication – what is being done and understand why.  Without transparency there can be no trust built up between any entity involved in the community association.  Without trust, no one is going to unite with you.  Doing business behind everyone’s back in order to get what minority elements within the community want and not what is in the best interests of the entire community will sabotage every effort to create community. 

Chances people are willing to unite together and build a strong and successful community in such a governance environment?     Zilch”

(author unknown)

__________________________________________________ 

My Perspective…

Throughout the nation and the world, private residential subdivisions controlled by declarant and homeowner association boards have ‘mushroomed’. Increasingly, we are witnessing the handing over the traditional public governance powers, not to mention the quality of our lives, to unregulated private corporations and their outside for-profit operatives.

Much has been written and spoken about the need for restoration of community. There have been excellent articles discussing community theory, the dynamics of the group and the individual, the effects of individualism, and many other related topics.

Too many in the ‘industry’ have for too long resisted the admission that negative aspects exist. They have refused to engage in constructive dialogue with those who assert otherwise. It is time for homeowners to assert their right to have a participatory, democratic form of community government .

During the past 20 years I have had the opportunity to participate in, observe, study and analyze the governance structure of this unregulated form of private government. My concerns center around:

• the numerous reports of arbitrary and capricious board decisions and reports of fraud by Directors and management,
• the unnecessary overreach into the personal lives  by association boards and
• the influence, control, abuse and litigation by for-profit operatives.

I support the movement to bring about change through education and the voice of the members.   Hopefully, some changes will eliminate the nonsensical intrusion into the personal lives of the members and restore the Constitutional and common law rights that have been, and continue to be, taken away by the outside industry operatives.

 A viewer’s comment:

Bryan Hamdn – I think other web site proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and wonderful user friendly style and design, let alone the content. You’re an expert in this topic!