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Home Owner Associations And The Law Of Change
By Ming Zhen Shakya
Death speaks: "There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market to buy provisions; but in a little while the servant returned, white and trembling, saying, 'Master, just now when I went to the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd, and when I turned I saw that it was Death who jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Please lend me a horse so that I may ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.'
"So the merchant lent him a horse; and the servant mounted it and dug his spurs into its flanks and galloped away.
"Then the merchant came to the marketplace and searched for me in the crowd. 'Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?' he asked.
"That was not a threatening gesture,' I said. 'It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him here in Baghdad for I have an appointment with him tonight... in Samarra.'"
Changing addresses doesn't always work.
And so it happens that a citizen fears he will be forever trapped in an intolerable domestic environment. No matter where he has lived he has encountered the down side of individualism: upstairs tenants who wear steel boots and have frequent calced sex on the floor; walls that are as thin as prosciutto; vandalism by prepubescent vandals; neighbors who paint their house day-glo orange and lavender; junked cars in driveways; weeds and litter.
One day, driving through a new community, he sees lawns that are buffed and polished, houses all painted various shades of tan, and no trash or junked cars anywhere. This is a haven to which he can escape! He quickly pulls into the model home's driveway.
Overcome with need, he digs his spurs into his bank account and flees to that fortress of beauty where a Home Owners' Association guards the quality of life.
And then he learns that he has traded freedom for serfdom; humans-being-human for Stepford Wives conformity. Yes, a man's home may be his castle, but if he's purchased it under the aegis of a Home Owner's Association (HOA) he is bound to find a trebuchet or two outside his walls.
Most folks in my town didn't know much about HOA abuse until a few years ago when some strange and mysterious occurrences gave us a quick course in exploitation.
A nice family from California came to Clark County, Nevada and, liking the climate and relatively cheap housing, bought a home for $129,000. in an HOA community and settled down. All went so well that they bought a second house, rented out the first, and used the income to finance their son's college education.
They had good tenants and the future seemed secure until one morning their tenants called to tell them that the new owners of the home had given them a 72 hour eviction notice. What new owners?
They called the HOA and asked how such an error could have been made. Ah, they were told they had not paid a bill of $81 and the collection agency had no recourse but to foreclose on the property and sell it to pay the eighty-one dollar bill, plus, of course, the collection agency fee, and an assortment of HOA fees for lateness and so on. The house had been sold "at public auction" on the steps of the Clark County Courthouse for the sum of $4500. This had to be a mistake, the owners protested. They knew nothing about a delinquent $81 bill much less about a "public auction" of their property.
Though the HOA knew their present address - and that the house on which the $81. assessment had been levied was occupied by tenants, they still sent the bill to the rented house. Naturally, the bill was returned because the addressee did not live there. "That's not our problem," said the HOA. It was only necessary for them to show that they had mailed the bill, not that it had been received by the intended person. And if the letter came back to them, "not at this address," it was not incumbent upon them to resend the letter to any other address they had on file. So, in a private little public auction, some friendly soul bought the house for forty-five hundred dollars.
The public was shocked by the revelation. The worthless ombudsman decided that the way the foreclosure was handled may have been "questionable" - but that HOA's have a legitimate reason to foreclose when fees go unpaid, "Without that power, few would pay the dues, and communities soon could find themselves in a state of disrepair." Sure.
A local attorney was sufficiently moved by the owner's plight to offer his services pro bono. He succeeded in getting the house returned to the rightful owners. Unfortunately, the misery did not end there since the couple who bought the property for $4500. was not entirely happy. More legal actions followed. By the time the situation was set aright, the rightful owners lost thousands not only in additional legal expenses but in loss of income from the rental property. It took years to resolve the problem.
Not to be outdone in HOA misery is a working single mom and young son who presently live in another HOA enclave. KTNV, the ABC affiliated newscast that maintains an HOA Hall of Shame, referring to the single mom, said, "When it comes to money, she's got little. When it comes to water, she's got none." Her HOA plumbed new depths of clever callousness when, in December, the three-person board informed her that they were shutting off her water for non-payment of some "assessments." She immediately agreed to a pay-off schedule with the HOA and their collection agency. A few months later, although she had always made her payments on-time and the collection agency had no complaint, the board decided to re-think their agreement. Since she now had "a history" of being late, they demanded the immediate payment in full of the assessment which by then included fines, late fees, and collection agency charges, a total of $3,000. Until she paid, she would get no water. One neighbor wanted to supply her with water using a garden hose from his property, but a not unfounded fear of HOA reprisal made him withdraw his help. Instead, many of her neighbors regularly bring her bottled water. Any vigilante impulse simply to turn her water back on was thwarted. The HOA actually cut her water pipeline, pinched it, and welded it shut.
In Paradise Spa, an HOA community made famous in the days of the Rat Pack when such as Frank Sinatra and his pals lived and spent leisure hours there, an out of town businessman bought enough homes to assure his election to the HOA board. More than a year ago a fire rendered an 85 year old lady's home uninhabitable. Her insurance company promptly paid $843,000.00 - to the HOA. She continues to pay her mortgage and fees but still has no home to live in. Nothing has been done. Hers was not the only grievance that the HOA ignored. After KTNV's coverage, the feds got involved and recently raided the HOA offices; but she is still homeless and paying a monthly mortgage and HOA fees on an uninhabitable eye sore. An even more egregious instance of avarice and cruelty is a now classical case: an American serviceman who owned a $300,000. home in a Texas HOA community had a wife had and children, one of whom was a baby. His wife became psychologically immobilized by fear and depression when he was sent to Iraq on a particularly dangerous mission. For months she secluded herself in their home, never opening mail. When he returned from his mission he discovered that his home had been foreclosed upon by the HOA and sold for $3500. The home was completely paid for so she had no mortgage to pay every month. The HOA monthly fee was among the bills she did not open. Government intervention on his behalf - because he had been serving in Iraq - eventually succeeded in getting his home restored to him.
Malevolence of this sort is even more onerous than the usual Ponzi scheme or investment scam. Perpetrators of these crimes count on their victims desire to make money even if it is to fund a charity. HOA crimes are more akin to muggings or embezzlements. The victim is in no way expecting a profit. Tricks are used to effect a foreclosure. Lawmakers and administrators are bribed either directly or by having their relatives and friends receive favorable and often unnecessary contracts for work, the cost of which will be borne by the homeowners.
What is it that enables such iniquity to occur and then to flourish? The answer is an old one. People who have power often suppose that possessing something carries an obligation to use it. We grow up with folksy maxims that are not nearly so wise as they appear. "Use it or lose it." "Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot read." Usually, however, the corruption of those to whom we have given power originates in our own failure to believe in and to act upon a fundamental tenet of Zen theology: all things in the material world, including our mind, change. Our vigilance must be constant.
HOA's are non-profit corporations and, as such, are not subject to ordinary governmental scrutiny. While the directors are "elected" it is not by any democratic process. The recorded owner of each property has a vote - not the occupant unless he is also the owner. Usually, at the time of signing the contract, attention is on the financing documents. The buyer has no idea about the power he is yielding to the HOA. These niceties are usually contained in a rider to the contract and the rider is not presented for inspection. The only choice the buyer has is to accept the unspecified conditions or not. A naive trust in human nature and a childish misconception of where the HOA's loyalties lie usually prompts his acceptance. The buyer also will not know that his HOA may join a organization that functions as a lobbying group that seduces legislators and other administrators to act in their interest - not the buyer's.
The power to "make improvements" is particularly troublesome. Last month the residents of a local HOA community were informed that they were being assessed for cutting down a row of fully-grown trees that surrounded their walled community. They were told that the developer had planted the trees too close to the cinder block wall - three feet instead of four. Years earlier, when the developer turned the project over to the HOA, defects in the wall were noted and the builder accordingly corrected them. The HOA inspected and, satisfied, accepted the wall; but they didn't seem to notice that the young trees had not been planted according to specs. Over the years, the wall showed ordinary wear, mostly with loosened vertical mortar fillings. But simple solutions to this problem would not do. Contracts were issued to unknown persons to cut down the trees, dig out the stumps and roots, plant new young trees, and repair the sidewalks.
The residents valued the trees not only because they were beautiful and provided shade, but nearby streets had become major thoroughfares and the trees acted to abate the noise. The HOA said that rather than continue to make endless minor repairs to the wall it made more sense to dig out all the trees and plant new ones a foot farther away. This is laughable. In the Mohave Desert, all trees send their roots out sideways because of the calichŽ (limestone) that their tap roots always encounter. Whatever channels the old tree roots made will be followed by the new tree roots. Nothing will be gained but profit to the contractors.
And so it is with religious organizations that we join and then fail to allow for the inevitable changes. Enthusiasm dulls our reason; and we later discover that we've committed ourselves to work for the sangha... in the kitchen... laundry... office... teach a weekly class. We may have overextended ourselves by agreeing to purchase materials for the manufacture of rosaries, bracelets, rakusus, mats and cushions, items that are sold by the sangha. We may have agreed to help in the manufacture of these salable items or to have monthly dues taken directly from our bank account. Possibly we will learn that the profits earned from our labor and expense accrue to a privileged few - and not necessarily for any religious purpose. Possibly we will learn that we are shouldering far more than our share of the work. Sooner or later we may become so disenchanted with yet another sordid instance of material world rot that we will turn away from religion.
We win if our disgust includes our own foolishness; and chastened, we turn inward to solitary spirituality - the only way to climb Zen's steep and narrow path. We lose if we blame the religious organization and move on to another group.
Happiness must never be thought to consist in anything outside ourselves - not in any person, not in any thing, and, most definitely, not in any place.
