Home Owners’ Associations: Fascism on the Half Shell
29th March 2013
I’m not sure what it is about “Homeowners Associations” (HOAs), but I can’t recall ever coming across one which didn’t involve all sorts of acrimony. A few years back, I lived in a house that was a part of a (mandatory) HOA. I was renting, so I didn’t really care or pay much attention to any details. And then, one day I found a bright yellow document sitting on my front step, which had a long and rambling letter from a neighbor who apparently was challenging the HOA on something and the fight had escalated. He had placed the letter on the front steps of every single house in our neighborhood. While I don’t even recall what the argument itself was about, I do recall him explicitly asking that the police be present at the next HOA meeting, and the phrase: “I fear my life will be taken; I fear my wife will become a widow; if this situation is not brought under control.” The whole thing seemed so bizarre to me — who would ever take an HOA so seriously? — that I remember telling people about that phrase, and it’s stuck with me.
And the thing is, every time I ever hear anything about HOAs, it always seems to involve some similar crazy story. A few months back, we wrote about an HOA president in Indiana going ballistic with bogus legal threats towards pretty much anyone who criticized him. And now, here’s a story out of Naples, Florida, where an HOA for “Fiddler’s Creek” is using homeowners’ fees to sue one of their own homeowners, a resident named James Schutt, because he made some comments the HOA board members don’t like on a blog about the community.
Anybody who buys a home covered by a mandatory home owners’ association is obviously insane.