Are homeowners in HOAs being “farmed” like captive animals by the Community Association Institute and government agencies?   This thought-provoking perspective about homeowner rights has been claimed by Fort Bend, Indiana resident Nancy Hentschel.  She has said:

“Home Owner Association (HOA) and Property Owner Association (POA) living is advertised to promote sales and to manage the homeowner population, but these “corporations” are specifically designed to disenfranchise most if not all the homeowners in the subdivision.

The HOA corporation is frequently controlled by the developers, builders, or even the vendors of the HOA corporation, such as the HOA management company and HOA attorneys.  These entities seek legislation to give the HOA board (and therefore its agents) ever more control over the property belonging to the homeowners.

This latter group has formed their own trade organization (Community Associations Institute), which not only lobbies for anti-homeowner laws but also uses funds from HOA corporation coffers (their “client”) in order to pay for the lobbying expenses. One should note that these HOA funds were taken from the homeowners under threat of foreclosure (from assessments).  The foreclosure power is used primarily to benefit these vendors, not the homeowners of the HOA…

(For brevity, most of this editorial has been supressed.  See the below link for the full article.)

…HOA attorneys are a specialized group of attorneys who are trained by the CAI to know how to turn a $50.00 contested fine into a foreclosure process that can yield the attorney upwards of 20 thousand dollars in attorney fees. The reapportionment of assessments and many other tricks, are never made known to homeowners. In this way, homeowners can be led, one at a time, into “executive sessions,” and the foreclosure process, without alerting other homeowners. Isolated in this way, most homeowners are astonished that this process is legal. If the victim of this abuse speaks out, which is quite rare, due to carefully constructed marginalization techniques, others with an air of protective denial will simply say, “There must be more to their story than that!” Unfortunately, the real story about HOAs is much worse. So how is this possible?  How did the HOA industry turn “servitude” into “membership” and “controlled by” into “belong to” and “corporate interests” into “community associations?” Think back to when you bought your home from the builder and developer.  HOAs prey on people’s natural suspicions of their neighbors as having hidden agendas to paint their home purple or jack up cars in the front yard.

Homeowners are sold these fears in exchange for their freedom. This is not a new idea, is it? Depending on the income and social status of the community, these fears are manipulated to fit the buyer. CC&Rs are sold as tools to keep “others” in line, so that they don’t bring down “your” property values (implied personal status), However, CC&Rs are more often selectively used to target and “farm” people for income to the HOA corporation and its vendors, as well as for racial, religious, and political discrimination and manipulation. In addition, let’s face it, there is always the real probability that at least one board member is simply a bully.

Homeowners inadvertently allow this, because neighbors are kept in a constant state of isolated suspicion about each other. When one neighbor feels targeted, he often innocently points to five other homeowners who have the same violation. The HOA’s vendors, or employees, are paid to go after everyone, and are indeed happy to do so. In this way, targeted and confused neighbors, inadvertently support the HOA’s abusive structure by pointing out their neighbors instead of objecting to the structure of the problem. It is also true that one racist bully in your neighborhood will become a powerful favorite of any HOA management company and attorney. He will often even find his way onto the board.

HOAs also commonly target widows who tend to pay off their homes when a spouse dies. Tax records reveal equity and a skilled HOA attorney can tap into this information.  Some of these cases make it to the news, like Wenonah Blevins, Houston, and Captain Mike Clauer, Frisco, but most do not. When people are targeted by an HOA (remember that they are led to think that their HOA is their neighbors), they usually are either shamed into silence or they desire to move away from such disgusting neighbors. Either way, the HOA‘s secrecy remains intact!”

See this link for the full article…
[1] http://www.fortbendnow.com/2010/08/04/47120