America’s HOAs Have Become Shadow Governments With Better Enforcement Records Than Most Countries
Nation’s Homeowners Discover They Don’t Own Their Homes So Much as Rent Them From a Volunteer Committee That Has Strong Opinions About Mailbox Colors
- HOA boards now issue more citations than some major American cities issue parking tickets.
- Mailbox colors have become a geopolitical issue in 47,000 subdivisions.
- Americans fought a revolution against a king and replaced him with a retired accountant named Dave.
- Somewhere in Florida, a man is receiving a formal notice about his wind chimes.
- HOA violation letters have more legal weight than some international treaties.
Shadow Governments Quietly Running American Suburbia From Clubhouses
SCOTTSDALE — A nationwide audit of homeowner association behavior confirmed this week that approximately 74 million Americans now live under the jurisdiction of HOA boards wielding enforcement powers that many legal scholars describe as “aggressive,” “creative,” and “technically permissible under contracts nobody read at closing.” The audit was conducted informally by residents who have collectively received 14,000 violation letters about grass height, holiday lighting duration, and the controversial positioning of one man’s basketball hoop in Henderson, Nevada.
The Community Associations Institute reports that there are now over 365,000 community associations in the United States, housing approximately 74 million residents. That is more people than live in France — governed by organizations whose executive authority derives from a 47-page document signed during a real estate closing when you were mostly just worried about whether the inspector found mold.
HOA Enforcement Capabilities Now Rival Municipal Government
Modern HOA boards have access to fine structures, lien authority, and in many states the legal capacity to foreclose on properties over unpaid dues — a power that would seem excessive for disputes over mailbox colors but is, in fact, how several American homeowners have lost their houses. Reuters’ investigative reporting on HOA foreclosures documented cases where homeowners lost properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over HOA debts of a few thousand dollars or less — a ratio that suggests someone got very creative about the drafting of the covenants.
One Scottsdale resident received a formal violation notice describing his mailbox as “inconsistent with community aesthetic standards.” The mailbox was beige. The approved color was “warm sand.” A color wheel was provided. The colors are identical to anyone without a spectrometer and a grievance.
Board Members Accumulating Power at Rates Alarming to Political Scientists
HOA elections, held annually in clubhouses attended by an average of four people who brought their own chairs, routinely determine the regulatory fate of hundreds of households. Turnout would embarrass a small town selectman race. The winners, often running unopposed, gain authority over landscaping standards, noise ordinances, vehicle restrictions, and paint palettes that haven’t been updated since George W. Bush’s first term.
The National Conference of State Legislatures has tracked a growing number of states passing HOA reform legislation in response to documented abuses — legislation that HOA attorneys are reading very carefully and already preparing workarounds for. The covenants run with the land. The workarounds run faster.
What the Funny People Are Saying
“Americans threw off the British Empire and gave themselves an HOA. The British are baffled.” — Lewis Black
“My HOA sent me a letter about my grass being an eighth of an inch too long. I sent them a letter about their parking. I lost.” — Bill Burr
“The HOA board president has more conviction than any politician I’ve ever seen, and his jurisdiction is 200 houses.” — Jerry Seinfeld
Wind Chime Disputes Entering Third Year in Several Subdivisions
Among the most contentious HOA battlegrounds nationally are sound ordinances targeting wind chimes, which occupy a legal gray zone between aesthetic nuisance and personal expression that no CC&R drafting committee in 1987 anticipated would become a decade-long cold war between neighbors named Gary and Deborah. Gary has the chimes. Deborah has the board seat. Gary does not know this will not end well for the chimes.
Legal disputes over HOA authority have generated a cottage industry of specialized attorneys who handle nothing but community association conflicts — a professional niche that did not exist forty years ago and now funds several vacation homes, each presumably located in communities without HOAs.
Residents Discovering the Document They Didn’t Read at Closing Is Actually a Constitution
At press time, one Colorado homeowner reportedly spent an evening finally reading his community’s Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions and discovered he is technically prohibited from parking a vehicle with visible commercial lettering in his own driveway, keeping chickens (he does not have chickens but feels strongly about the right to have them theoretically), and painting his shutters any color “other than those listed in Exhibit C, which is available upon written request from the Association Manager.”
He is currently drafting a written request. He does not expect Exhibit C to resolve anything. He is right. Welcome to the HOA.
This article is American satire produced through a collaboration between the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer, neither of whom lives in a planned community and both of whom have strong opinions about mailbox colors. Bohiney.com practices American satirical journalism in the tradition of people who read the covenants after it was already too late. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!