The Case Against State Protection of Homeowners Associations
George K. Staropoli
StarMan Publishing, LLC
2003, ebook edition, 163 pp, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 $5.00 ebook price
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View Table of Contents.
The author, a veteran homeowner rights activist, makes his case against
state government protection of homeowner associations. He documents, using his appearances before
the Arizona Legislature, state legislative hostility toward upholding the civil
liberties of homeowners with their broad, misguided interpretation of “private contract” prohibitions, and the use of statutes that favor the HOA; he
provides numerous supporting materials from US Supreme Court, federal appellate
and state court decisions; he provides research and publications by political
scientists going back to 1992; and he even provides, in support of the
advocates, the publications of the national
trade organization that lobbies state legislatures against returning homeowner
associations to the American system of government.
The opinions and evidence presented makes a case for
a uniform view that homeowner associations are state actors – governmental
agencies as defined by the US Supreme Court --
and that there is no
overwhelming public interest to warrant the denial of the US Bill of Rights and laws to homeowners
living in associations.
An excerpt:
Over the past forty
years there has been an ever-increasing dispersion of a new social order in
America. Its roots are founded in the spread of planned communities and its
model of community governance that is an undemocratic, police state insistence
on conformity to rules set through the façade of democratic institutions, much
like those we are familiar with in regard to those “Peoples Republics”
throughout the world. Each day, more
and more children are living under and
learning about this form a private government that does not respect the
beliefs, rights and freedoms underlying the US Constitution or US Bill of
Rights.
The proliferation of planned
communities and their HOA/POA/CID form of governance arose from the ashes of
and over the failures of utopian views of ideal societies. This form of
governance is based on socialism with the ownership of common properties and
the need for the governmental control and regulation of the members of the
community. As with all planned
communities, from the utopian communities of the early 1920s to the existing
Cuban, Chinese and Korean governments, an enforcement agency is necessary
because the foundations of the society and community rest of principles and
values found, over history, to be contrary to our human nature.
According
to Forrest McDonald in Novus Ordo Seclorum, the
Founding Fathers did not try to reform
human nature, but set up mechanisms of checks and balances and a separation of
powers that recognized human behavior for what it has been for centuries. Utopian ideals were not made part of the
“new order of ages” created by the Founding Fathers, but ideals based on the most prominent
political and economic theorists and principles were used to create the
greatest nation on earth.
These
associations quickly found that it was necessary that the micromanagement a
person’s life is required in order to attain conformity with the objectives of
the association. And the objectives of these “states”, these private
organizations based on court rulings that CC&Rs are valid contracts, are the maintenance of property values
through the strict enforcement of the CC&Rs by a governing body so created,
without a homeowners bill of rights,
without any reference or inclusion of the US or state Constitutions, and with
the total abdication of involvement and oversight by our civil government. In essence, they have become a state within
a state and protected by the greater civil government to function, operate and
violate the laws, values and fundamental beliefs of our country.
The
reader is probably saying to himself, “No, this is not true, just the babblings
of a malcontent with a personal issue.
There is no radical change or a new order within American society. It is
not possible here in America. It could never happen here, the bastion of
democracy”. But, it’s true and has
happened here in America, the bastion of democracy.
How
this has come about is well documented in several books. In the early 1990s, two notable books were
published by political scientists: Privatopia:
Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government,
Evan McKenzie and Neighborhood Politics: Residential Community
Associations in American Governance, Robert J. Dilger. A more recent book, 2000, is Community
Associations: The Emergence and Acceptance of a Quiet Innovation in Housing,
Donald Stabile, funded by the homeowner association trade group, Community
Associations Institute, CAI, and one of its founding supporters, The Urban Land
Institute, a non-profit, real estate
land usage organization founded as the Real Estate Foundation, as separate from
the FHA. As Stabile well documents,
the FHA worked assiduously to promote and encourage the use of planned
communities as a means to affordable housing under the most efficient use of
the land argument of ULI. Yet, there
has been no involvement by political scientists or sociologists in this national
effort to restructure our society
around profit making for real estate
interests, with a “good word” by our federal government to promote this new
social order.
In
this book, The Case Against State Protection of Homeowner
Associations, the author, George K. Staropoli, reveals his
naïve attempt over 3 years in Arizona to call attention to the acceptance,
encouragement and defense of these private government organizations by state
legislatures, state agencies such as the real estate departments, the builder and real estate agent trade groups
and sadly, the media that still refuses
to present both sides equally.
This book documents the harsh reality that our state governments have
abdicated the values, beliefs, principles and laws that made America stand out
alone as the model of good government; that special interest groups have
promoted their views of this social order while hiding the other side of the
coin; and that this order has been accepted by the public in general, defending
their acts as “protecting their investment values in their homes” and that they
are private organizations that are party to private contracts entered into
voluntarily and with full knowledge of
the consequences by homeowners.
The
author provides substantial documentation relating to violations of US and state
Constitutions and statutes; US Supreme Court and Arizona and other state
Supreme Court rulings directly bearing
on these violations; of attitudes that reflect “better bricks and
mortar” make a better America and that fundamental American values, beliefs and
principles play second place to this overriding “state” objective of these
planned communities. Self-interest,
isolation from the larger community and conformity are the overriding values of
this new societal order rapidly overtaking America.
This
is must reading for anyone seeking a
new home, for students of government, for political theorists and scientists,
for historians, for government officials and for the judiciary. This book
reveals how this “quiet innovation in housing” has undermined our American way
of life and replaced it with an overriding, yet superficial and unproven
concern that planned communities are the only means to enhance property
values.
Note: Please see Citizens
Against Private Government HOAs for more information on homeowner association
issues.