From California to Virginia, from Washington to Florida, a groundswell of protest is beginning to emerge on the political radar. With over 45 million Americans now living in homeowner associations, homeowners are taking to the airwaves, bombarding politicians, publishing newsletters, creating websites - all with one central message – there is something deeply flawed about home associations.

THE HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATION TRAP

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What the homeowner ends up with after the lobbyists and lawyers have finished with them

© David Ramirez. All rights reserved.

They charge that arrogant board members and greedy lawyers are flagrantly tramping on fundamental constitutional rights, and fining, liening and foreclosing on homeowners in record numbers (4000 foreclosures in Harris County, Texas, alone).

Here in California, Katherine Rosenberry, the author of the Davis Stirling Act, the law regulating common interest developments, flatly stated before the California Law Revision Commission (CLRC)on February 2nd., that the act had failed. She blamed it on the marching orders given to her to make sure that she pleased all of the lobbyists. The CLRC has just begun a thorough investigation of homeowner association law.

Homeowners have been asking how fundamental property rights have been surreptiously stolen from them. There are at least six major historical forces.

1. After World War 2, there was a pent up demand for new housing. This was accentuated by returning G.I.’s , who wanted decent, modern housing.

2. With the only intact economy in the world, the U.S. enjoyed a new found prosperity. A bluecollar worker in Detroit earned more than a hotel manager in Paris.

3. Developers realized that more profit could be earned from mass producing houses than from building custom homes.

4. As large, new housing tracts had to be built in the suburbs, far from the traditional urban amenities, developers discovered that, in order to attract buyers, they had to provide swimming pools, club houses, golf courses and the like. They also realized that they had to provide some structure to maintain these common facilities after they left the development. Hence, homeowner associations were formed.

5. Cities and towns soon realized that they could shift the tax burden for building streets, sewers and lighting from the public tax coffers to private developers. Today, many towns require all new developments to be in common interest developments (CIDs). 5,400 new homes are being built in San Clemente, and they are all in CIDs. Gilbert, Arizona mandates that all new housing be in CIDs.

6. Parasite industries – lawyers, management companies – soon realized that homeowner associations could be cash cows for themselves if they could corral the CID’s into their stables. And this they did. Making lavish contributions (aka. bribes) to politicians, they erected complex regulatory structures which hemmed in the homeowner at every turn.

(Here in California in the early 90’s, they would wine and dine the chairman of the Assembly Housing Committee, Dan Hauser. The following day, he would do their bidding at a legislative hearing.) The slightest deviation from association rules would result in massive fines and/or lawsuits from the association. The American dream was turning into the American nightmare.

All across the country, homeowners are beginning to fight back. Many are demanding that homeowner associations be abolished completely. Others are calling for radical reforms that guarantee them fundamental protections against marauding boards and lawyers.

However, a new battle front has emerged. In ominous moves with frightening implications, the CID industry is laying the foundation to force existing homes into homeowner associations. Susan French, a UCLA law professor, and author of a background report for the CLRC, recommended bringing existing homes into homeowner associations. The lead article in the January 2001 issue of Urban Land (the mouthpiece of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) – the mega lobbying arm for the major real estate tycoons) argued for the same forced CIDization.

Homeowners are doubly shocked. They shake their heads and ask – "What has happened to freedom in this country?" As one homeowner put it, "It is bad enough that you are forced to buy a home in an association, but to force all other homes into associations in nothing less than criminal".

The industry juggernaut, however, is not content with this. It is seeking to gobble up homes around the globe. Katherine Rosenberry, for example, has spent the last 16 months in England working with the Lord Chancellor’s office to bring homeowner association law there.

One wonders if there will be a reverse Boston Tea party! ULI has even greater, global ambitions. Already in 35 countries, it sees the entire planet earth as an investment opportunity, where individual ownership is a thing of the past. Giant corporations with giant management companies will control peoples’ lives to an extent unparelled in history. Globalization has become gobblization.

Here in the U.S., giant Del Webb Corporation is set to swallow 17,000 acres of public land by building a massive so-called "master planned community". The Bureau of Land Management is set to auction the peoples’ land located in southern Nevada on May 9th.

John Locke, the great proponent of the private ownership of property as being the fundamental basis of individual liberty, must be turning furiously in his grave. In a few short centuries, his notions of free enterprise are turning into the enterprise of the few.

The maximization of profit is turning out to be incompatible with freedom. As America hurtles towards the future, it is obsessed with the vision of unlimited sums of money that it sees through the windshield. It no longer sees the vision of freedom receding in the rear view mirror. The family home, like the family farm, will become a thing of the past, unless free citizens once again rally to the ramparts.