When will Texas legislators find solutions to the problems they created by creating mandatory homeowner associations?

July 22, 2007

By Harvella Jones (View author info)
Copyright 2007 The National Homeowners Advocate Group, LLC

The headlines read: Texas - "'Westpark Lakes' Homeowner Association closes its doors and leaves its homeowners without street lights.'"


My first reaction to the news was "Why isn't the city of Richmond keeping the lights on? What is Fort Bend County doing about this?" Public information on this community indicates this subdivision homeowners pay General Fund tax in the amount of 0.493340% and Emergency Services District tax in the amount of 0.070000%. Is this not an emergency? Is this not something that would fit in the category of the General Fund?

This is not a time for local talking heads to chew the fat over; this is the time to show how insignificant a homeowner association is and challenge the wisdom of having one in your community. Developers sometimes are mandated to create homeowner associations or else; oftentimes given the same ultimatum as homeowners regarding the right to buy property they desire--either join the homeowner association or you do not get to buy your house. In the case of developers, either create a homeowner association or you do not get your commercial property.

Homeowners in the Westpark Lakes Community should now seize this opportunity to challenge where their money went and the wisdom of even having an association. Why did this association suddenly shut down? What have they been doing with the money? Why have they not paid the utility bill if they have been collecting for it?

The homeowners have been placed in the driver's seat. It appears to be somebody has committed fraud and breach of covenant. Where does it state in any deed restriction that a homeowner association can be shut down by one person--the president? What has the Westpark Lakes' President done with the money collected over the years?

The dissolution of a mandatory homeowner association (first of all homeowner associations should not be mandatory; they should be voluntary, if anything, as we are a country of choice) should not dismantle the services rendered to a community as there are checks and balances in place to prevent such a disaster.

According to the Community Associations Institute belief, the "impact of eliminating mandatory membership property owners associations are:

• communities will not have the authority to collect the funds necessary to maintain the common areas
• street lights will be turned off
• recreational facilities will be closed
• household trash will not be removed
• homes will not be uniformly maintained
• unauthorized structures and alterations will be constructed on lots or limited common areas
• inappropriate behavior by residents will not be regulated
• liability and property insurance on common areas will expire
• property values will decline, resulting in a lower tax base for municipalities
• cities will be forced to expend tax revenue on basic municipal services to these communities, including police patrol, neighbor dispute resolution, trash removal, street lights and deed restriction enforcement"

There are no genuine case studies to support these bullet points, which leads me to the next point. Since it appears Westpark Lakes' Homeowner Association was dissolved by one person and/or board and no one else had anything to do with the dissolution, it appears the pendulum has swung to the side of the homeowner advocates who have said for years we do not need homeowner associations in our communities, particularly mandatory ones. When you thrust all of the community's services into the control of a volunteer board of directors, what do you expect but that the association will eventually sink into the muck from which it came?

This is an embarrassing situation for the State of Texas, humiliating not only to the Westpark Lakes community but roping in the Governor on down to the Board of Directors as well; and I personally thank Channel 13, ABC, for airing this powerful story. It is a glaring testament to what can happen and will continue to happen to homeowners in their communities controlled by homeowner associations if they do not start protesting against mandatory associations. It was noted that many of the "villages" in this community property values have declined over the past year, even with a homeowner association.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that when a homeowner association is involved in something adverse it created, everyone suddenly becomes "weak-kneed", unknowledgeable and clueless as to how to proceed with a thorough examination of the facts in order to get to the bottom of the problem. Quickly the situation turns into an "I don't know what to do" problem. If anything, this should alert legislators, the media and other homeowners that something is dismally wrong with having a mandatory homeowner association in your community in which some of our most important services are negotiated and/or controlled by "untrained volunteers". Some of these associations handle millions of dollars yearly. While these untrained volunteers have no people skills, accounting skills or business expertise in this type of business, they do get high marks for their ability to harass, insult, ignore, oppress, collect maintenance fees, assess fines and attorney fees, sometimes render physical abuse, run off with the money, file foreclosure lawsuits against our homes and buy and sell the foreclosed property for sometimes between 1% and 2% of the market value. Yes, between 1 and 2%!

Homeowners do not need to be told how to live and how to keep up their homes when they are the buyers. The mentality that has slowly crept into our home buying process never ceases to amaze me as to how we arrived at this point that we cannot function unless we are in a homeowner association community in which we are being told how to manage our own property. Are we too busy helping the company we work for become richer, going to the movies or playing golf to notice our property rights where we live have eroded? To the Westpark Lakes' homeowners, I ask how can you live in a community and not notice that you have not had an association meeting in five (5) years? Do you ever wonder where your money is going? Do you know what your board members look like? Do you ever wonder why you have not received a financial statement from your association explaining where your money went? Have you ever been to your once-a-year association meeting?

An old saying, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Homeowners who sit back and think it is smart to micro manage a neighborhood are not smart but neither is a homeowner who does not attend any of his or her association meetings. I know because I use to be one of the dumb ones who never attended a meeting. I heard from a neighbor in my old Kingwood neighborhood that no one went to the meetings because it was so hostile there and I decided I wasn't going to go either. It is your neighborhood and you are the one who control it, not your board because you can vote them out, not your management company because you can demand the board fire the management company and not the board's attorney because you can demand that the board fire the attorney with the law firm as a total dismissal package. Please remember, it is your money that is paying the bills, your maintenance fees and most importantly your community.

Remember, you heard it here first--a homeowner association can and will foreclose on your home in the State of Texas, Florida, California and Arizona and any other place they can. Nothing has happened in the State of Texas to change that fact. Homeowners, you can continue to sit back and think you are safe from homeowner association foreclosures if you want and not pay attention to this article and then you will pay your own consequences. Not only do you have control over whether or not lights are turned off in your community but you have control over whether or not your property can be foreclosed by your homeowner association. You may wonder, what is that power I have? It is called the power of standing up for your rights. The power of speaking out. The power of our 1st Amendment Right to free speech. We ask that you start filing complaints with your attorney general with the hope that an investigation will be triggered by your complaints. Complaining in great number does make a difference.

Unfortunately, we get many calls from "surprised homeowners" who, in spite of our efforts over the years to inform, never believed what we were telling them. It is understandable, though, because who would believe that any State would allow homeowner associations to foreclose on a maintenance fee debt?

It is our duty as advocates to speak out and bring the masses to a better understanding so that this down-hill plunge in property and Constitutional rights can be reversed.

So I am asking people to turn this downward trend around and tell others what they lose when they buy into a homeowner association community not only in Texas but in California, Florida, Arizona and many other states. While the square footage and number of rooms may differ, you have received cookie cutter rights the same as everyone else in your community. A lien is already on your property when you purchased it. If you do not pay your maintenance fees, you will eventually become a defendant in a lawsuit. You have lost the right to enjoy the freedom of customizing your house outside of the builder's specs. You have just crossed over into the new Twilight Zone.

Homeowner associations are new-age racial cleansing machines. They are prospering and multiplying on the ignorance and fear of people and think it is a great concept to control people through their property and this concept, they believe, raises property values. The HOA concept that the ability to foreclose is necessary to control the masses and maintain our property values and our rowdy and unclean neighbors, who may or may not be a member of a minority group has paralyzed our Constitutional rights. The only time most of us become concerned about this thief in the night is when we are personally attacked and then we notify groups like mine--The National Homeowners Advocate Group, LLC; and as soon as the problem has been resolved, we disappear into the night with our same agenda--to do nothing.

Nothing is probably going to happen to Westpark Lakes' association because they are either trying to prove a point as to how needy they are by going cold turkey or the homeowners affected are not going to do one solid thing but appear helpless.

I personally remember a time when you could buy a home, not in Texas, of course, but where you could buy a home, have enough sense to cut your lawn without being told when and how high; a time when you could actually enjoy your home--inside and out. A time when people actually enjoyed being around each other, loved each other and cared about why their neighbor's grass might be too high--perhaps they were sick or worse dead. Now in today's atmosphere, they could be lying in their home unattended because their neighbors did not know them or like them due to the animosity built up by their homeowner association, that thrives on pitting neighbor against neighbor.

Something that I have noticed over the years is that all the sick, old, evil, bitter, rude, arrogant, malicious and mean-spirited busybody homeowners love to volunteer for duty with the homeowner association. They, of course, are a perfect target for the roving, over populated Community Association Institute Attorneys that started all this homeowner association unpleasantness in 1987 with their support of a case law called Inwood vs. Harris.

Do I see this as a great opportunity for Westpark Lakes to file a class-action lawsuit against their homeowner association that would affect every homeowner association in the state of Texas? Yes, I do. Have they shot their self in the foot by shutting down so abruptly and leaving their members without lights? Yes. they have. Sometimes when we attempt to prove how much we are needed, we actually show just the opposite.

So, how will Westpark Lakes' HOA end up? Only time will tell.