HOAs Gone Haywire

So far, in my HOAs Gone Haywire series on the Huffington Post, I have spoken directly to homeowners to explain what living in an Association managed community really means.

For instance, I explain what a CCandR really dictates they can and can’t do; I explain what happens when they don’t know or follow the rules; and I help them understand that HOAs and COAs are businesses and should be run like businesses.

In other words, I help educate homeowners so that their Associations don’t go haywire.

But what are property managers to do? How do property managers not go haywire?

In early May, I spoke about this at the 2017 Community Association Institute Annual Conference and Exposition in Las Vegas. If you are a property manager and did not get to hear my talk, here’s a transcript. It may not be as good as therapy…but it’s a start.

HOAs Gone Haywire: Community Association Managers Caught in the Crossfire

They say there is no such thing as bad press. But have you seen HOAs in the news lately?

Turn on the TV or look at the internet and you see families out on the street because they didn’t pay their dues; you see Associations accused of being a part of the “war on Christmas” because a homeowner was fined for holiday decorations that violated the community’s CC&Rs; you see lawsuits over everything from rigged elections to HOA embezzlements.

Why all this to do over a little thing like a managed community?

Because HOAs and COAs are caught in the cross fire of all kinds of American economic, cultural and social dramas.

For example:

In lawsuits over holiday decorations that make the news…. you see culture wars.

In homeowners whose houses are foreclosed on for late association dues you see that HOAs are not just neighborhoods. They are businesses.

In all the commotion over what kind of trash cans a homeowner can use or what kind of curtains they can put up you see how Americans’ need for absolute control over their environment doesn’t always work out like they plan.

In lawsuits over home invasions you see how Americans’ need for a sense of absolute safety and security can never be achieved…no matter how high the entrance gates.

And the media loves to cover these stories. They are salacious suburban soap operas that reality show producers couldn’t top.

And who gets caught in this dragnet?

The community association manager.

All of you have probably been caught in the cross fire of a similar Association drama.

Some of you may have also been caught in an HOA media storm. I know I have….more than once actually.

Recently I had to send a violation letter to a homeowner for putting up an unapproved fence in front of an environmentally protected area because the kind of fence she put up was clearly a contradiction of the recorded CCandRs. The homeowner claimed that the kind of fence that was actually allowed under the CCRs would not keep their autistic son safe.

Cut to local news cameras at my office door accusing me of battering this poor family.

Cut to my business and me being slandered and dragged through the mud over simply doing my job.

After all, my job, as directed by this Association’s Board, was to enforce the CCandRs…. right?

As managers, we don’t write the CCandRs; we aren’t charged with picking on certain people. So if we violate a resident for putting holiday decorations on their porch we aren’t a part of the war on Christmas. Rather, we are simply enforcing the regulations…..the regulations, by the way, that the homeowner agreed to when they bought the property.

This is exactly what I have been addressing in my series on the subject for the Huffington Post called HOAs Gone Haywire.

In the series I speak directly to homeowners to explain what living in an Association managed community really means.

For instance, I explain what a CCandR really dictates they can and can’t do; I explain what happens when they don’t know or follow the rules; and I help them understand that HOAs and COAs are businesses and should be run like businesses.

In other words, I help educate homeowners so that their Associations don’t go haywire.

But what are property managers to do?

How do we not go haywire?

There’s not an easy answer to this question. After all, most of us got in this business basically by accident. Nobody goes to school to become a property manager and absolutely no kid anywhere says when they grow up they want to be a property manager. You fall into it.

Next thing you know you’re monitoring people’s actions and telling them what they can and can’t do with their most prized possession…their home.

As a property manager, your job, even on a “good day”, is tantamount to running a police state. And you’re the villain for doing your job.

If things escalate and it turns into a “bad day” you wind up in the local media. Sometimes you might even get caught in something bigger on a national level.

I have. For instance, years ago a homeowner in a community I managed erected an American flag in his backyard that was so big it was fit for a monument… I mean lit and everything.

And, yes, I was charged to send that little letter because the CC&Rs clearly stated he couldn’t put up a flag without approval. The local news gets wind of it and portrays me and my management company as being unpatriotic, and unsympathetic to a family whose son was an Iraq war veteran.

Does it stop there? Well not quite.

Enter stage right: a flag waving congressman who then submits a state bill making it illegal to prohibit people from displaying the American flag… as long as it is small and attached to their home.

In other words, that flag monument that was prohibited by the homeowner’s CC&RS is still prohibited… but this congressman managed to get a few more votes out of it.

How American is that?

Lets face it: what we do on a daily basis is a cross between Judge Judy, a Duck Dynasty episode or a Real Housewife Reunion. Right? We can not make this stuff up.

So, the point I am making is that very rarely do people go against the tide so often and so visibly just by doing their job than us. Rarely does a teacher, or an attorney or even a minister go to work and wind up being vilified in the news and on social media just for doing their job.

But it happens to community managers all the time.

So what do we do? We can’t fix this mess. And it only seems to get worse every day.

What I tell people is that we, as managers, don’t have a dog in the fight. We just do what the documents say.

We take directions from somebody. We follow the rules and the board of directors. By writing the letters and enforcing the CC&Rs we get caught in this mess through sheer osmosis. …not because it was our dream to get on the nightly news being portrayed as unpatriotic veteran haters who bully disabled children.

So all I can say is this: just because HOAs have gone haywire doesn’t mean we have to...

…and whoever said there was no such thing as bad press was obviously never an HOA manager.

Thank you very much.