A series of essays.....
.....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
They want all the houses to look nearly identical. I guess they like the movies 'The Stepford Wives' and 'Pleasantville' where everything and everyone looks and feels the same. Honestly, is it really that simplistic?
"A local Orlando area family is in a battle with their homeowner's association over a fence for their son who has Asperger's Syndrome. The HOA flatly states that the type of fence the family requires for the safety of their five-year old son does not meet the architectural review board guidelines." (WESH News, Orlando, FL)
"HOA shuts down boy's lemonade stand." (FOX News 13, Tampa Bay, FL)
"A homeowner near Windermere, who happens to work for Orange County's environmental department, has been sued by her neighborhood association for replacing her thirsty grass with a water-conserving landscape." (WESH News, Orlando, FL)
Given all of this information accumulated by the local Orlando news media within the past few years, my mind is in overdrive. When it comes down to human beings being allowed to function as human beings rather than robots or puppets, I am very concerned for all of us who live under the glaring eye of anointed home owner committee leaders who are sanctioned by their HOA's to enforce all rules and regulations.
Several years ago I worked for ISSA Homes, Inc., a high-end building company located in Celebration, Florida. Among other things, I was responsible for securing all pre-construction building permits from the Osceola County Offices in Kissimmee, Florida. I worked closely with the building department making certain that all county codes, rules and regulations were met on single-family and condominium blueprints that were architecturally signed and sealed and ready for the necessary permits required in order to built the product for our clients.
The town of Celebration was born in 1994 and was an original brainchild of Mr. Walt Disney himself! Many say that the plan behind Celebration for Walt was to build an entire town that would reflect our nation's past, the close-knit communities we think of as Small Town USA today. Residents delighted in having large front porches to sit at while discussing the day's activities with their neighbors and friends passing by. Many teens living there may have called it prison like in any other small town community, however, roots were established and Celebration began to thrive and spread.
As time progressed, so did the size of the houses and I had to be careful that our clients desires and selections did not violate or supersede the written laws of the Super Committee set-up originally by Walt Disney World to govern over the community itself. ISSA was responsible for submitting for approval exterior colors or certain building materials chosen by clients that did not match the Committee's codes which had become the 'law of the land' in Celebration.
ISSA Homes was not the only builder in Celebration. And, not just any builder could conduct business there. Each building company turned in an application, was scrutinized, and then had to be voted in by WDW and the governing body of Celebration. I suppose you could say that just to be able to build there was reason enough to accumulate official accolades within the state and its building community.
Success did not come without paying a price and I can recall Don Hempel, one of the owners of ISSA Homes, Inc., often say, "We must work exceptionally hard to give them what they want. They are buying into a dream here and our clients deserve to have us help them realize that dream, no matter what the cost!" Don fought hard for his homeowners and soon ISSA was building estate homes priced upwards of 2,000,000 dollars.
It was about this time, late 1990's, that Dan and I decided to build our own much more modest home just east of the I-4 corridor and north of the Orlando International Airport. Our small community of seventy-four homes was conveniently snuggled between the major artery of roads leading into and out of the metro Orlando area with a five minute drive on SR-408 that took us into the heart and action of downtown. Initially, our little, gated community, only half completed, was under the jurisdiction of the construction company building our homes. This was soon to change.
With a minimum of ninety percent occupation, our subdivision was turned over to the home owners association. Our modest quarterly dues, for the most part, went to cover street repairs, mowing the lawn and planting flowers within the common areas and, the constant repair of the two gates that controlled traffic in and out of the community.
In the beginning, life was as near to perfection as possible with happy neighbors who gratefully attended homeowner's meetings to learn about the community and have an opportunity to meet one another in closer quarters. Elections were held and soon several of the neighbors occupied official posts while others were to head committees that ranged from creating social events in our small park area to walking around the subdivision making certain that everyone was in compliance with the HOA's rules and regulations. And, that is precisely when politics began to rear its ugly head and work to manipulate the hearts and minds of some of the people we would kindly wave or say hello to each day!
The most uncomfortable part of this realization for me was having to work within this stringent environment eight hours a day in Celebration only to return home to face more of the same. With more than eighty percent of newly built homes belonging to association communities, reports the Associated Press, this scenario is difficult to escape.
Don't misunderstand me.....I enjoy driving through our gates and seeing nicely maintained lawns without any dollarweed poking through the St. Augustine. It's totally understandable to discourage someone painting the exterior of their home 'hot pink' by having them submit potential color schemes to the architectural committee to advise them in a more appropriate direction. What is not enjoyable is to witness some people morph into a 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' personality when given the power to consciously control the thoughts and actions of others.
Most of us can remember these heartbreaking stories:
"On the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old African American high school student. Zimmerman, a twenty-eight-year-old mixed-race Hispanic man, was the neighborhood watch coordinator for the gated community where Martin was temporarily living and where the shooting took place." (WFTV, Orlando, FL)
"In June 2010, Captain Michael Clauer of Frisco, Texas, lost his home when his HOA foreclosed on and sold his house while he was en route to Iraq all because he was $800 behind in his HOA dues payments." (KHOU, Houston, TX)
"In 2008, Joe Woodward tried to rebuild his home after it was destroyed by an airplane that fell from the sky and crashed into it, killing his wife and infant son. Woodward planned out his new home to be on the same property as the original home, but made a few changes; if the new house were exactly the same, it would constantly remind him of his loved ones. Woodward's HOA told him that unless he changed the home's shingles, size, and elevation to conform to their rules, i.e., build the house to be just as it had been before the crash, they would sue him." (WESH News, Orlando, FL)
In the (GAWKER),written by Lauri Apple, she writes, "Governed by boards of directors....homeowners ostensibly chosen by their peers to represent the interests of their communities....HOA's are organizations that have become somewhat infamous for imposing arbitrary fines and liens on unpopular or "rogue" homeowners, making things up as they go along, treating people unfairly, enforcing strict adherence to their rules, collecting fees, and acting irrationally or even illegally. The people who sit on their boards are often petty, vindictive, utterly incompetent, and/or control-freakish. Regardless, anyone who wants to move into a housing development ruled by an HOA has to agree to follow the HOA's rules....which can prove troublesome for anyone who is even slightly individualistic, or simply laissez-faire about the color of their neighbors' driveways."
Having lived in our home for seventeen years this September and, having experienced a very serious economic depression during this time, we have witnessed the ugly side of human nature more often than we'd like to admit. Please don't even think that our HOA "couldn't possibly" take our house just because we didn't pay our fees or any fines incurred...because they totally could. Apple says, "Today, encouraged by a new industry of lawyers and consultants, boards are increasingly foreclosing on people sixty days past due on association fees." And if you somehow end up on the board's bad side by, let's say, using the wrong colored wood chips in your flowerbed, or you were on vacation and weren't able to pull the few weeds that grew-up in the meantime, it's likely that your HOA will fine you, lien you, and threaten you with foreclosure!
Certainly, Dan and I could have decided against moving into an HOA governed development. Never having had the experience of an HOA while residing in Michigan most of our lives, we truly did not know what to expect. So, you roll with the punches and do the best that you can all the while knowing that you are good people who are neat and clean and expect that those living around you will take pride in their homes by keeping them that way, as well.
Then the kindly looking, older gentleman with his clipboard in hand comes walking around the subdivision on a sunny, Saturday morning and stops, dead still, in front of your picture window to survey the territory. Chicken scratches begin to clutter his once pristine, white sheet of paper and he carries a small camera he uses to document your indiscretions and other petty misdeeds. You question yourself, "Did I forget to coil my water hose in a perfect clockwise configuration? Are the lower branches of our live oak trees hanging below the acceptable level? Have the stains from the fallen oak leaves in the driveway discolored it enough to be an eye-sore to all who pass by our house? Oh, my!"
Scary! We have to ask ourselves, when is too much power? When HOA disputes become personalized making it difficult to resolve them, this can further complicate matters. When board members interpret the rules to suit their own ends, homeowners often must look to the courts to enforce basic standards of accountability, and that can get expensive. Evan McKenzie, a University of Illinois-Chicago political science professor says, "There's no training or actual requirements for board positions." McKenzie adds, "This means that people in charge often don't understand the most basic requirements of the law. Many homeowners don't either."
And, so.....you have chaos!
Copyright © 2015 by Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
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