HOAs are the formal entities created to maintain the common areas of those large communities, as well as to enforce deed restrictions. In addition to the large single-family home communities, most condominium and town home developments have HOAs, which usually are created when the development is built.

Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&Rs) are issued to homeowners when they sign their purchase paperwork, and HOAs are formed to ensure the CC&R provisions are adhered to, in order to maintain the quality and value of the properties involved. HOAs also have the authority to enact and enforce maintenance and design standards in addition to those established by city ordinances.

HOA membership is mandatory for all property owners within the development, and HOAs are corporations with formal by-laws and a governing board. Board members are elected, and can be removed from office, by the HOA members.

HOAs have the power to issue assessments for common property maintenance, as well as fines for violations of CC&Rs and HOA design guidelines. And homeowners who fail to pay the assessments or fines can have liens placed on their properties.

According to the Community Associations Institute, more than 50 million Americans live in association-governed communities, with some 1.25 million of those people serving on the governing boards of those associations.

CAI is a more than 30-year-old national organization of community associations dedicated to fostering vibrant, competent and harmonious community associations.

Pros and cons of HOAs
In Arizona, which has no central body that keeps count, the number of HOAs is estimated to exceed 10,000.

“There are a lot more homeowners associations in recent years — more than 10,000 of them in Arizona now,” said Curtis Ekmark, a Valley attorney who specializes in HOA law.

Ekmark also is vice president of the West Valley Homeowners Association, a coalition of various westside homeowners associations that’s dedicated to providing training and guidance about HOA management and efficiency. It holds monthly meetings and provides seminars on HOA issues, including proposed legislation.

Whether an HOA is a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you ask.

“HOAs keep the value of the homes up because the appearances of them are maintained,” said John Spooler, past president and still a board member of the PebbleCreek Homeowners Association in Goodyear. “We don’t want to stereotype everything, but just maintain the areas.”

The PebbleCreek HOA is a bit different from others “because we work with the developer yet, who has control of the board of directors by having three representatives on the five-member board,” Spooler said. “This year, I was due to go off the board and the developer [Robson Communities] asked me to stay on.”

When Spooler declined, Robson Communities hired him and put him on the HOA board as one of the developer representatives.

Spooler devised a committee system of management five years ago when he first went on the board.

“We do not have a GM [general manager] or company that manages us; the board of directors manages the whole community,” he said. “We have 11 committees that report to the board.”

The committees range from handling communications to food to golf course matters.

“All are volunteers and are made up of homeowners — so maybe 100 different people — so the system works very democratically,” Spooler said. “So we think we do represent all of the homeowners.

“We have a board administrator who handles the calls and is the first line of communication. And we have a green-slip program — for complaints. We try to respond within 72 hours.”

Other side of the coin
Opponents of HOAs point to their usual non-democratic organization, as well as their often overzealous enforcement of CC&Rs and guidelines, restrictive rules and fee increases.

George K. Staropoli is president of the Scottsdale-based Citizens for Constitutional Local Government, and has been active as a homeowners’ rights advocate since 2000. Staropoli and CCLG assert that HOAs are “independent, undemocratic private governments” operating outside the American system of government.

“If we are to make progress, we must distinguish the concept of a planned community, which is a real estate ‘package’ of homes, landscaping, amenities and rules, from that of the HOA, which is the undemocratic governing body of the planned community,” Staropoli said.

Staropoli points to the growing number of homeowner and condo association residents who have become upset with their associations because of arbitrary enforcement of design guidelines, uneven policies pertaining to the flying of American flags and unreturned phone calls. He is an advocate for major reform — which he’s not seen yet.

“As the result of the failure of the Arizona Legislature to produce effective HOA reform legislation, for two years, and the recent actions by the Real Estate Department, one can conclude that Arizona is a nice state to visit — but not to buy a mandated HOA home,” Staropoli writes on his group’s Web site. “Beware!”

With the absence of a state ombudsman or a central agency to oversee the operations of HOAs, homeowners are left to learn about them on their own. Hence, several grassroots organizations have sprung up.

CHORE, the Coalition of Homeowners for Rights and Education, is another East Valley-based homeowners’ rights advocacy group. It tries to educate homeowners and homebuyers about HOAs and how they operate.

The California-based American Homeowners Resource Center, a national and international network of homeowners working together to protect homes, maintains an interactive Web site for residents of homeowners associations. The sites provide a wealth of information about homeowners’ rights, HOAs, proposed legislation that might affect HOAs, general HOA news, complaints vs. HOAs and a list of other resources.

(The next article in the series: The legalities of HOAs — what HOAs can and cannot do, and what rights homeowners/HOA members have.)

Darryl Henning can be reached by e-mail at dhenning@westvalleyview.com.

HOA information resources
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