image: xkcd # 1410 (August 20, 2014)
Ward Lucas is was an investigative reporter for 9 News in Denver, Colorado. I remember watching him on T.V. when I was a kid. Is that like telling somebody “I read about you in History class!”? Although we live about an hour from each other, we’ve never met.
Ward is also the author of Neighbors At War, a book which is much better book than mine, and a blog of the same name. He recently wrote about “Stupid, Stupid HOA Board Members! Just Stupid!“
The four board members of the Twin Creek South Estate Homeowners Association may be among the stupidest people on Planet Earth. These knuckle dragging hominids in San Ramon, California might even qualify for the infamous annual “Darwin Award.” Their collective IQ points could easily be totaled up on one hand.
California is in the midst of a drought so bad that smaller communities are now running completely out of water. Many Californians are paying big sums of money for water brought in by truck from other states. Reservoirs are bone dry. Aquifers are drying up or becoming too saline to use. The collective weight of trillions of gallons of missing water has actually caused land along the San Andreas Fault to rise significantly triggering swarms of thousands of mini-earthquakes. The Legislature and Governor have had to enact a law forbidding Homeowners Associations from fining residents who don’t keep their lawns green. More food crops are grown in California than in any other state, but those crops are no longer being shipped to the nation’s grocery stores. That’s why you’re seeing record prices on store shelves across the country.
Yet the Twin Creek South HOA board members have the unmitigated gall to assess monthly fines against a homeowner who tried to create a drought resistant lawn.
In response, I posted the following comment, which has not yet been approved for publication, and probably never will be. It’s not the first time this has happened, and we’ve had some e-mail exchanges about it in the past. Neighbors At War is his blog, and he is free to publish or not publish readers’ comments as he wishes on it. But I think he’s really sticking his head in the sand by denying that there are certain ideologies and philosophies that are pro-H.O.A. And that as a result, certain political parties –Libertarians and Republicans — which correspond to those ideologies and philosophies will reflexively oppose H.O.A. reform as a matter of (flawed) principle. The Democrats, on the other hand, are worse than useless, and support H.O.A. corporations while providing the illusion of reform in order to keep the peasants placated, ensuring that the home owners remain as powerless as ever (e.g., Colorado State Senator Morgan Carroll, Democrat-Aurora. She even had Ward fooled for a while — he praised her as an “HOA Hero in Colorado” (January 8 2013) before I convinced him otherwise. See also George Staropoli, “Thank you Senator Carroll.” (Feb. 28 2013)).
Anyway, here is what I wrote that was deemed unsuitable for publication on the Neighbors At War web site:
October 2, 2014 at 7:15 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
> The Legislature and Governor have had to enact
> a law forbidding Homeowners Associations from
> fining residents who don’t keep their lawns green.
And there was a great disturbance in the Force, as though millions of Tea Partyin’ disciples of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan cried out in horror at the thought of government regulation interfering with so-called “contracts” between individual home owners who “agreed” to the rules and private H.O.A. corporations.
“Yes, it’s stupid for homeowners associations to require water-greedy bluegrass, especially in times of drought. That’s not the point. The point is, should the legislature force associations to change their policies, or should members of those associations act independently to change the rules? There is certainly well-developed libertarian theory that supports homeowners associations. … Obviously, the associations are not always going to get the rules right. But the rules may be changed internally, without government interference. If you don’t like the rules, you are free to move somewhere with different rules. . . . Indeed, it creates a kind of market democracy libertarians can actually get excited about.”
– Colorado libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
“In Defense of Homeowners Associations”
February 12, 2003
http://www.freecolorado.com/2003/02/shorts12.html (scroll down)
“I thank God my HOA is able to assess fines.”
– Colorado libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
“Homeowners Associations Debated”
February 2003
http://www.freecolorado.com/2003/02/homeowners.html
“However, I am exceedingly glad fines may be issued.”
– Colorado libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
“Is a Homeowners’ Association a Contract?”
February 2003
http://www.freecolorado.com/2003/02/homeowners2.html
“I’m certain HOA rules are sometimes stupid and they are sometimes stupidly enforced. But the alternative is legislative action — which is usually stupid. As a last resort, if I find my HOA rules (which I agreed to live by in buying the residence) oppressive, I can move a few miles (or even a few hundred yards) outside of the tiny HOA area. If the state legislature makes the rules, though, I cannot escape them except by moving out of the state.”
– Colorado libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
“Legislation vs. Contracts for Property Rules”
September 24, 2003
http://www.freecolorado.com/2003/09/shorts24.html (scroll down)
“Legislation interfering with property development and HOAs should be repealed.”
– Colorado libertarian activist Ari Armstrong
“Johnson, Armstrong Debate HOAs, Gambling”
October 01 2003
http://www.freecolorado.com/2003/10/hoajj.html
It is “stupid” for the government of California to do anything about the drought, because “government bad”. There are a lot of people out there who seriously believe that ’tis far better to let a mass disaster happen, that could result in the deaths of thousands or millions of people, than regulate the behavior or corporations. A bad science-fiction novel written 60 years by an insane Hollywood-screenwriter-turned-New-York-celebrity-author-who-despised-flyover-country said so.
Instead of having the oppressive jackboot of government thuggery dictating to H.O.A. corporations that they cannot fine home owners for saving water, we should just let the magic of the free market do its work. The home owners who want to install water-conserving landscapes are free to move to neighborhoods where it is allowed. And H.O.A. corporations with stupid rules will fail to attract new “customers”, and will just have to continue to collect assessments from (or foreclose upon) the home owners who are unable to sell their H.O.A.-burdened property. See how that works?
Based on past experience and e-mail exchanges with Ward, I am well aware that he will not be publish this comment on his blog. (If you’re reading this on “Neighbors At War“, then I was obviously wrong). Exposing H.O.A. corporations as a failure of Libertarian and Republican theories does not fit Ward’s ideological narrative. It’s his blog, and he is free to censor it as he wishes in order to avoid controversy and offending anyone. Armstrong recently wrote that it “is a despicable lie” to point out a real-world consequence of his beliefs, which must make me a “despicable” liar. I’ll let you decide.
edited to add this disclaimer:
But, as Evan McKenzie has said before, H.O.A. corporations are “based on a bogus ideology of privatism” ( Sept. 14 2014 ) and that “anybody who espouses the philosophy of ‘privatism,’ claiming that the so-called private sector is superior to government, has to answer for the obvious and growing problems of homeowner and condo associations” ( June 25, 2011 ).
“HOAs do a great job of illustrating to libertarians (who seem to need to learn this more than the average person, for some reason) that the world is not a deductive system, and all facts about human relations don’t follow from a simple logical calculus. Simply spinning out definitions of voluntary and involuntary quickly gets you into a conundrum here.”
– J Alan Katz (July 22, 2010 at “Are HOAs Unlibertarian?“)
and
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
– Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged
How ironic that her followers refuse to check their premises when faced with the contradiction of H.O.A. corporations as bastions of everything they believe. If you want to see Ari Armstrong’s vision for the future, imagine a private boot stomping on a human face…forever.
Madison Hill H.O.A. 