Homeowners Associations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

foreign story tonight concerns home ownership so if you are under 35 honestly this story isn't for you it'll never be for you you will never own a home sorry that is the deal that you made when you decided to be born after 1988 but we didn't want you to feel left out so we've actually prepared a full alternative story for you tonight about Chuck E cheese a different crumbling American institution that you should go watch now instead this is real it is 25 minutes long and you can find it at last squeaktonight.com please go do that now because there is genuinely nothing for you to see here okay for everyone who remains this story is about HOAs which stands for homeowners associations not as you might have thought horse on Adderall which I believe is the potential sequel to cocaine bear HOAs also sometimes known as Community associations our entities set up to govern groups of hunks like a Suburban neighborhood developments or condos and often make local news as the villains in stories like this it's a simple story of a man with some simple needs sit down and have his little chips and a soda if he wants and say hello to some people tan is talking about her neighbor Ted I'll be 92 in September and the bench outside his door I have a place I like to come out here and sit and relax notices from his HOA the Bethany Villa Association saying simply remove your bench from the common area or it will be removed the man deserves a place to rest and enjoy nature and eat his little snacks and say hello to people and pet puppies yeah let that man of his bench he deserves to eat snacks and pet puppies which is by the way the single greatest way you could spend a day nothing tops that if on the day that your baby was born a friend came and told you that they spent the afternoon eating snacks and petting puppies they had a better day than you did the Miracle of Life can't compete with the simple joy of munching snacks and scratching backs and this is true a rub rub also quick shout out to Tanya there the neighbor built by that local station is simply neighbor and Ted fan she may be a Ted fan but I for one am a Tanya fan because I see the effort that it takes to put on a full face first thing in the morning and go on the news just to say stop with Ted but that is not a one-off stories of HOAs being petty are legion a valley homeowner says her HOA wants to find her because she installed artificial grass a homeowners association told one San Antonio family their holiday decorations are up too early so they got to come down I got lots and lots of um letters from the HOA telling me to stop feeding the Ducks I mean when you receive a violation for a tree not being tree shaped um it boggles your mind yeah of course it does because what does not tree-shaped even mean if it has branches bark and a place for a squirrel to store some nuts and get some it's a tree it's tree shaped by definition the fact is a lot of people live in HOAs 29 of the US population lives in a Community Association and it's actually increasingly hard to find a home that doesn't come with one as of all the new single-family homes sold in 2021 82 percent were in an HOA that's up from around just 40 in 1990 which is pretty remarkable given that when one local station asked viewers how they felt about their HOA the results were nearly universally negative with one notable exception this was a rare comment I like our HOA I guess I'm the lucky one but it was quickly followed with don't count yourself lucky too soon every HOA is just one vote away from hellish nightmares wow one vote away from hellish nightmares is a pretty intense comment it's also incidentally the dnc's sole campaign message for the last two elections so if they are this widely used and this widely loathed tonight let's look at HOAs what they are what purpose they serve and the surprising Powers they have to wreak havoc in people's lives and let's start with the basics courtesy of this old explainer video just what is a Community Association the association is a legal entity created as a result of a planned Community a board of directors is responsible for governing your Association working together with the board members and committee members can ensure that your community will run smoothly and effectively after all board members are owners just like yourself okay you can really tell that video is from the 90s not just because it's shot with equality that can only be described as after-school porno but also because the board in question is just three men and one woman that they all ignore in other words almost every 90 sitcom the point is hois are run by elected Boards of your fellow homeowners and they require the payment of dues which average around two to three hundred dollars a month but can be much more depending on where you live and in return the HOA covers upkeep of the common areas and amenities in the neighborhood like playgrounds or swimming pools they also crucially enforce architectural and Landscaping guidelines like no benches or trees must be tree shaped which are often trying to push aesthetic uniformity and preserve property values you can find HOA rules like homes May display a maximum of two exterior decorative objects or all garage doors must be painted Benjamin Moore mayonnaise OC 85. and one Arizona HOA required that front yard landscaping must contain a minimum of one 36 inch box tree one 24 inch box tree 10 5 gallon shrubs and ten one gallon shrubs and I genuinely can't tell if those are HOA requirements for taking care of your lawn or rules to settlers of Qatar and those rules aren't just advisory they are enforced through fines and hois can be pretty unforgiving about handing them out take a close look at Deborah Blue's Wake County home the color of her shutters had her facing steep find with her homeowners association they decided to find me 25 a day never paid close to two grand in fines and took down her Plum shutters which was immediately met with a response that now they were going to find me in violation of taking the shutters off the house and start finding me again that is absurd she got fined for the color of her shutters took them down and then got in trouble for the absence of shutters it's one of those situations where no matter what you do you lose sort of like going on The Voice sure there are technically winners but name a single one this show has been on for a conservative 50 years and not a single winner is a household name seriously tell me the first and last name of just one winner you can't no one can not even Honky Tonk Frankenstein could do it and some hlas could be surprisingly aggressive about actively seeking out rule violators a as this man discovered three years after buying this property the Henry's received a letter from their homeowners association saying that they were doing an audit and they noticed that I had a shed in my backyard and it wasn't approved by my homeowners association Gavin who was a disabled veteran told the HOA the shed was there before he bought the property and none of his neighbors have ever complained since you can't see this from the front yard and no one came knocking at the Henry's front door they asked their homeowners association how they were able to perform an audit that's when they were told over the phone that Google Maps was used to scope out their backyard yeah they spied on him with Google Maps which feels extreme if you're relying on the achievements of the Space Program to find out what is in someone's backyard it's probably not your business and if you're wondering how HOAs get the authority to do all of this the answer is they're basically born with it hois are typically created by developers when they build a new neighborhood they write the HOA into deed restrictions with membership automatic upon purchasing your home and they're set up as not-for-profit private corporations that can often function like a local government some HOAs handle Street Paving snow plowing lighting and run private sewer and water systems and others even dabble in traffic enforcement in the Parkview Community in Spring Valley an HOA board email says they installed this a speed camera they say more are coming neighbor Ted Morris says what worries him and some other neighbors is how much a violation will cost you for going slightly over 15 miles an hour the notice says it's 250 for the first ticket 500 for the second one thousand dollars for the third in any more violations for you and your guests a thousand dollar speeding tickets given out not by the city but by the HOA basically the way hoa's work is they get to set the rules and select the punishment for breaking them think of it like Disney World when you walk into the Mouse's house you play by the mouse's rules and if you step out of line goofy is allowed to break your knees and the existence of HOAs is something that many local governments actually appreciate cash strap unit municipalities like them because developers build roads and parks and pass the costs along to the homeowners in fact many municipalities even mandate the creation of HOAs in new residential developments which might be why the rise of HOAs has been called The most significant privatization of local government responsibilities in recent times and that gets to an important point because HOAs can have the authority of a government and collect fees and fines like one but when it comes to accountability they can actively resist it in ways the government officials could only dream about after the residents have won HOA in Arizona posted some social media comments about an upcoming Board election the HOA demanded that they remove posts that were critical of its board and threatened to find them as much as 250 a day if they didn't and while they eventually walked that back that is a pretty striking level of hostility toward basic scrutiny even before you learn the this is how one board member dealt with press inquiries as the story unfolded I gotta ask you no I'm sorry no you've got to get away from me that's Val Vista lakes board director Todd McCoy following a private board meeting tonight in Gilbert after being shocked we reiterated to McCoy that the community was very upset to which he replied right now holy he came with that reporter with the fire of a thousand Mel Gibsons there was almost no scenario where yelling get away from me that aggressively is called for aside from maybe bumping into Ezra Miller in Hawaii and at this point you probably won't be surprised to learn that private associations designed to have the force of law in Suburban neighborhoods have a history of being used to exclude certain groups as we discussed in our housing discrimination piece many neighborhoods had racial covenants barring the sale of housing to Black Americans and in some cases HOAs tried to enforce those covenants even after the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional but even today there are cases where HOAs are used to actively exclude certain types of residents just last June the board of the Providence HOA in Denton County Texas which oversees a community made up of 2200 homes past a rule that would ban renting a house to anyone using a publicly financed or subsidized housing program such as Section 8 and the impacts of that were immediate revision threat fears being homeless soon that's because the rules have changed in their Providence Village subdivision I sit in my living room and cry because I just don't know what to do now that is terrible but it's not just her that new rule threatened to displace more than 150 families renting in the neighborhood with black families making up 93 percent of those households and another those HOA officials might not think of themselves as racists but 93 percent is a pretty solid A4 racism that hoa's policy is now under investigation but the fact is there is nothing in state or federal law that explicitly forbids HOAs from enacting bands like this it's basically a segregation loophole which by the way would be a pretty good slogan for the suburbs and if you're thinking well this all seems up but thank God there aren't private companies making this worse hold on I've got some bad news because at this point we should probably discuss management companies you see while as I mentioned all the big decision making in HOAs is done by elected Boards of homeowners they may not have the time or skills to do everything running in HOA entails or they may not want to get their hands dirty policing their neighbors that is why the majority of HOAs hire professional companies to handle their day-to-day needs under the board's Direction here is how one of the biggest associate pitches itself the people who serve on our boards are volunteers and for most of them they have other full-time jobs so our role is to come alongside them and help do the heavy lifting of what it takes to manage that neighborhood that they may not have the time for or the expertise for our role is really to help them achieve that Vision now in theory that sounds pretty good doesn't it but in practice it can get much messier than that remember Ted who's getting his bench taken away his neighborhood was run by associa so if all they want to do is help a neighborhood achieve a vision as long as that Vision includes Ted doesn't get to sit down I guess mission accomplished the problem is when you introduce for-profit companies to find problems in your neighborhood things can change fast many of these management companies have people whose job it is to drive around neighborhoods looking for infractions if you look at that letter that Ted got regarding his bench you'll see that it says the infraction was noted by the associate Arizona Inspection Team and just watch as one woman explains just how quickly things snowballed after a new management company took over her HOA first the HOA told her her trash cans couldn't be visible from the street you have to turn your head so far over like this to see it for the second that you are passing my house so she moved them inside which is very hard to get them in and out then the problem was her hose it was you know all wrapped up so it really didn't look bad then it was her lawn art can't have those then they wanted her to power wash her house and sweep up her driveway but when she didn't get it done fast enough she got late fees on top of late fees 25 a day for each infraction these are things that are so incidental they're not important they're asinine and you're charging me seventeen thousand dollars seventeen thousand dollars that is clearly ridiculous I adore everything about that woman including her world-class delivery of asinine although I will say I do think she could do a little bit better with her lawn art it's not 17 000 fine but of course not it's just a bit of a waste when she could have something spectacular like these Ducks wearing boots or these ducks made of bananas your lawn is a canvas Pat fill it with whatever duck art speaks to you the point is this is a system that can quickly trap people in a vicious cycle of debt here's how it works let's say you fall behind on HOA payments you might be charged interest and have to pay additional penalties but that is just the beginning here because once the management company starts pursuing payments they can involve lawyers whose fees can be astronomical and things can get out of hand fast here is the Bill of just one 88 year old homeowner in Texas she fell ill and was in a nursing home so she missed an annual dues payment at the start of 2021 of 423 her HOA then started charging interest and fees for missed payments and just five months later her bill was already up to 682 dollars but things has really started escalating when lawyers fees started getting introduced because there are a lot of them and over the course of just two years she suddenly owed over eight thousand dollars while over half of which was lawyers fees and if you wondering why lawyers are even getting involved here it's because they often come in when HOA is already exercise a truly incredible power that they have over homeowners which this woman found out about the hard way it was a process server who came and knocked on my door and served me with a foreclosure notice and of course you know I freaked out Maisha had fallen behind on a lot of her pills but she said she'd work something out with the mortgage company but this was the HOA and I had no idea that an HOA could foreclose on you it's true hoa's can foreclose on your home which one of those things that sounds ridiculous but is absolutely true like how there are four times as many chickens as people on earth or Lenny Kravitz is Al roka's second cousin or the first song Charlie puth ever masturbated to was this love by Maroon 5. that's a true fact and I hate that I know it but I love that you now know it too and this power gets deployed all over the country Colorado's HOAs alone Falls more than 2400 foreclosure cases from January 2018 to February of last year and to make matters worse those homes can then be sold at auction sometimes without the homeowner even realizing just as this woman explain how despite desperately trying to pay her late HOA fees she wound up losing everything walk down paid of the 2700 and when I walked out I said this is all I owe right yes then here comes the next set of letters and now it's up to 6400. turns out there were post-judgment legal fees and 18 back interest so even after she'd paid more than nine thousand dollars she was still somehow behind on her dues but in 2018 she received the most shocking letter of all an eviction notice you know it's you lose your home that's hard but sadness turned to anger when she realized the HOA had purchased her home through foreclosure for three dollars and 24 cents a year before she was evicted that happened they bought her whole house for three dollars and 24 cents and losing your home alone is horrifying but seeing itself for so little is genuinely insulting because 3.24 cents is significantly less than what it costs to buy just one of those banana ducks they cost 17.89 and the reason I know that is I bought one and yes I too were surprised by how small it is but much less surprised than I was to learn that it technically cost more than someone's entire house Most states don't even require HOAs to offer a payment plan before taking legal action against a homeowner the reason for that is simple remember HOAs are private organizations that means that the nation's 350 000 HOAs are largely unregulated and the government sees any disputes as private matters the California ages office says that it does not handle most homeowners associations complaints the Texas Secretary of State says that no state agency regulates home or Property Owners associations and the New York State AG says in most cases there is no government agency that can help unhappy home owners who are having problems with their homeowners association adding good luck which is basically just a cute way to say you're it's like you're washed her hair and put on a little church dress and if after all of this you're thinking well I have learned my lesson I will never buy a house in an HOA remember over 80 percent of new homes that are sold come with one also you might not know that you are dealing with a bad HOA until it is too late as in most places you aren't legally required to be granted access to all of its rules until after you are offered to buy a home is accepted which seems a bit weird doesn't it if your HOA can see your backyard from space you should probably be able to see your HOA documents before you sign and look I'm not saying that all HOAs should immediately be gone for a start some people do like this besides right now local government just aren't equipped to suddenly take over the services like trash collection or maintenance that they provide but at the very least State should be looking for ways to avoid the worst possible outcome for homeowners who simply find themselves in a tough spot like mandating HOAs offer payment plans on unpaid debt before they take legal action and banning foreclosures based solely on fines and attorneys fees because at their best HOAs are annoying student council adults telling you to trim your shrubs and move your trash cans but at their worst they are glorified debt collectors with the power to upend your life and expel people from a neighborhood and at Absolute minimum from now on HOA should probably be forced to be much clearer with people about what they are potentially getting themselves into good morning Stephanie and Chloe hi there welcome to Cedar Paradise the moment you purchased your home you joined our wonderful homeowners association whether you wanted to or not the HOA is here to take care of you you give us money and in return We maintain all the beauty you see around us and if you don't pay up we'll turn your life upside down so let me show you the neighborhood here at Cedar Paradise each of our Lawns requires somewhere on the property one tree six three gallon shrubs one bird bath a garden gnome a second gnome for that one to talk to a third one they ignore one Victorian child playing hopscotch and an American flag but no benches please no eat Ted when you join an HOA you're really joining a community that looks after each other and is your elected representative I make sure to take a Hands-On approach ah novelty mailbox that's a violation oh yeah that's a violation wind chimes gross three violations nope I don't care for that tree that's a violation so staying in a 15. that's another thousand dollars again you and Ken isn't the only one who appreciates everything the HOA does the HOA that's your sons are they found my shed by strapping a GoPro to a raccoon damn raccoon some white people apparently my cans are too visible when they're parked up there but you'd have to turn your neck like this to even see them but I don't know what else I'm supposed to do with this one hey Pam cans aren't allowed to go down to the curb until 4 pm on trash day it's 3 57. how long have you been in there Pam this is recycle only I know but damn I know you know this Pam I know oh no broken glass on the driveway that's another fine are you allowed to do that there's nothing in the rules that says I can't these rules are stupid I don't what did you say nothing nothing have a good day Bob and hey if you fall behind on your payments we get it we're not monsters oh hello I'm here for the day I didn't know I owed anything well we sent you a 20 fine three months ago we haven't heard from you since well here there's 20 bucks thank you but that's not all there's this bill now too wait what is this now I'll let our lawyer explain and that starts my hour where'd you come from right there no you've got fees late fees late late fees lawyer fees that's me fees for this conversation we're having right now fees there's a raccoon fee yeah the raccoon fee anyway it comes to 11 067.38 hey wait I I can't afford that well great news then during this conversation we foreclosed on your house I just bought it oh four bucks can you break a 20. wait wait wait wait wait this all feels really illegal oh that's what's so great about it it's not I'm not it's not illegal at all it's completely legal I'm a lawyer he knows I know you know yes wait what the yo hey damn y'all are strong hey you want to come to my new house yeah please yeah let's have a drink yeah let's see what he's got in the refrigerator yeah good call oh there's a lot of fun art so welcome to the HOA I think you're going to like it here and if you don't tough nuts you've got no other choice bye foreign

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 4,983,435

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Id: qrizmAo17Os

Length: 25min 27sec (1527 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/brb1006]

Here's the website for "Last Squeak Tonight" that John Oliver created as an alternative to this week's episode (for viewers under 30) dedicated to Chuck E. Cheese. Complete with a 25 minute long video discussing the chain, Showbiz Pizza, and the return of Mickey Mouse from last week's episode.

[u/danielbgoo]

This whole episode really stressed me the fuck out.

[u/Cincibi]

I used to live in Florida. It's hard to find any house not under an HOA. In my neighborhood they were going to foreclose a house on an old man because his grass wasn't green

Now, in Florida, during winter, often there is water restrictions so you can't water your lawn, but you have to keep your grass green.

Luckily a lot of us pooled together some money to have his grass painted (yes, if you don't know, they have grass painting service in Florida)

F HOAs! Never again will I live under one!

[u/VeteranSergeant]

Given how badly some HOAs behave, it surprises me there isn't more violence in regards to these sorts of disputes. There seem to be at least three or four homicides (often multiple killed) related to HOA disputes every year, but honestly, the way some of these organizations act, you might expect there to be more. There were HOA-related killings in both Toronto and Florida back in December that left 7 people dead. A man in Florida burned down his condo in January after the HOA foreclosed on it, destroying it and severely damaging 4 neighboring units.

If the HOAs are allowed to be effectively lawless, it will only inspire more lawlessness in response. There need to be very strict limitations on the powers of HOAs and what they can charge for, as well as yearly audits of their books that are public.

[u/kspjrthom4444]

As an American, we have HOAs because we are idiots. We love having the freedom to fuck ourselves over and heavily exercise that right all the time.

[u/BIGREDDMACH1NE]

I want to watch but knowing it's about hoas I might have an aneurysm.

[u/shadowdra126]

As someone who was under 30 and bought their house in 2020 and got a great deal before the housing market shat the bed. I made sure to buy a house in a place without an HOA. And I am so glad I did

[u/infinitejetpack]

I live in an older HOA.

The association puts on a handful of community events each year and maintains the common areas and trails.

We have architectural rules, but the board cannot fine homeowners for violating them or make anyone fix anything. We have yearly dues (under $10/month to maintain common areas and trails), but the board has no authority to collect.

Even though compliance is essentially voluntary, the overwhelming majority of people in the neighborhood pay dues and follow the rules anyway.

At some point between then and now, HOAs lost focus on bringing the community together ... really sad to see.

[u/NinjaTickleMaster]

I used to hate my HOA, but after getting on the architectural control committee and seeing how they operate from within it seems like they actually do have good intentions. The Karens in the neighborhood make the meetings so unpleasant that nobody wants to go, and you can’t get anything important done without a majority of owners at the meeting. And those Karens seem to harass the board members so much that they no longer have any desire to interact with the community. And now some states have even passed laws allowing you to sue board members individually which made a lot of them resign. Which is how I got on the ACC committee in the first place. Nobody wanted to get sued by some Karen who thinks we’re discriminating against her religious beliefs by rejecting her request to build a giant crucified Jesus statue in her front yard.