Divemedic

People ask all the time, why do you live in an HOA neighborhood in Florida? Why not just build in a neighborhood without an HOA? The answer to that is- you guessed it- government rules and regulations. Now there is no law, rule, or regulation that says that a neighborhood must be controlled by an HOA, but there is an agency that has that practical effect.

You may or may not be aware that Florida used to be mostly swampland. In fact, it still would be if it weren’t for pretty robust laws and regulations on flood control. On top of that, Florida is built upon an underground lake known as the Florida Aquifer. The aquifer is just a large underground lake that fills the limestone that the entire state is built upon. When the level of water in the aquifer falls, we get sinkholes and the weight of the ground above collapses the now empty underground limestone caves. So Florida has a limited amount of freshwater.

Enter the South Florida Water Management District. (SFWMD- pronounced “swif mud”) This agency controls everything from who may drill a well to how much of the area of your development must contain flood control features like retention ponds, ditches, and even how much of your property can be covered in non permeable surfaces like concrete. They even control the vegetation that grows in those areas, and by control I mean that they tell property owners and developers to take care of it. (pdf alert) Is it a bit heavy handed? A little, but that is why we can build here, instead of Florida being a swamp.

This means that a percentage of each residential development must be grassy areas, landscaped, and dedicated to retention ponds. Those flood control features and permeable surfaces must be maintained at the expense of those who live in the developed area. For a neighborhood, that means mowing, fencing off, and caring for the vacant land. If that doesn’t happen, SFWMD can and will take legal action against the homeowners of the development.

In order to have a legal framework to enforce each homeowner taking care of this, instead of some skating by without contributing, developers create HOAs who then take care of these “common areas.” As long as the HOA is there, it also takes on more traditional HOA rules like neighborhood pools, maintaining property values through rules (called covenants), and other functions.

So you can disband the HOA, but as a homeowner, you are still liable for maintaining those features, but you now have no way as an individual to make your neighbors pay their fair share of those fees. That’s right- you can be stuck with paying it, unless you want to lose your house along with the crackhead who lives down the block and decided not to pay his share because he is a crackhead and doesn’t care.

That’s why more than 80% of Florida’s homes sold in the past few decades are in HOA communities, and most of the rest of them are doublewide trailers whose occupants live next door to or with a meth lab. There are some nice homes that are not in HOA areas, but they are really expensive.

So being stuck with an HOA, your only real course of action is to do your best to keep busybodies from passing rules that mandate certain paint colors, tell you what color your landscaping lights can be, or whether or not you can park a boat in your driveway.

That’s why I do what I can to ensure that those sorts of rules don’t get passed. The law in Florida says that an HOA can’t modify its covenants unless 2/3 of the property owners vote at a meeting to do so. You can’t exclude a property owner who doesn’t live there. You can’t have a secret meeting, and it isn’t 2/3 of those present at the meeting, it is 2/3 of all owners. Now an owner can give his proxy vote to another owner, but the proxy must state the particular covenant that is to be voted on AND the date of the meeting that the proxy is valid for. This is to prevent shenanigans and those with ill intent from changing things behind others’ backs. So I use that to my advantage. As long as I can get 1/3 of property owners to vote no on a covenant change, the rules stay as they are. A property owner can vote no by proxy, or by simply not coming to the meeting. I do what I can to make people see it my way and keep the rules the way that they are. I can look at the guy in the mirror just fine knowing that I kept a tyrant from ruling over the people who live in the neighborhood.

If you are a person who has a problem with those tactics, then how in the world will you ever have the stomach for a civil war? You don’t even have the stomach for parliamentary maneuvering, and you think you are going to survive civil unrest? Or did you think that the coming troubles are going to be a debating society where everyone obeys Roberts’ Rules of Order and plays fair?

If you live in Florida, you more than likely live under an HOA, POA, or some other deed restricted community. The reason for that, is more than 80% of Florida residential property is governed that way. It’s a fact of life in the Sunshine State. I wish that it wasn’t so, but wishing is for children. Since we have to live in reality, there is only one answer.

All politics is local. You have to be involved. I initially showed up to the HOA meetings to be a pain in the ass. I was the guy in the back of the meetings who pointed out that they weren’t allowed to do whatever harebrained thing they were discussing. Then I got roped into being on the board. That was 4 years ago.

Since that time, I have slowly recommended new board members from people that I know I can trust. There is me, another retired firefighter from up north who is as conservative as they get, a retired golf pro who was once sanctioned by the HOA for having FJB and Q flags, a woman who is friends with my wife and drinks Tequila with us, and a couple of others.

The only issue then is busybodies that want to come to meetings and stir the pot. We got that this week at our quarterly meeting. This woman who owns property in the neighborhood but lives elsewhere bought a home for her unemployed hardcore leftist so decided to show up with a list of demands.

• She was complaining that people’s landscaping lights can be coded messages. For example, blue lights mean support for cops. She mentioned blue lights at least three times during her rant. The only lights that should be allowed are white, according to her.
• Some people are parking RVs and boats in their driveways
• The colors that some people paint their houses is ugly
• The neighborhood needs to decorate for holidays like Christmas, Halloween, etc.

I explained to her that I was one of the people who had colored landscaping lights, and I didn’t change the colors for political reasons, but because I liked the different colors. I do red, white, and blue for July, Orange for October, and multicolors for the Christmas season, and if she didn’t like it, I don’t care.

I pointed out to her that the HOA can’t require any of those things because they are not in the governing documents. We can’t legally just make up any rules that we wish. We are bound by those documents. So she demanded that we change them. Well, says I, we can’t change them on a whim. There is a process that takes months, we have to mail out notices to all people who live there, at least 2/3 of the residents have to approve, then it has to be published, etc.

I also explained to her that, even if she were to get a rule prohibiting RVs and boats from parking in driveways, we don’t have the legal ability to prevent people from just parking them on the street in front of their house.

She said that we should just vote on the neighborhood’s Facebook page. All of the people in the neighborhood, according to her, should just do the right thing and be good, friendly neighbors and just do as she asks. (Her exact words)

My response was not nice. I told her that a good friendly neighbor would mind her own business and stop trying to control other people and their property. Then I pointed out that Facebook doesn’t get a vote in how I choose to run my own property. She left in a huff and wants to get up a petition to get the rules changed. I told her that her petition won’t get anywhere because those of us on the board already have enough votes in our pocket to prevent her from reaching the 2/3 threshold. That’s how voting works.

Those of us on the board collectively own or have the proxy votes for about 25% of the property in the neighborhood. That would require that she get 90% of the remaining property to agree with her- and actually show up to the meeting to vote in support of her position. That is nearly impossible.

We will see how much of a pain in the ass she can be, but I will say that this is the exact type of asshole that I am on the board to prevent. I also changed all of my landscaping lights to blue, just to piss her off. She can kiss my ass.