4 ms·

Convincing your neighbors to vote a certain way is "a pretty bare modicum of effort"? If that were true, we wouldn't have our current democracy in such a terri

by magduf 8y ago

Convincing your neighbors to vote a certain way is "a pretty bare modicum of effort"? If that were true, we wouldn't have our current democracy in such a terrible state. Billions of dollars are spent on every election to try to convince voters of how to vote, and look where it gets us. How do you think one person running around to his neighbors is going to convince them to vote for genuinely good HOA board members? Remember that the bad members are also going to be running around trying to get votes. And who would you have them vote for anyway? Yourself? I don't know about you, but I have no time or inclination for such a job. Frequently, HOAs turn out this way because the people who do have time for that crap are the people who really are a problem. This is a strong argument in favor of professional property management in fact (which is what my condo has, and doesn't seem to have any of these problems).

WorldMaker 8y ago
The "bare modicum of effort" in that case as the average person would be at least paying attention to the folks running around trying to get votes, and paying attention to what they are telling you. Billions of dollars are spent trying to convince voters to vote, because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. Also, things like meeting minutes and annual budgets are generally required to be transparent in most HOA founding documents (constitutions, articles of incorporation, bylaws). You don't have to want to be a board member to review meeting notes (or directly attend meetings in most cases), and especially to review an annual budget of how your money is spent. 54 different people in the example above had an opportunity to review the budget? Did they just not care? Was it "creative accounting" fraud? (If so, why weren't the people responsible personally liable for fraud? White collar crimes are still crimes.) My HOA maintenance fees include major utilities so we all assume year-to-year increases, but just about everyone in my building still seems to take a fine tooth comb to the annual budget every year in the hopes of avoiding an increase or finding a possible decrease. (Also, property managers are generally orthogonal concerns to HOAs given they have different goals and most property managers still report to an HOA. You can still have good property company reporting to a bad HOA. There are also plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies out there. My HOA has already been through a small handful of property management companies trying to find a good one. We seem to have lucked out with the current one, at least, given all that we are going through.)
- magduf 8y ago
  >because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. That simply isn't true. As bad as voter turnout is in the US, it's still over 50%. The winner is ignorance, as so many voters actively vote against their own best interests (e.g., poor people voting for the party that passes tax breaks for millionaires). >why weren't the people responsible personally liable for fraud? White collar crimes are still crimes. Now this is an excellent question here. I have no idea what the answer is, but it seems like the US is really bad about this kind of thing, and not just with HOA management. It seems like prosecutors here just don't want to bother with cases like this, maybe because not enough money is involved? >There are also plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies out there. Yes, but at least here, as you found out with your case, you can just hire a different company when you need to. It seems like the best case is what your HOA has going on: an HOA composed of owners, acting mainly as overseers for the professional management company that does that bulk of the work of managing the place. The HOA horror stories I've seen (and experienced) seem to involve HOAs which do their own management, so basically some busybody in the neighborhood who has time and interest gets voted in along with a few of his cronies, and then mismanages the funds badly.
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    Voter turnout only goes over 50% for presidential elections. It isn't even that high for midterm federal elections, let alone local ones. A school bond failed in the next county last week because an overwhelming number of votes supported it - but they didn't have enough people vote to make it a legal quorum (or whatever it's called). https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101 https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101
lazyasciiart 8y ago
I'm on my HOA board, so yes, all of your objections appear to me as "I don't want to do anything at all". And comparing "talk to your 50 shared neighbors" to "organize an election with hundreds of millions of voters" is just off the charts hyperbole.
- magduf 8y ago
  Again, you didn't answer my question. Who exactly are you going to get them to vote for, if you don't like the guy who's running the place now? And yes, talking to 50 neighbors sounds like a big PITA to me, when you aren't even on the board and don't have a way to contact everyone and arrange a meeting; you'll have to go door-to-door and hope to catch people when they're home. That's a significant project. You don't have to do this in neighborhoods that don't have HOAs. And finally, again, WHO will you have them vote for, if you can convince them to not vote for the other guy who's mismanaging funds? Are you volunteering to spend all your free time on this payless, thankless job?
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    What do you mean, I didn't answer your question? I am volunteering, yes. I literally already do this. I would tell them to vote for me. I am very aware of what being on a HOA requires because I already do it and yes I think it is not that hard. So to be clear: ME. (I might use magical technology like mailboxes to facilitate asynchronous communication if I didn't already have access to the email address of every homeowner, which as a member of the HOA you should have)
    - magduf 8y ago
      >I would tell them to vote for me. I am very aware of what being on a HOA requires because I already do it and yes I think it is not that hard. So to be clear: ME. Maybe you're willing to volunteer your time for another job, but I'm not. Moreover, I'm under no illusion that people would vote for me; I'm not highly charismatic. So who is someone like me supposed to get people to vote for? Where's this magic person in every subdivision who has the time and talent to take on this thankless job? Your solution doesn't scale.

by magduf 8y ago

WorldMaker 8y ago

The "bare modicum of effort" in that case as the average person would be at least paying attention to the folks running around trying to get votes, and paying attention to what they are telling you. Billions of dollars are spent trying to convince voters to vote, because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. Also, things like meeting minutes and annual budgets are generally required to be transparent in most HOA founding documents (constitutions, articles of incorporation, bylaws). You don't have to want to be a board member to review meeting notes (or directly attend meetings in most cases), and especially to review an annual budget of how your money is spent. 54 different people in the example above had an opportunity to review the budget? Did they just not care? Was it "creative accounting" fraud? (If so, why weren't the people responsible personally liable for fraud? White collar crimes are still crimes.) My HOA maintenance fees include major utilities so we all assume year-to-year increases, but just about everyone in my building still seems to take a fine tooth comb to the annual budget every year in the hopes of avoiding an increase or finding a possible decrease. (Also, property managers are generally orthogonal concerns to HOAs given they have different goals and most property managers still report to an HOA. You can still have good property company reporting to a bad HOA. There are also plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies out there. My HOA has already been through a small handful of property management companies trying to find a good one. We seem to have lucked out with the current one, at least, given all that we are going through.)

magduf 8y ago
>because the only real winner in most general elections, whether HOA or national, is "apathy" as most votes are undecided or not even cast. That simply isn't true. As bad as voter turnout is in the US, it's still over 50%. The winner is ignorance, as so many voters actively vote against their own best interests (e.g., poor people voting for the party that passes tax breaks for millionaires). >why weren't the people responsible personally liable for fraud? White collar crimes are still crimes. Now this is an excellent question here. I have no idea what the answer is, but it seems like the US is really bad about this kind of thing, and not just with HOA management. It seems like prosecutors here just don't want to bother with cases like this, maybe because not enough money is involved? >There are also plenty of horror stories of bad property management companies out there. Yes, but at least here, as you found out with your case, you can just hire a different company when you need to. It seems like the best case is what your HOA has going on: an HOA composed of owners, acting mainly as overseers for the professional management company that does that bulk of the work of managing the place. The HOA horror stories I've seen (and experienced) seem to involve HOAs which do their own management, so basically some busybody in the neighborhood who has time and interest gets voted in along with a few of his cronies, and then mismanages the funds badly.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  Voter turnout only goes over 50% for presidential elections. It isn't even that high for midterm federal elections, let alone local ones. A school bond failed in the next county last week because an overwhelming number of votes supported it - but they didn't have enough people vote to make it a legal quorum (or whatever it's called). https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101 https://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101

lazyasciiart 8y ago

I'm on my HOA board, so yes, all of your objections appear to me as "I don't want to do anything at all". And comparing "talk to your 50 shared neighbors" to "organize an election with hundreds of millions of voters" is just off the charts hyperbole.

magduf 8y ago
Again, you didn't answer my question. Who exactly are you going to get them to vote for, if you don't like the guy who's running the place now? And yes, talking to 50 neighbors sounds like a big PITA to me, when you aren't even on the board and don't have a way to contact everyone and arrange a meeting; you'll have to go door-to-door and hope to catch people when they're home. That's a significant project. You don't have to do this in neighborhoods that don't have HOAs. And finally, again, WHO will you have them vote for, if you can convince them to not vote for the other guy who's mismanaging funds? Are you volunteering to spend all your free time on this payless, thankless job?
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  What do you mean, I didn't answer your question? I am volunteering, yes. I literally already do this. I would tell them to vote for me. I am very aware of what being on a HOA requires because I already do it and yes I think it is not that hard. So to be clear: ME. (I might use magical technology like mailboxes to facilitate asynchronous communication if I didn't already have access to the email address of every homeowner, which as a member of the HOA you should have)
  - magduf 8y ago
    >I would tell them to vote for me. I am very aware of what being on a HOA requires because I already do it and yes I think it is not that hard. So to be clear: ME. Maybe you're willing to volunteer your time for another job, but I'm not. Moreover, I'm under no illusion that people would vote for me; I'm not highly charismatic. So who is someone like me supposed to get people to vote for? Where's this magic person in every subdivision who has the time and talent to take on this thankless job? Your solution doesn't scale.