Shut up, homeowner. We don't want to hear from you.

I live in a community where the property management says, "we are not allowed to speak with our board members and everything needs to go through her".

- Michelle307. "Need to get the Property Management Company/Board Members to follow bylaws, they expect everyone else to follow, except them". January 17 2024

This is not an isolated incident. Another homeowner recently sent me a similar story.

Peculiarly, the Management Contractor presumes that it is appropriate to ask that Association Members refrain from contacting their Board by any means. This highlights an ignorance of the fact that the Management Contractor is not a party to the Contract between Members and their Association. It can be presumed that Board members are well-aware and freely accept that their role on a Not-for-Profit Board is to serve their fellow Homeowners and understand their accessibility obligation to Homeowners with whom the Contract is bestowed.

- Attorney representing homeowner, to attorney representing H.O.A. corporation. January 22 2024.

Any bylaws, policies, or any other rules that prohibit H.O.A.-burdened homeowners from contacting H.O.A. board members should be illegal. With board members held personally liable by fines and/or jail time to deter bad behavior. This would incentivize H.O.A. boards to exercise oversight over their agents -- such as managers and attorneys -- rather than letting their managers and attorneys act as a "deep state" controlling the H.O.A. corporation with the board being mere figureheads.

Here's how I think CAI [Community Associations Institute, the H.O.A. industry lobby group] wants things to end up: The BODs [H.O.A. Board of Directors] would have nearly absolute power over homeowners, whose only options, if they feel they have been mistreated, would be to elect a new board or sell their home and move somewhere else. The association attorney and property manager would (and do) control the BODs. CAI trains and organizes the attorneys and property managers. The states would require certification of property managers. CAI would provide that certification. The out-of-control owner-run insurgent groups would be shut out of the policy process and branded as loons and nutcases.

Particular complaints about abuses would be conclusively presumed to be either a) lies and distortions spread by neighborhood malcontents who couldn't get along with Mother Theresa, or b) unrepresentative anecdotes that fail to capture the true level of mass satisfaction with HOA life. And the state legislatures would pass UCIOA [Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act] and move on from HOA legislation to other matters, like selling the state tollway system to Spanish and Australian corporations. That's the desired endgame as I see it.

- Evan McKenzie, former H.O.A. attorney and author of Privatopia (1994) and Beyond Privatopia (2011). "Privatopia Papers" blog, March 14 2007. Emphasis added.

H.O.A. board members not wanting to to do their job is something I have more personal experience with than I ever wanted. In one instance, the H.O.A. president told me in court that he could not be bothered to respond to my inquiries about H.O.A. attorney fees that had been explicitly prohibited by a judge's Court Order ; and that I should have contacted the same H.O.A. attorneys who were threatening me because he was too busy acting on behalf of the homeowners; when in reality he and the rest of the Board of Directors were serving the H.O.A. management company and H.O.A. law firm. But that is a story for another day.