Better read the fine print

Your home is your castle, if the homeowners association says it's OK

It's a good thing the founding fathers didn't try to declare their independence in a subdivision clubhouse.

They might have rejected King George III, but there would be no getting away from the real sovereign: the homeowners association. Amid all their enlightened talk of God-given rights, they would have had to grapple with rules on guests, noise and spittoons.

Two centuries after the Declaration of Independence, a new generation of Americans is quietly submitting to the dos and don'ts of homeowners associations. The result is a widespread experiment with a largely unchecked private form of governance for which almost nobody has planned.

In North Carolina alone, the number of homeowners associations has grown from 3,000 two decades ago to more than 15,000 today, according to the Homeowner Associations of North Carolina. In the Triangle, the number has soared over the same period from 481 to 2,915.

"They're everywhere now," said Tim Minton, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County. "I don't know of a subdivision right now that doesn't have one."

An estimated 57 million Americans live under the rule of homeowners associations, or HOAs. If current growth trends continue, a majority of the country could live under HOAs by the end of the century, wrote Robert Nelson, a University of Maryland professor who authored "Private Neighborhoods," a 2005 book on the subject.

"It has been a social revolution," he wrote.

As these organizations become more common, people are realizing that homeowners associations do more than organize ice cream socials, clean community pools and approve new fences. They have become mini-governments with the power to issue fines, assess taxlike fees and even foreclose on scofflaws who do not pay.

Now, some say, it is time for the government to inject some checks and balances. State lawmakers are talking about studying HOAs and are even considering creating a state agency to issue permits to the community managers who help run them.

Legal scholars are working on a model Homeowners Bill of Rights that they hope will limit HOAs abuses by requiring open board meetings, guaranteeing homeowners access to association documents and limiting when HOAs can foreclose on homes.

A quiet revolution

The growth of homeowners associations has been easy to overlook.

People who live in HOAs sometimes know little about their neighborhood government. Those who do pay attention quickly realize that their homeowners association deals mostly with tiny gripes that people would otherwise have to settle for themselves.

"A lot of times, it's about somebody's neighbor doing something they don't like," said Vickie Maxwell, president of the Wessex homeowners association in Cary. "People tend to be very uncomfortable going to their neighbor and saying, 'Your dogs have been barking all night, could you please put them up?' "

For the volunteer boards that run these associations, governing can be a tough experience. Tom Mangum of North Raleigh said a neighbor who had been to his house for dinner suddenly stopped talking to him after learning he was on their HOA board.

The man apparently took exception to a letter he had received from the board asking him to stop parking on the road, Mangum said.

"It doesn't take much," Mangum said. "He never talked to me again."

So, a few thousand HOAs now outsource most of their day-to-day power to private community management companies. In places such as The Oaks condominium complex in Chapel Hill, people with problems turn to Ed Bedford, a former lawyer paid to be the community's part-time CEO.