Karen Cartels: HOAs and Growth in the West
The West's state governments weren't ready for the rapid influx of exurbanites creating demand for covenant-controlled communities, and gave way cartel-like micro-governments run by your neighbors.
Sometime in the 1990s, as the population of the interior West was beginning its rocket-trendline upwards, states like Colorado witnessed the rise of an entirely new layer of government that is now associated with newer, more expensive homes. Homeowners Associations (HOAs) became synonymous with nice, new, big homes for which demand was driven by wealthy migrants from places like New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, and other urban areas of the country that favor planned HOA-controlled neighborhoods.
What we locals didn’t realize at the time was that the HOA would become the new must-have sidecar to almost every new development from around that point on. And what nobody realized was that Colorado’s statutory structure wasn’t robust enough to ensure that these neighborhood covenant-enforcing organizations would be forced to behave ethically, responsibly, or reasonably.
Colorado, and likely the rest of the interior Western states, have statutes to govern the creation of HOAs, but after that, the rules are vague or non-existent. In Colorado, HOAs were rare and relegated to only wealthier and gated communities prior to about the mid-1990s (an estimate, not a hard fact.) Even worse, the people creating demand for these ‘organized communities’ may not fully realize what HOAs are, and yet created so much demand for them, the only communities you can buy into in Colorado anymore that are not HOA-controlled are almost definitely from prior to the mid-1990s.
Homeowners Associations are organizations that form a political boundary around a housing development, most often created by the housing developer, and come pre-baked with covenants for the neighborhood, ranging from upkeep of home exteriors, to landscaping requirements, to parking, or even house color or the types of plants one can have in a yard. The intensity of their power ranges from HOAs that charge $100 per year to enforce basic covenants such as not having cars parked in the yard, all the way to multi-hundred-dollar per month HOAs that may even manage snow removal, lawn care, and even all exterior care and insurance on the structures.
In essence, HOAs are governments, albeit it very small ones. In Colorado state statute, they are not directly recognized as a government or a pseudo-government, but are granted the power to govern a neighborhood and to govern it powerfully.
How powerfully? Well, most HOAs in Colorado preface your ownership with a lien on your property, and if they don’t start with a lien, they can get one via a court order simply by a request, and it holds legal power because the homeowner signed a document when they purchased the house that grants the HOA that power.
The rise in demand for HOA-controlled communities is a strange one, but one with a very clear motive. Those creating demand for these covenant-controlled communities clearly see value in this additional layer of government over them, but mostly … their neighbors. Keeping broken down cars off lawns, off streets, or weeds growing taller than x-inches, or ensuring their neighbor doesn’t leave their house without paint, might be some of the positive headlines. And, certainly, an HOA can offer some direct benefits to careful owners stemming from the power and control they wield, such as keeping property values high by keeping perceived condition and value of the community up for prospective buyers.
Keeping the condition of a community up sounds like a noble cause, but there are some interesting details under the surface of the HOA that make it clear that this added layer of governance is driven by a desire to create familiarity and homogeny in the built environment. Those creating demand for these spaces have decided that they want to keep the riff-raff out, or at least controlled, and they want to ensure that every home is governed by rules that are enforceable by the power of the State’s courts.
The most interesting thing about Colorado’s statutes about HOAs is that they basically sanction a new form of government, and accidentally put no rules around how these micro-governments are required to behave. An HOA can put a lien on your property for not paying dues and fines, but there is absolutely no regulation around the HOA’s provision of due process in the condition of challenging a ‘violation’ and the ensuing fee. Yep, there’s no court, no jury, no audit, no oversight, and no expectation of a judicious process in cases of disagreement between you and your HOA.
In Colorado, an HOA can put a lien on your property and pursue foreclosure once you have half a year’s worth of unpaid dues. And the best part? Under Colorado statute, HOA fines are considered the same as HOA dues – which means they can fine you in any way the HOA bylaws permit, including interest, fines on fines, and so on. And the even better-best part is; There is no requirement or structure around appeals or due process to determine if the fine or fee was justified or reasonable – it’s entirely up to the board and the bylaws of the specific neighborhood.
Okay, and in all fairness, in 2022, Governor Jared Polis signed into law a new adjustment to the statutes for HOAs that they can no longer foreclose on a property over unpaid fines. That means that until sometime later in 2022, an HOA in Colorado could legally take your property from you by a legal foreclosure for not paying a fine or fee for something like weeds, a parking violation, and they could ramp up fees on those fines without any regulatory requirements around how the fees are applied and balloon.
That’s … insane … Have you ever read HOA bylaws on their fee, fine, and lien policies? You should…
An even more intriguing element of HOAs is that they’re most often governed by an elected board of volunteer homeowners from the community, in partnership with a contracted property management company. And it’s the elected volunteer board where all of this becomes even more interesting …
For many of us, working the daily grind to buy bread and mortgage payments doesn’t result in much additional time to wander our communities looking for compliance with our HOA bylaws. So that leaves only the people with enough time, interest, and motivation to do something like that. Which is where the stereotypes become reality.
I have lived in a couple of HOA-controlled communities – one in the first six or so years of my adult life due that being the only property type available in my price range at the time, and a deep naivety about what HOAs were. The second was in a community that was, again, the only thing I could afford, and I bought in somewhat of a panic due to the housing market rocketing up in price so rapidly, I was afraid of not being able to live in my home state anymore. And in these two experiences, I realized two things: First, the stereotypes about HOA are spot on, every time. And, second, the first HOA fine you get that is definitely unjust, you’re up a creek without a paddle due to the regulatory structure around HOAs, because there is no regulatory requirement for a just due-process.
Boiling down all of the talk of statutes and regulations around HOAs; Imagine a government that has no requirement to abide by due process, and where any perceived wrong-doing against the laws was entirely the job of the person and board who issued the violation. Imagine there was no jury in these circumstances, and that the perception of the people on your HOA board was the final word on the outcome of the ‘violation.’ Now, imagine a government where if you don’t pay a fine for a violation, such as a parking violation, they can rapidly and lawfully put a lien on your property and then pursue foreclosure in a State-sanctioned court of law, and the State will support that taking, if it is within the bylaws of the HOA to do so...
If you transpose the statutory powers and social structures of HOAs to a country outside the U.S., the nearest comparable structure is a cartel. By definition, a cartel is “... a coalition or cooperative arrangement between political parties intended to promote a mutual interest.” It doesn’t just mean drug-pushers and mafia, it just means a group working to structure rules for a community to promote a mutual interest, but that are not technically a government.
Americans are generally hysterically afraid of cartels, yet the explosion of growth in the West has resulted in these pseudo-governments being voluntarily elected and installed, as a way to keep the unclean masses away or at least controlled.
The best part of HOAs is who ends up being on HOA boards. It’s never people like you and me, it’s always someone with a lot of time on their hands, and with something resembling a mental illness that leads them to do things like count weeds on a neighbor’s lawn, or be fearful of things like planters in the wrong place, or visitors parking in the visitor spaces for too long. And, in my experience, it’s always – and I mean always – people who don’t work, stay at home, and perfectly fit the stereotype of what we are all now popularly calling, “Karens.”
An odd stereotyped truth is that the Karens always seem come from HOA controlled communities in other places. I’ve never known a real local to get involved with the HOA – mostly because we often land in HOA-controlled communities only due to a lack of other options, or naivety about what HOAs are and do.
Karens always seem to be in the interior West on some late-life adventure to see the mountains as the backdrop to their insanely boring lives, and they always seem to be from places like Florida, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Connecticut, or California. And they seem to love watching the parking lots for visitors, making sure that planters aren’t in the wrong place, and that your parking sticker is properly placed in your windshield. Oh, and dog poop – they love watching for dog poop in the wrong places.
I imagine they must watch out their windows like a berserk Shih Tzu, monitoring for squirrels and other dangerous invaders. What kind of person does it really take to spend their time that way?
Let’s rack it all up. In the West, we have growth rates that point vertically on a graph, a State government that didn’t anticipate a parallel explosion of growth and demand for HOA-controlled communities, a new layer of micro-governments installed in most new neighborhood communities in these rapidly growing real estate markets. They hold immense power to foreclose on your property with no due process, for which your board members are only the people with the time, interest, and motivation to enforce bylaws to whatever level and whimsy they see fit.
Does anyone really think it was a good idea, and one that’s reflective of local Western values, to have a cartel-like structure with immense control over our homes and finances, and for which only the Karens of the world will come out of the dung-piles they inevitably roll out of to control?
Based on some experience with HOAs, entirely due to naivety and lack of other options, I look back and realize that the colonization of the West is almost entirely demonstrated by the sharp rise of, and demand for, HOAs throughout the West, but especially in places like Colorado, California, Arizona, Montana, and likely parts of the Pacific Northwest, where similar growth has occurred.
And in that colonization, a paradox is present in how many of the voluntary HOA-subscribers will also tell you about their disdain for government regulation and control. Yes, disdain for government regulations, and so they’ve voluntarily added a layer of government, but where the police, court, judge, and jury are all embodied into two of your most useless neighbors with the most time on their hands – Brilliant. I suspect this doubles as a litmus test for how to identify a cognitively dissonant bullshitter - as in, anyone who declares disdain for governmental rule, yet voluntarily signed up to add yet another layer of government over their daily lives.
Rapid growth rates in the West, including the addition of numerous new developments, all of which appear to come with HOAs, seem to appeal entirely to exurban migrants. It’s familiar to them, it’s a good thing to them, and it helps to ensure that the unclean masses keep their lawns green, their paint colors acceptable, and their cars off the street.
Order, by the power of a government-like organization, without a regulatory structure that forces messy and drawn-out due process… In essence, the cartels of Karens - the Karen Cartels - have swept the West clean of the riff-raff that once occupied these spaces, and are mere continuation of an east coast-style colonial build-out in the West to ensure the space is familiar, safe, and people are governed adequately and completely.
The Fleeting West is written by a deeply rooted westerner with some experience with HOAs, their history, and statutes, and finds the demand for them curious in context of the history of the West.