A short time ago Jan Jackson posted an article titled "The Psychopath
Next Door". It was an interesting treatise and it sent me to thinking
about what the "HOA Experience" does to people, does to the quality of
life that those people participate in.

One only has to look to the HOA websites, both pro and con, to realize
that the type of relationship that exists between the residents and
between the residents and the HOA is unique. It's unnatural. I read the
sites and I always come away feeling that the cogency of living in this
type of neighborhood has been transformed to the point of being
unrecognizable.

I find that the types of conversations that I engage in with my
neighbors almost always center around the association and what they
should or shouldn't be doing.

The obvious, club-handed vaunters that live out their domination
fantasies through pompous, silly behavior are obvious. You can laugh at
them, but what about the people who simply let a part of their
personality dissolve into the HOA collective?

A Case History

Once upon a time, right after I moved into my HOA, before I became
enlightened, I believed. At one of the first general meetings I
attended
a young women stood up, hysterically crying, and proceeded to relate
how
she had be sent a violation notice from the management company because
her children were leaving the gate open. She left immediately after
this. A couple years later she ran for, and got elected to the board.
She then became president. I didn't think much about it as her monthly
"Message From The President" was the usual combination of "Rules
Reminders" and banal HOA pep talk.

When I was elected she was finishing her term as president. At my first
meeting the when the topic turned to that most important of all
questions; "What are we going to do about these rules violations?",
someone made the heretical statement; "We serve the residents, right?"

At that point as the board blowhards started paying homage to the "God
Of Fiduciary Responsibility" she just looked down at the table and very
softly said, "HOAs really aren't designed for the homeowners". I
remember that, as clear and intact as if it happened five minutes ago.

What had happened to her? Where was the person who had stood up and
read
the board the riot act? How did this "board" experience, so effusively
described by the CAI, break her personality?

I soon realized that while the management company always had enough
trivial chatter to occupy the board rodomonts, anyone with a tendency
towards nuance, would quickly understand where the real power lay. They
would see how they, the board, was being manipulated, and that in spite
of all the carefully crafted propaganda produced to ennoble and glorify
the board, it was foreordained that the management company's will would
be done.

So what happened? Why didn't she just quit? I think one has to be on a
board to understand the magnitude of coercion that your typical
management company engages in. The only real interest they have is in
keeping the account. Because of that, any real challenge that is put to
the system must be systematically dismantled. This usually accomplished
by various anecdotes related by the CAM to illustrate how, what is most
likely common sense, is really flawed thinking in the world of the HOA.
The moral of the story is always, "we are professionals and we know
what
is best for you." The board member is left with a stark decision, not
about the subject at hand but about how he or she is going to act in
the
future. This is the turning point. The board member will either
surrender to the prevailing managerial philosophy or become the dreaded
"troublemaker".

If the board member surrenders, he or she starts down the path of
internal conflict that manifests itself in a gradual withdraw from any
meaningful involvement. He or she knows that all the officious
posturing
about things so trivial that in a normal environment they wouldn't even
be mentioned, must be trumpeted as critically important to the HOA's
success. You can only live that lie so long. This is why most of the
previous board members I speak to simply do not want to be involved
again, ever.

For the "Alpha Dog" board member, these thoughts and feelings just
don't
exist. Their ego-centric world exists only to satisfy their grandiose
vision of themselves as they ply their psychopathic trade on the
residents, all the time the CAM devil sitting on their shoulder, urging
them on.

I have to ask all the supporters of HOAs, what are we doing to each
other? Why do we have to exercise control over each other to the point
of destroying lives in the name of a social fantasy that has no
material
existence? Has it become that easy to deny the painfully obvious truth
that HOAs create sterile communities where residents are encouraged to
report each other to the "authorities" in the name of being neighborly?
Could any of you look into the eyes of your neighbors that your about
to
foreclose on and feel "right" about doing it? Has the peculiar form of
intolerance and dim-witted ambition that is probably best shown in the
defective personality of George Bush become a preferred attribute of
community living?

If you are someone who has been assimilated into the HOA universe, get
out. If you are someone who believes that HOAs are a natural and
fruitful way of life, get help.

Robert Metcalf
Chadds Ford, PA