New at Reason

David Weigel | April 20, 2006

Robert H. Nelson opens the door on private community associations.

Comments

|4.20.06 @ 8:41AM|#

I love this stuff in theory, being a huge fan of decentralized decision making.

Unfortunately in practice these things always work out crappy, probably because the rules are made to ensure maximum aggergate property value, which pushes everything down to the lowest common denominator. You work all your life to be a homeowner and then you find out that you can't own pets or paint your house to a color you like.

There is probably a related and more interesting problem (hint, hint, Mr. Nelson) which is whether it is healty for humans to regard their dwelling places primarily as financial investments, rather than a domain of personal identity. This seems to be the change driving suburban life, rather than this public-to-private shift discussed here.

I had my wife put the "Transforming..." book by Nelson in the wait line for your book at the library when there was a blurb about it here. I need to check whatever happened with that.

|4.20.06 @ 9:07AM|#

In reading the article in my print edition copy (unveiled, un-solicited, subscription plug), one facet of PCA's was blatantly missing from the article: private foreclosure. In many of the high-end private enclaves in Texas (I have no direct knowledge outside my state), PCA's have been granted coercive foreclosure privileges by the local and/or county government. Depending on the community, if you "violate" any of the PCA rules (Dave W. mentioned two: pet ownership & house color limitations) a majority vote of the PCA governing body or the entire association membership (read: your nosy neighbors) can foreclose on you, sieze & resell the property, and evict you (with the PD or sheriff's assistance, of course). While these rules are stated in the PCA contract (part of your sale contract(s)), it still perpetuates the collectivist claim of group control over nominally private property.

|4.20.06 @ 9:35AM|#

It's ironic how, in the interests of keeping property values high, the little capitalists become little collectivists, complete with their own cute little politburos.

|4.20.06 @ 9:38AM|#

Another missing facet of local government that he doesn't mention is zoning laws. Who gets to decide what can be built in the neighborhood? There's a tiff going on in my town about the city needing more affordable housing (large student population), but the area next to downtown that they want to relax rules for large apartment buildings is resisting claiming they are a historical district. It would detract value from their neighborhood to allow contractors to put big ugly college apartments next door.

Would a local neighborhood association be able to resist such a rezoning effort and effectively zone themselves? I'm interested to hear what other libertarians feel about zoning laws. Anybody have a link about where I might find more about this topic from a libertarian point of view?

|4.20.06 @ 9:58AM|#

Yogi -I too wondered how such a long article on this subject could avoid the word "zoning." The libertarian take is that the restrictive private zoning of neighborhood associations is voluntary and thus completely ok. I personally think that developers and homeowners have embraced this concepts largely out of a perceived lack of strong zoning in traditional towns and cities. People saw their neighbors break up old houses into apartments, put wild and ugly additions onto houses, etc. and said that they don't want to put up with that again. In other words, people would love to have full autonomy with the use of their own property but have felt burned by other people's choices, so they embraced a culture of living in ugly, beige houses to avoid the worse annoyances of weakly zoned towns. Tightening up zoning is of course unpopular, since it changes the rules on owners ex post, but I see it as a necessary evil to save the millions and millions of houses that were built before the private communities described in this article.

|4.20.06 @ 10:05AM|#

to avoid the worse annoyances of weakly zoned towns

Of course the irony is that people looking for more freedom, rather than less, end up in the government controlled areas.

Actually that is not ironic to me because I don't think the key to freedom is private versus government control. But some round these parts do. This should be ironic to them.

Jesse Walker|4.20.06 @ 10:23AM|#

There's a ton about zoning in the book -- which I recommend highly -- but we could only excerpt so much.

MP|4.20.06 @ 11:01AM|#

As Dave points out, and my own personal experiance has shown, the advantage of private vs. public collectives is typically not due to the private vs. public nature, but rather the fact that private colletives are typically smaller than the associated public collectives. The primary goal of a libertarian should be to remove power from the collective and retain it for the individual, regardless of the nature of the collective.

KipEsquire|4.20.06 @ 11:33AM|#

The very term "private government" is merely a gimmicky contradiction in terms. These communities, while a wonderful idea, still exist in municipalities, counties, states and a country and are still subject to the whims, er, votes, of outsiders.

Great idea? Sure. "Government"? Nope.

|4.20.06 @ 12:39PM|#

"People saw their neighbors break up old houses into apartments, put wild and ugly additions onto houses, etc. and said that they don't want to put up with that again. In other words, people would love to have full autonomy with the use of their own property but have felt burned by other people's choices, so they embraced a culture of living in ugly, beige houses to avoid the worse annoyances of weakly zoned towns."


"In other words" people would like to have full autonomy over their own property and their neighbors' property as well. It's the same old deal: freedom for me, but not for thee.

s.m. koppelman|4.20.06 @ 12:47PM|#

Living in South Florida, I see firsthand some of the unintended consequences of private communities run by association bylaws that have been intentionally made difficult to change.

What happens when the structures in these communities become functionally obsolete? Here I'm primarily thinking of age-restricted pod communities of small condos for retirees. We're blessed with hundreds of these communities, some of them the size of towns. When they were built 30-40 years ago, the 850-square-foot condos with shared laundry outside were decent retirement and vacation places for working-class and many middle-class people. Now in terms of amenities they are on par only with public housing projects save for the scrubby golf courses, yet they cost as much as a three-bedroom colonial in West Des Moines, and that's with the value-depressing effect of the restrictions. The new generation version of their original target market generally doesn't want them and the working-class immigrants who would be happy to live in them can't because of bylaws designed to ensure that new residents would "fit in".

The same goes for plenty of deed-restricted and planned developments of single-family homes. Deed restrictions enacted to preserve uniformity mean that a 950-square-foot 2-bed 1-bath house built in 1971 in the outer suburbs here, now priced out of reach of the sort of retirees it was built for, is nonetheless encumbered by undesitrable features. Since it can't be substantially expanded thanks to a virtually unalterable "private" zoning code drawn up by the original developer, virtually the only people who can both afford it and want it are those looking for a starter home, people who don't intend to stay long, leading to a population that might be too transitory to organize and change the rules.

There's nothing especially Dynamistic(TM) about a stagnant, functionally obsolete community that won't be able to even vote in a new paint color until the utility and value of the place gets so low that it's largely abandoned and a company that wants to redevelop it buys enough units to vote in the wrecking ball. And the communities that bar corporate ownership of units? If the surrounding community (where all the commerce is) goes into similar decline due to an economic downturn, Peak Oil theory turning out to be correct, or whatever else, how will the land ever get repurposed in any way short of eminent domain? Even then, the private association is only another layer standing in the way of substantive redevelopment in the future. Once you've gone through the Hurculean effort of emptying out a large, unitary community in order to bulldoze so much as a single 100'x65' lot because of what amounts to a private layer of single-use zoning, you're still at square one in contending with sprawl zoning enacted by the local government jurisdiction.

This is more dynamistic?

Are there any good examples of private communities with powerful association restrictions that have physically evolved over time, that is, changes in building heights, changes in site use, etc.? It seems more like a recipe for enforced stagnation than any sort of way to invigorate neighborhoods for the long haul.

|4.20.06 @ 1:01PM|#

The very term "private government" is merely a gimmicky contradiction in terms. These communities, while a wonderful idea, still exist in municipalities, counties, states and a country and are still subject to the whims, er, votes, of outsiders.

Citizens of states are subject to the whims of the votes of outsiders through the federal government. State government don't have complete control over what goes on in their borders, but they're still governments. Likewise, homeowners' associations don't cease to be a government simply because its residents remain subject to the laws of states, municipalities, and the federal government. Outside voters can affect the residents of these communities, but the government of the communities is still controlled by its residents.

My only objection to the article was its attempt to base the discussion around the terms premodern, modern, and postmodern. I get the impression that's a broader theme in the book. Maybe it makes more sense in the broader context, but in the excerpt it just seems pretentious and not terribly useful.

SPD|4.20.06 @ 2:09PM|#

Why can't I just buy a house and be left alone? Can't I get my trash collected by a private service and pay property taxes to make sure my street and sewer lines are maintained? And why should other property owners get a say in what I choose to do on or with my own property in the first place? I think the micro-collectivist slant is what frightens me most about this concept.

SPD|4.20.06 @ 2:10PM|#

Why can't I just buy a house and be left alone? Can't I get my trash collected by a private service and pay property taxes to make sure my street and sewer lines are maintained? And why should other property owners get a say in what I choose to do on or with my own property in the first place? I think the micro-collectivist slant is what frightens me most about this concept.

When I hear about big goverment, I think "1984." When I read about private community associations, I think "Stepford Wives."

|4.20.06 @ 2:17PM|#

And why should other property owners get a say in what I choose to do on or with my own property in the first place?

Because there will come a time when you will want a say in what your neighbors are doing.

|4.20.06 @ 2:20PM|#

Maybe, but that doesn't mean I should have it. If it doesn't directly affect me, why should it be my business?

|4.20.06 @ 2:26PM|#

Private "governments" are great (they are not really governments, because they are voluntary). Please remember that these housing developments might be restrictive, but people have chosen to live by the restrictions when they purchased into the places. And please remember, these places are often far less restrictive than a normal city government.

For example, someone was telling me that condos are bad, because "you don't really own the place, it is owned by the condo organization... if you want to do work on your apartment, or change things, you have to get their permission". Yes, it is true. But for me to get permission to make changes to my apartment requires that I go down stairs to the condo office, and fill out a form. Where as if I want to make a change to my house if I didn't want to live in the condo, I would have to get permission from the city government, who is terribly more restrictive, and charges a lot of money for the building licence. So really, my condo organization owns my building less than your city government owns your house. And certainly my condo organization isn't going to sieze my house and give it to a developer because it can charge more taxes!

The lameness of most of these subdivisions, isn't the private organization that runs them, but that living in the suburbs is pretty lame in and of itself. There are plenty of restrictive government run suburbs that are just as oppressive.

|4.20.06 @ 2:38PM|#

If it doesn't directly affect me, why should it be my business?

Well, it depends on what they're doing, I guess. But most of these restrictions are put in place for their benefit (real or imagined) in propping up the sale price of the house. If you paint your house vomit green with purple accents, don't be surprised if your neighbor bitches about it. But in general, I agree with you - it just doesn't seem to work that way in the real world.

|4.20.06 @ 2:39PM|#

SPD: If you don't want to be subject to a homeowners' association, you're free to buy elsewhere. Some people want to live in restricted neighborhoods, and some people want to live in unrestricted neighborhoods. As homeowners' associations grow in popularity, the supply of unrestricted property dwindles. If we eventually reach the point where the proportion of property that is subject to restriction is no higher than the proportion of people who want to live in restricted communities, the incentive to form restricted communities. In short, as long as there is significant demand for unrestricted property, there is no reason to expect that it won't continue to exist.

But I think you seriously overestimate the percentage of the population that would want to live in a completely unrestricted community. As long as there is a wide selection of communities with different levels and forms of restrictions, most people are going to be able to find something that they consider preferable to a completely unrestricted community.

sm koppelman: Restricted communities are still evolving. I see no reason to expect that people will refuse to learn anything from failed communities that currently exist. If people find that communities are too stagnant so that they depress value in the long-run, developers will offer communities that are more flexible. As for existing communities, if the price depression gets severe enough, a single developer can buy out the community and start from scratch. It's difficult, but possible.

Stormy Dragon|4.20.06 @ 2:47PM|#

>Private "governments" are great (they are not
>really governments, because they are
>voluntary). Please remember that these housing
>developments might be restrictive, but people
>have chosen to live by the restrictions when
>they purchased into the places. And please
>remember, these places are often far less
>restrictive than a normal city government.

They may be fine in and of themselves, but when coupled with local zoning laws that force you to choose one of the existing communities instead of having the option of starting a new one of your own, the situation changes.

It's like arguing that state governments cannot be oppressive because you have a choice of which state to live in.

b-psycho|4.20.06 @ 2:47PM|#

Chalk me up as co-signing Dave W.

The idea that one can own a house & be told what they can or cannot do with that house by their neighbors just strikes me as absolutely bonkers & a contradiction of the whole point to private property rights. Far as I'm concerned, if you're not paying my bills, then your opinion on my place means nothing whatsoever.

|4.20.06 @ 3:03PM|#

The petty dictators in the private associations seem like budding little totalitarians to me.

|4.20.06 @ 3:18PM|#

Can a private community decide they don't want a minority family to buy a home within their jurisdiction? Can such a decision be made in violation of federal regulations?

|4.20.06 @ 4:12PM|#

At least homeowner's assoc's aren't drugtesting (yet). More than I can say for some private associations.

slightlybad|4.20.06 @ 4:22PM|#

SPD,

The Supreme Court addressed exactly that concern in Shelley v. Kraemer. A lot of neighborhood associations tried to use these to skirt desegregation. The Court basically held that as private contracts, restrictive covenants could discriminate and were not per se unconstitutional. However, to legally enforce them (through the courts) required state action and was thus unconstitutional. Hence, you can execute racist covenants legally but you cannot enforce them.

|4.20.06 @ 7:44PM|#

Hey, did y'all see Walter in Denver's posting (go down to April 15) on a woman jailed after violating a law of the local Landmarks Preservation Board:

"Megan Forbes cooled her heels in jail for a few hours Sunday, long enough for her to rue installing the wrong kind of garage door behind her historic home and then failing to answer a summons on the municipal violation."

|4.23.06 @ 9:17AM|#

You raise a very valid point, Dave. The fact is that small associations tend towards the tyrannical, because there is nothing more hard-wired in the human brain than the desire to control others.

One good thing to remember is that unwillingness to be dictated by others does not imply unwillingness to dictate. The truth is that the one reason most people object to dictatorships is because they are not themselves dictators.

One of the reason we ended up with a strong central government is the one reason why people moved from their charming, cozy little villages into the big impersonnal city. They tend to leave you alone a lot more than your kind, concerned neighbors. It is not that a central government cannot be as overbearing as the most stiffling local enviroment, but that when they make the balance of their resources and their priorities, they well decide that certain comformities are not worth the trouble of enforcing.