The History Behind Today's HOAs Robbing Millions of People of Their Home Ownership!

How did we get here? That is, how is it that millions of people here in the US are paying 100s of $1,000s, if not more, to have "a home of their own," only for other people who pay NOTHING to actually own it?

Before exploring the history of HOAs, it's very important to first understand what it means to "own" something, like a home. Home ownership is a LOT more than just having your name on a piece of paper that says a certain building is "yours." Ownership has to do with CONTROL! Whether it's a ball or whether it's a huge mansion, the thing that makes that ball or that mansion "yours," instead of belonging to someone else is whether or not YOU have control over it! If you "own" a ball, YOU get to decide what happens to that ball, where it goes, who plays with it, and when. Likewise, owning a home means, or at least it should mean, YOU get to decide what happens to that house, who gets to be in it, and what is done with it or to it. Of course, "ownership" is not absolute. The fact that you own a ball doesn't mean you can throw it at the face of someone unless it's part of a game that person has agreed to allow such throwing. Likewise, owning a home doesn't mean you can modify it or grossly neglect the care of the surrounding property in such a way that it becomes a real hazard to others, like having a dying tree leaning over a public sidewalk that is on the verge of falling and, thus, subjecting pedestrians to possible injury. But other than doing things with your home that, really and truly, represent an objective threat to the safety or health of others, YOU should have control over your home.

So, to understand how home ownership has been, increasingly, siphoned away from the people who spend so much of their income to buy a home in the first place, we have to go back to the beginning of the institution where all of this began, almost 1 and 1/2 centuries ago--Segregation!

After the Reconstruction Era, following the American Civil War, came to an end in 1877, after Federal troops were removed from the former Confederate states, southern whites began to find other ways to claw back what many of them felt was a huge injustice--being forced to share both power, wealth, and land with black people. They realized they could not longer, not overtly, enslave blacks of African origin, but they were determined to re-establish dominance over them in other ways. These various methods of "putting blacks back into their place" are generally referred to as "Jim Crow," and one of the these methods was to keep black Americans separated from whites to the greatest extent possible. Blacks were not allowed to dine at the same restaurants, sit in the front of buses, use the same public restrooms or water fountains, attend the same schools, frequent the same parks, but above all, they were not allowed to make homes in the same parts of town!

But by the mid 1950s, Segregation began to wane. One Supreme Court after another banned certain types of segregation, like the Brown V. Board of Education decision in 1954 against school segregation, though southern states resisted integrating schools well into the 1960s. But it was the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that, at least on paper, ended housing segregation.

But just as with school segregation, whites had to find other strategies to keep people of color out of their neighborhoods. One, was to just move. If all else failed, by moving to the suburbs from urban city centers, or "White Flight," was on way to keep from having to live next to those "others." Other white neighborhoods, though, resisted with the help of "Red Lining": ensuring that mortgage companies would find excuses to deny loans to blacks, other than in predominately black neighborhoods, in order to keep them from buying homes in predominately white neighborhoods. This practice was also made illegal by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, though it persisted for many years afterwards until it became too risky for mortgage companies to get away with.

What were racially bigoted whites to do, such as the typical white homeowners who lived in Plano, Texas in the 1970s, when what had been a moderate-sized, sleepy town, thought of as near to, but not a part of Dallas, Texas, began to experience an influx of people moving in and buying homes, and an increasing number of them, non-white? The answer was Homeowners Associations (HOAs)!

We have to recall that, until the 1940s, almost all homes were "stick built," that is, constructed and sold one at a time. But once some home construction companies began to realize they could greatly increase their profits by purchasing large tracts of land at a time, and by using the same materials and blue prints for every house, tract home or "Cookie Cutter" houses, began popping up all over the country. By the 1980s, blacks and other people of color or varying ethnic groups also began to take advantage of buying these relatively less expensive homes, as Federal laws were also, gradually, removing other, non-financial barriers...which had led to whites prone to bigotry, who already felt like they were being, increasingly, "boxed in" by "others," very, very worried, if not down right afraid!

With this historical information as the backdrop, now imagine what it was like when, in 1984, a tract home construction company, already well-known for using the cheapest materials they could get away with, Fox and Jacobs, wanted to build a low cost, garden-home community of 2-1-1 houses, with very small yards, with no alleys, surrounded on 3 sides by larger, white-owned, middle class homes, mostly 4-2-2 in size with large yards and alleys? Needless to say, they were very alarmed!

They began to voice their fears, at first hoping to stop the development. But since Fox & Jacobs saw a chance to make a lot of money by cramming as many houses as they could into a relatively small area which they obtained for a low price, they made some concessions in order to belay the racist fears of the surrounding, most all white neighborhoods--establishing an HOA with very strict rules about how the homes were to be maintained and decorated, but very interestingly, paying to have fire-prevention, water sprinklers installed in every home!

Believing racial and other non-white, newcomers brought with them innate, lower standards of home maintenance and safety, higher crime rates and a clashing sense of what a home "should" look like, the worry that lower priced homes would naturally attract these "others" got us an HOA, with the thinking these “others,” should they get into Peachtree Village, ONLY RESPOND TO PUNISHMENT! Moreover, there was a very large concern over how these "others" might easily set their homes on fire! Images of careless peoples who, prior to moving in, had little to no idea how to use an electric stove and oven, would be cooking over the wood burning fire places, bound to catch fire to the rest of the houses and, then, spreading to the larger home communities nearby. (We have to also recall that, while the City of Plano had a professional Fire Department, it was nothing like it is today. Response time was slower, and the number of fire trucks were fewer, especially given the burgeoning population growth.) The actual threat to fire safety was non-existent, but the perceived one was so compelling, Fox & Jacobs was given no other choice so, while it cut into their profit margin, they relented and spent the time and money to install fire sprinklers in every one of the 97 Peachtree Village homes.

Of course, the irony is that more than a few whites were attracted to Peachtree Village. In fact, many whites bought homes in PTV because they, indeed, very affordable, and for singles, a couple with no children or grown and gone, or maybe, one or two small children, it made perfect sense.

For the whites who moved to PTV, the 1000s of rules didn’t seem all that threatening. For them, those rules were meant only for those “others.” For many, if not most, of the white potential homebuyers, realtor agents made sure to emphasize the several parts of the founding documents that state the purpose of the HOA was primarily to take care of the Common Areas. By contrast, any interested homebuyers from any racial, ethnic or other minorities, were sternly warned, "If you live here, you will have to follow all the rules or else have a lien placed on your home!"

Trouble is, HOA communities also attract the sort of people who love to control others! The combination of a small number of people who, perhaps, have some sort of psychological addiction or a “need” to order others around and a larger number of residents who, somewhere deep down, carried a fear within about a host of terrible things would follow if the “others” were not kept under strict control did, indeed, work well to keep the “others,” especially black Americans, from moving in.

But no one in 1984 could have foreseen how what had been, at that time, a new business model, the HOA management company, would become the whopping 88 $Billion industry of today! In 1984, HOA management companies were little more than a new sort of accounting firms that specialized in taking care of collecting HOA dues payments, paying taxes and issuing checks to maintenance contractors. Over time, however, these management companies soon discovered how they could greatly increase their profits by amplifying the fears people have of “others.”

They also learned it was much easier to get their foot in the door of newly-constructed communities and soon they began to partner with the Tract-Home Construction Industry to ensure that, regardless of whether the houses they built were big or small, affordable to the average worker or specifically designed to attract only the rich, they became ever more skilled at transforming the “American Dream” of HOME Ownership into a mere financial investment that had to be protected at all costs from “others.” Tellingly, it's virtually unheard of for an already-established home community to invite in an HOA to take over. Also very revealing is the fact that homeowners who move out of an HOA dominated community often look to make their next home in an HOA Free area!

As their profits increased, accordingly, they had enough left over to begin a nationwide propaganda scheme, in which, they soon had millions of Americans convinced what other people did with their homes would have a direct impact on the resale value of theirs, regardless of the facts! In other words, they managed to transmute what had been a purely racial worry, one that had people convinced any increase in racial minorities moving into a neighborhood would automatically lower the value of all the surrounding homes, into a belief that ANY sort of difference between the appearance of one home would drag down the value of those surrounding it! This is when the fanciful “Purple” or “Polka-Dotted” House Myth was invented and, over time, became the powerful, though, completely unsubstantiated fiction it is today.

In fact, one need only visit most any other nation in the world to see how this myth doesn’t exist. Beautiful, multi-million, dollar mansion or villa would be surrounded by small houses or apartments, that have no negative impact on the larger home. In fact, they sometimes add to the value of the larger mansion because the location provides nearby housing for those who will work as maids in or garden-keepers around the mansion!

Now, with a huge, profit incentive having taking over the HOA movement, who are spending an enormous amount of money to influence legislatures, as well as common thinking, especially with the help of social media, the HOA management industry has even succeeded in influencing homeowners to think, not only must they never decorate their homes’ exteriors in ways THEY would like, but the interiors as well! Some homeowners now find themselves saying, “I would just love to paint my kitchen cabinets black, but I can’t because my spouse tells me that would hurt the re-sale value of our house!” How absurd!!!

For all the expense and trouble it takes to buy a home, and for most people, their home is the largest expense they’ll ever have in their lifetime, it’s utterly ridiculous that anyone should ever have to spend most of their life in a home they decorate to make SOMEONE ELSE happy!

For these reasons, the HOA Movement is, finally, beginning to wane! Homeowners of every stripe are fighting back, organizing and telling their legislators to change state and federal laws to restore sovereignty over their homes. This is what's happening in Peachtree Village. A good and increasing number of us who live here as well as other homeowners who are leasing their homes to our neighbors are learning how to resist the abuses of power we've been subjected to. Yes, it's probably going to take a while before we have our home sovereignty completely restored, and those who have grown so accustomed to having a LOT of power over us are probably going to be shocked and dismayed that anyone should dare oppose them, to which we here at Peachtree Village Neighborhood Union say, "Get used to it! Your days of robbing us of our home ownership, in the true sense of the word 'home,' are numbered!"