HOA’s in Louisiana: The ‘Legal’ Fleecing of Louisiana Homeowners
Does the State of Louisiana, given all its lawyers and courts receiving fees to juggle unresolved HOA messes, have any intention of enforcing its own sanctified and perpetual property laws?
We live in a New Orleans North Shore neighborhood that recently went from an HOA covenant-protected serenity to chaos, chiefly attributed to negligence/obliviousness in the performance of our volunteer HOA Board of Directors, over many years, and to the for-profit enthusiasms of Louisiana’s legal eagles.
‘Sum-ma’ is here, and the kids (who always get kicked the hardest) are hot and the pool is closed. The tennis courts are closed. The clubhouse is closed; that is, closed to us homeowners but not to outside ‘paying event’ renters. The volunteer HOA Board has two civil suits pending. Who pays the fees for these civil suits? Well, not the HOA Board: we homeowners do, and will.
At least two lawyers are up and billing or getting ready to do so, and we blue and white collar neighbors (yes, multi-racial) will be expected to pick up the tab, while also expecting/fearing a decline in the value of our properties and losing any sure expectation of a successful sale for profit any time soon.
Louisiana HOA law, recently updated, is a putative area of ‘expertise’ for lawyers hungry for business. Our HOA now has three legal firms involved (or suited up-one is pro bono, as the homeowners can’t afford to pay for a lawyer.) To date, we homeowners’ rights and access to relief in this peculiar situation remain altogether inconclusive.
One of the items in Louisiana HOA law refers to the right of HOA homeowners to obtain timely and full financial HOA records from the volunteer Board upon written request. Such written requests by homeowners here have been ignored or only partially honored by both past and current HOA volunteer boards. So, the Board tells us we are skint; shutters our amenities but does not pony up the receipts. What exactly happened? Where to go to find out? Answer: why, to the courts: where else? Louisiana’s circle of legal revenue sharing remains unbroken. (But wait, don’t we pay taxes already for the courts?)
Our HOA Board failed to renew its own ‘legal’ covenants, so the neighborhood has thus far undergone two unsuccessful votes to bring our ‘expired’ covenants back. Who knew the covenants were set to expire? The neighborhood sure didn’t. Two recent and successive vote processes to renew the ‘expired’ covenants were mismanaged; some neighbors were too angry or broke to vote at all; renters can’t vote, and absent landlords weren’t to be bothered. The first and second vote attempts failed by small margins.
Our HOA Board is now threatening to sell ‘common’ areas—our ‘amenities’ and the common land on which they sit. What sorts of development will be allowable to the buyer? Not a clue.
If common property is sold, dues-paying homeowners (we currently can’t pay dues because we have no covenants) ‘will’ receive a portion of the sale proceeds, from which homeowner profits we can subtract all of the legal fees the HOA Board will have accumulated by then to cover its own board-liability-insured backs.
Is this happiness? Well, no. Are we arguing in the neighborhood? Well, yes. Do you remember the ‘time-share’ legal fiascos of past decades? The semi-feudal structures now written into law, such as regarding time-shares and HOA’s, continue to undermine the basic, American, essential ethical and legal claims of the home/land owner. Caveat emptor!
Individual property rights are constitutional in America and trump semi-feudal property rights--and should. Volunteers on HOA boards do not reign supreme over the rights of their neighbors who have voted them in and can vote them out. The startling transformation of a neighbor into an ‘official in the neighborhood’ is a tricky business. Volunteering is not governing.
The original and standing by laws that were created when our neighborhood was established within our municipality are routinely bypassed/contravened by the HOA Board. Relationships within the neighborhood have been redirected to those of normal love-thy-neighbor values to ‘who do you YOU support’ in our confused and fractured battle for peace and prosperity. So, no, this is not happiness.
Does the State of Louisiana, given all its lawyers and courts receiving fees to juggle unresolved HOA messes, really have any intention of enforcing its own sanctified and perpetual laws for the rights of those who own their own land and the home that sits on it?
From what we’re seeing now, we really doubt it.