Life in an age-restricted community
My wife, Cathy, and I moved to this over-55 community in January, 2001, a few weeks after I retired. Looking back, I think I would have gone nuts from boredom -- and I'm not the kind of person who gets bored easily! -- had we not moved. This community has lots of things for me to do and I'm happy for having them. We have tennis courts, an indoor and an outdoor swimming pool, a putting green, a workout room, a movie theater, a dining hall, and activites galore. I even resurrected my bridge-playing (I recommend Bridge for Dummies for anyone). I started a community website (sorry, it's for residents only) and this is my fourth year as a member of a committee.
Under every silver lining, there's a cloud. Ours is that the community is run by a Homeowners Association (HOA)!!
You see, when you buy a property in a communty like mine, you sign a non-negotiable contract. It's called a contract of adhesion -- I guess because you're stuck with whatever the other party has written. And that contract contains "covenants, easements and restrictions" and the HOA by-laws. Essentially, it gives the board of trustees absolute power over your life.
That's only potentially bad. There are horror stories on the Internet...anything from a resident not being permitted to hang a POW banner to widows experiencing foreclosures. However, a lot depends on whether the board consists of power-hungry jerks or well-meaning fols who listen to the concerns of the residents.
Our board is much closer to the latter than the former, but it it could be better.
You have two ways to fight a bad board: vote out the worst members at each election, or sue them. But, suing them is a no-win situation because if you win, the HOA pays for the cost of the lawsuit by assessing the residents! And if you lose, you're out a bunch of money!!
I have to say now that I would rate our previous board as a 6 (out of 10). They didn't cause too much stress and didn't make any onerous new rules. We recently elected three new member to the 5-member board.
posted by Pete Holsberg @ 2:57 PM
2 Comments:
At 6:47 PM ,
Anonymous said...
These sort of almost condo arrangements are part of the details that we've already hashed out for our cohousing development (which, btw, now has a blog of it's own!). The difference I guess is that we all wrote the documents / agreements ahead of time - way before we moved in (it's not even built yet), but there's a similar rule for folks who are signing up late. YOu have to agree to all the decisions made before you joined (and boy there's a lot of them) - ranging from "how will pets be handled" to "how do finances get managed".
Ain't communal living fun? :)
At 9:39 PM ,
Pete Holsberg said...
Quite a difference! Communities like mine are created by developers and accepted by towns because they (especially the ones for seniors) are cash cows.
I'm going to check out your community and perhaps make some comments on you rblog.
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