HOBB Community

Many of us live in PUDs (planned unit developments). Isn’t this a creation of HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development)? Is this just another case of the federal government trying to help us?

PUDs are run by boards that are set up by the developer. In our case, Sun City Hilton Head, SC, the board was developer-controlled for roughly ten years. Only recently have residents obtained four seats on the seven-person board. The board makes the rules for approximately 6500 houses.

An example of one of these rules is that we can’t leave our garage door open. If we do, we can be fined. From what I’m told this rule came from the developer’s concern that open garage doors may affect sales. The developer established the rule and the developer enforces the rule (through the community association). Whose rule is it? The community never voted on it.

This is just one example. There are many others, including contracts that the community pays for from our community dues. I personally don’t have a problem with community rules or contracts as long as they are the will of the community. I do have a problem with developer-imposed rules and contracts, especially in light of shoddy work done by the developer. Isn’t this the fox guarding the hen house?

How can this be changed? Can HOBB help? The single voice “crying in the wilderness” doesn’t seem to be getting the job done.

We have a similar thing here. There's a president of our community group pre-installed by the builder, who can never be removed, so technically it's more a dictatorship community. It's a long standing scheme that I think benefits a lot of insiders more than consumers.

The home I left had trash pickup, city street lights, and other city services that came from property tax dollars paid. Now counties are able to get the same property taxes without providing any community services. We get to pay for those separately to private organizations hired by our dictatorship, and they're not optional. I suspect that's how some of our "drive by" county inspections happened, as there was some payoff to mass built controlled comminutes.

The community group laws don't have to make any sense, and can even violate constitutional rights. I think their sworn to uphold the interest of the builder, certainly not the constitution. We live within a hierarch of law systems, from federal, state, local, then community groups can trump all of them to their own whims, whatever that might be.

Even with elected parts, a group of what maybe used to be just nosey busy bodies, can make rules to torment a neighbor they don't like. A quote from somewhere...Man was not made to serve law, the laws are made to serve man. But if that were true, Americans would all be created equal, with certain in inalienable rights. Some people never want that, though the may pretend to uphold that principle.   

thanks for the comments, Ron.
why doesn't MSNBC do a special on this issue?
(pardon my cynicism. go figure!)

There have been many horror stories on that subject. But it should be well known the goal of major American news organizations is to entertain, and inform only to the extent it remains profitable. They're not all bad, but no longer a powerful part America's sold out checks and balances system.