Our HOA Endangers Our Lives

I was foolish, selfish, and cowardly. I went to the paint store and bought a can of paint.
Let me explain ...

THE COVID SUMMER OF 2020
To begin, we must ask, “What has just happened?” Please add your memory, your perceptions, in the comments following this article. Or post your own article. Corrections to what I report below are welcome.

Let’s sit back a moment to recall the context of these events, to remember the summer of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic was accelerating in the United States and around the world. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advised all Americans to avoid going to public places for any nonessential errand. In public spaces, you could breathe in and contract COVID-19, get sick, and die. You'd return home and infect others. Or if you already had the disease and walked around, you could spread it to others in the store. Do not go to the paint store to buy paint. Do not go to the hardware store and stand in line to rent a power washer, or to buy a roll of screen for your window. Do not endanger human life to do these things. Wait for your county, state, or federal health officials to say “all clear.” Wait until it is much safer to go into public spaces. Trust government, guided by medical science, to advise us on what is safe. So my wife and I began ordering our groceries for curbside pickup from Safeway and Giant.

During the summer and fall of 2020, sirens could be heard always in the distance, and sometimes very close by. Ambulances appeared every week in Quail Valley to rush someone to the hospital. Social services were overwhelmed. Families in cars lined up to receive bags of food given out by the churches on Woodfield Road, by the elementary school on Strawberry Knoll Road. The doors of restaurants, movie theaters, schools, places of worship, and county offices, were locked. Our president was sowing confusion, suggesting that we might heal ourselves by drinking bleach. An MCPD officer in Silver Spring shot and killed a young Black man, Finan Berhe, who was suffering mental distress. On May 25, a police officer in Minneapolis (where my sister and her family live) strangled George Floyd, a Black man, while a teenager recorded the murder on cell phone video. 8 minutes and 45 seconds.

GOOFY HOA INSPECTIONS ... IN OVERDRIVE
Let's recall that under Maryland law, the HOA is our most local form of government. In this context, our family received HOA “violation notices” that our front steps and stoop were lilting; that there were stains on the concrete front steps; and that our plastic shed was the wrong color. How did I respond?

I was foolish: I did what the QV HOA directed me to to. I put on a mask and went to the paint store during its “slow hours” and bought a pint of light blue paint. This was foolish because the trip was not “essential,” and I was endangering human life. How many HOA residents contracted COVID-19, or passed it along to others, on such non-essential trips?

I was selfish: I knew that my neighbors were probably receiving threats from the HOA (“Do this or the HOA will fine you”) like I was receiving, but I acted quickly just to get the darn HOA and property management off my own back. Just to breathe a little easier during the chaos.

I was cowardly: I could have done the work of protesting to the HOA itself, and to my county, state, and federal elected officials, but I did not want to add to my workload at that moment in history. I’m 65 years old and healthy, but I did not want to "burn out." I was already doing a lot, serving on boards and committees of human rights organizations and starting up a neighborhood community garden. Israel evicts families and demolishes homes almost every week of the year in the West Bank, but I could have done more to protect the lives of my family members and my neighbors here in Maryland in this era of housing insecurity and disease.

I called the property management office to explain that the stains on my steps were caused by the dark leaves from our neighbor’s cherry tree, but the property managers office was closed and not answering the phone due to the epidemic. Wow. Catch-22. We fine you, but are now unavailable to hear your appeal. Hit and run.

In our 20 years of residence in Quail Valley, the lilt in the front steps had never been cited before, but now during a pandemic, it was suddenly a "violation" in the eyes of the HOA. The deadline-to-fix-it clock was ticking. In July, we had the walk, steps, and stoop demolished and replaced. It cost $3,000. The new concrete still gets stained from cherry tree leaves, but I think those silhouettes are kind of pretty. In any case, the sunlight bleaches them away.

Finally, as you know, I went to the paint store and bought paint. This risky action, however, was totally unnecessary. As it turns out, plastic sheds do not have to be painted. They do not have to exactly match the color of the house, according to the current QV HOA Architectural Guidelines.

So, in addition to being foolish, selfish, and cowardly, I was also lazy. I should have taken the time read online about that detail in the Architectural Guidelines before rushing to the paint store. Somehow, the HOA’s property management inspector must have overlooked that detail as well, as they erroneously dinged our shed on their clipboard during the property inspection in the summer of 2020, then sent their letter of violation to us. Shame on me ... for trusting the HOA and its property management. I'll try not to make that mistake again!

BACK ON TRACK, AND NONE TOO SOON
When trauma happens, confusion is a normal human response. Your mind asks, "Is this really happening?" "Did I do something to deserve this?" "If I object, will the attack on me only get worse?" You go into defensive mode. That's how I felt when experiencing the HOA attack on my family in June.

By the fall of 2020, I had the energy to ask a few questions. How many of my neighbors, in this time of mass unemployment, housing insecurity, and pandemic, had been required to make $3,000 repairs to their homes? Wearing a mask, I was talking to my neighbors out in the open air. “How were the HOA inspections for you this year?” I wrote down their testimonies, and began publishing them (without revealing residents' names) online. I also paid the HOA $70 for a printout of the June 2020 inspections, but only got a report that lists 2/3 of the 592 properties in Quail Valley.

I complained, left messages, and filled out forms with the county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Office of Human Rights (OHR), and Division of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA). I wrote to elected officials. Staffers in these offices advised me to file a complaint ($50) with the Commission on Common Ownership Communities, which I did in December 2020. It took the CCOC five months to rule that it does not have jurisdiction over these matters. Today, I went to the dictionary to look up the word “feckless.” If your dispute is about a crooked gutter, the Montgomery County CCOC might be able to help you. If your dispute is with a crooked, predatory, multi-billion-dollar, state-wide industry, you are out of luck.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
On May 12, 2021, I watched a Maryland District Court throw the book at the Quail Valley HOA in its attempt (over three hearings!) to extort money (at first $30,000) from an Asian American family. Just days before this latest, three-hour courtroom fiasco, the property management mailed to this same family two threatening letters (dated 5/29/2021) that cite “violations” that are erroneous: an “opaque” stain was used on a deck (such stains are allowed), and the deck was "not approved" (it is part of the original home design). Today, I went to the dictionary to look up the word "intimidation."

Last week, QV HOA property “inspectors” were recorded on video as they opened the gate and entered the back yard of a resident. The county has suspended HOA board elections for an unknown period. Reasons unclear. Is this a crisis of democracy? You be the judge.

I write this with a sense of urgency. The stress and financial harm to families (credit ratings damaged, HOA debts mounts up, time is spent defending your front door style) is ongoing.

The pandemic is not over. What unseen suffering by families is happening right now? What harm is our own HOA about to cause us? If family "debt" is involved, the thuggery happens "in a dark closet," because "debt-privacy laws" dictates that the public is not allowed to know about a lien, unless the family shares its pain by speaking with others, or unless a dispute goes to court. I believe our HOA board members may be largely ignorant of what is actually going on with regard to the debt-crisis machine grinding away in the State of Maryland. They're too busy approving $4,000 for the property management to take snapshots of everybody's front-door style.

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
We've lived here for 20 years. All of the streets in Quail Valley are named after birds. This article (and the “Living on Cuckoo Court” series at PATCH.com) is my attempt to shed some sunlight on these matters of governance, to someday make our lives safer and easier to live here in Quail Valley. The structural and institutional problems I've touched upon have been growing for decades. With this series, I begin making amends to ALL of my neighbors, which include the HOA board members. They deserve to hear the truth. We must each review our own actions, and how our neighbors have been impacted by our actions (or inaction), and recall what we have learned, and when we learned it. We need to halt what is happening, and listen carefully to those who are suffering.

We are caught in a system of extortion whereby the more we are fined, the more profit is made by bad actors. All expenses accrued from HOA hyper-aggression (e.g., attorney's fees when HOA cases fail in court) ricochet back into the face of the residents. And if the worst happens, if residents are evicted or die and our houses flip, there’s a lot of money to be made in fees, fines, and service charges. It's a textbook example of "dysfunctional economic incentives." The system rewards destructive behavior, harming the very people it is meant to serve.

The informal Quail Valley Friendly Team (50+ families and growing) is trying to create a more compassionate HOA in our neighborhood. But the problem is deeper and wider than that. The state laws that uphold the predatory HOA industry must be reformed. The whole HOA system, invented in the 1980s, is dysfunctional and un-American. On Monday, we met with State Delegate Lesley J. Lopez. We are in discussion with attorneys. This story has just begun to be told.

A BETRAYAL OF TRUST
Our QV HOA Covenant (which is hard to find on the internet) states (page 9) that the HOA must

“promote the health, safety, and welfare of the residents.”

The Quail Valley HOA and the property management it hired have severely violated that trust.

I should have spoken up, I should have protested loudly, in June of 2020, and perhaps years before that. But it is never too late to act today. In the twelve-step recovery programs, you learn that “making amends” is often a long process. It is much more than just a verbal apology. It involves understanding the sources of the problems, changing your practices, changing your own behavior. This conversation began months ago, and it will likely continue for years. Trust has been destroyed, and HOA/property management attacks on the bank accounts of residents (our well being, our "welfare") are stepping up even now, as I write, in May of 2021. We are not close to taking steps toward resolution and restitution. We are at the start of diagnosing a disease in the body politic.

In the summer of 2020, I was foolish, selfish, cowardly … and lazy. Let me now begin to do the work of making amends to those I may have harmed: my Quail Valley neighbors, my family, and myself. I will not "forget the whole thing," or "just let it slide." As you reflect on the past year, please pause to reflect on what I have written here. Is it truthful? Do you feel betrayed? What is your memory of events in 2020? Can we all, together, try to understand what has just happened?

Find the "Living on Cuckoo Court" series at https://patch.com/users/steven... Thanks to several readers for reviewing drafts of this article. To receive QV Friendly Team emails, send a request to quail-valley-friendly-team@googlegroups.com. These opinions are my own. I'm a member of the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East board of directors; Voices from the Holy Land Online Film Salon steering committee; the Quail Valley Friendly Team; and the UU Congregation of Rockville, Maryland