Las Palmas couple fight homeowners group

Conflict emblematic of change in housing rules

July 06, 2004

By LARRY PARSONS

Herald Staff Writer


Amid rolling, golden hills and curving, rock-walled roads bordered by freshly mown grass, life in a spacious, five-bedroom home in the upper reaches of the Las Palmas subdivision near Salinas would appear to be comfortable if not idyllic.

That's what attracted Angie and Loyde Inlow, a health consultant and doctor who bought their 3,700-square foot home about three years ago on a canyon hillside in the Prestancia Ranch section of Las Palmas. But the past few months have been anything but stress-free for the Inlows.

They've butted heads with the development's homeowners association over planting a strip of fresh sod behind their fence and, since March, over plans to add a second, two-car garage and second-floor game room to their two-story home.

"People on the board are very controlling. They believe what they say goes, period," Loyde Inlow said, sitting in the living room while his wife held their 6-month old daughter, Sierra. "Not everyone has been following the rules. It's very hypocritical."

They tell stories of aerial photos being taken of the offending strip of sod, of keeping an eye on neighbors with binoculars, of rules being changed arbitrarily, of hard feelings among neighbors on the block overlooking the Salinas Valley. They've hired a lawyer.

"We don't want purple houses instead of tan and beige. We don't want storage of cars in front yards to make it look like Prunedale," Angie Inlow said. "But when you start enforcing rules for only certain people, it falls apart."

Their neighbor Michael Boylan, a stockbroker and association board member, defends the homeowners association in general, but believes the Inlows are caught in the middle of "a power play and confusion."

"Some people do things without getting permission, and other people get (grief). It's not right," Boylan said.

The flap on Prestancia Circle -- a U-shaped, hillside road with about 30 beige and tan, tile-roofed homes worth about $1 million apiece -- is emblematic of a major change in the way millions of U.S. homeowners find their neighborhoods governed.

Decisions about landscaping, plumbing systems or raising fees to repair roads increasingly are the province of homeowner associations, rather than local city or county governments.

In California, 8 million of the state's 35 million residents -- nearly one-fourth -- live in housing units governed by private, corporation-style homeowner associations. Nationwide, 50 million Americans live under private residential rules, ranging from the setting of appropriate home colors to the size of acceptable pets.

"Practically nothing is being built without common-interest developments," said Oliver Burford, executive director of the Executive Council of Homeowners, a San Jose educational group for homeowner associations. "It is a growing trend."

Residents take up costs|

Many cities push for the creation of housing with homeowner associations to shift the costs of infrastructure and services -- from roads and streetlights to parking enforcement and garbage collection -- to residents rather than general taxpayers, Burford said.

Planned unit developments like Las Palmas, condominiums and cooperatives are the main types of common interest developments, or CIDs, governed by homeowner associations.

CIDs make up only about 16 percent of the housing on the Central Coast -- from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara County, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Their heaviest concentrations are in San Diego and Sacramento, where they account for 42 percent of housing. Planned unit developments are the fastest-growing housing type in California, increasing by 84 percent since 1985.

For the most part, homeowner associations work well, Burford said.

"My best estimate is that with 95 percent there is decent dialogue between boards and members, and the members who live in the association are happy as a lark," he said. "There is a scattered 5 percent where things go from bad to worse."

Avoiding 'dictatorships'|

Those isolated associations can produce vivid black eyes, he said, such as when one bans a resident from flying a U.S. flag at the start of the Iraq war, or another forecloses on an elderly couple's home over $120 in overdue association fees.

"There are probably some out there that are dictatorships," Burford said. But the biggest problems facing many associations are finding board volunteers and understanding all the laws on associations.

"In many cases, boards do or don't do things out of complete ignorance," he said. "The last thing most people want to do is become a dictator, whether benevolent or evil."

But in a few cases, homeowner association rules have reached almost absurd levels:

• In Boca Raton, Fla., an association held a court-ordered weigh-in of a resident's dog to make sure the dog didn't exceed a 30-pound limit.

• In Santa Ana, a 51-year-old woman was warned by her condominium board about kissing a friend good night in her driveway.

• A Washington, D.C., condominium board banned the possession or use of "Barry Manilow records, tapes or CDs."

Several bills prompted by negative stories about homeowner associations are pending in the California Legislature. Two would prevent rapid foreclosures for overdue association fees. Another would require secret ballots for all association elections. Another would require associations to make financial records more open to members.

"Probably some of the complaints by homeowners are justified," Burford said. Some associations operate too secretly or violate their own rules. "That leads to dissidence," he said.

Few problems around county|

Judging from a shortage of high-profile disputes, homeowner associations in Monterey County appear to be handling their duties without rubbing too many homeowners the wrong way.

"There has never been a firestorm," said county Supervisor Dave Potter, who represents much of the Monterey Peninsula and Carmel Valley.

Many local associations are potent players in neighborhood land-use debates, but county officials recall only a couple of internal disputes pitting associations against members.

About six years ago, a Carmel-area association fought with a homeowner who had painted his home light blue with decorative designs of white urns. In another case, the county had to pay for a new roof for a Toro Park homeowner whose county-approved roof violated the neighborhood's design rules.

But county planning manager Dale Ellis said such stories are few and far between with local homeowner associations.

"We have seen few of those kinds of problems," he said.

When associations are run well, Ellis said, they provide a real value in keeping neighborhoods up.

"A good one is a tremendous help," Ellis said. "If someone has a problem with a neighbor parking on his lawn, an association might be able to do something. We could never do anything about it."

Sharan Jackson, a Monterey property manager, helps run associations in several Monterey Peninsula communities. Aside from a few flare-ups over the location of satellite television dishes, her associations conduct their affairs in fairly low-key ways, she said.

"They are not aggressive on sending anyone to collection," Jackson said. "All my boards are very concerned about their individual homeowners."

Bill Phillips, a Monterey real estate broker, just finished managing a 140-member condominium association. The biggest problem wasn't a power-hungry board, but filling seats on the board, he said.

"It's a true democracy. Anyone can run for the board," Phillips said. "But people don't want to get involved."

Homeowner association board members must serve without pay, and the job entails a certain amount of grief.

"Any time you are enforcing rules you are going to be the bad guy," Phillips said.

Neighbor vs. neighbor?|

Some people inevitably will chafe under rules set down by a homeowners association, Burford said.

"For a staunch believer in the 'my home is my castle' way of thinking, a homeowner association might not be the right thing," he said.

To the Inlows, the Las Palmas homeowners associations -- there is one master association, and a dozen others for different parts of the subdivision -- amount to a good idea being distorted by petty, personality conflicts.

They agree with rules against cars parking on the streets, barking dogs, basketball hoops left in driveways, and the like. But they can't fathom why their strip of sod ran afoul of rule enforcers, while neighbors have planted trees and other landscaping in similar spots.

"It's not neighborly -- feuding with neighbors," Angie Inlow said. "The association ends up with a little bit of power, and then threatens to put a lien on our property.

"It's supposed to be an association of homeowners, not a vigilante group," she said.

A Las Palmas association official referred a reporter to the group's attorney, who said he wouldn't comment on the Inlow case.
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