Why the OCOC Cannot Help Residents Very Much

UPDATE: Regarding the first photo, above. In the summer of 2021, the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection looked into the situation and reclaimed the blue recycle bins, a number of which were broken. Nobody returned the unbroken recycle bins to residents. Nobody returned the "confiscated" trash receptacles to the residents, which is their personal property. The trash cans may still be in there, unless the HOA has discarded them. -SL

QUESTION: A neighbor has written to me, "Appealing to the county's OCOC sounds like it would be the final, desperation-level escalation of a process that would involve the Quail Valley HOA board working with its [hired property management company] to make sure they understand their responsibilities and are accountable to do a better job, perhaps at the prompting of activists like yourself. I would like to know to what extent that direct 'mediation and negotiation' [between you and the HOA] has occurred."

RESPONSE: Yes, I need to explain better, in this blog series, what my experience has been. My general aim is to report the experiences of other residents (and post some relevant documents), but my own involvement should be clear here.

First, we should review the acronyms we are using, the "alphabet soup":
OCOC - The county's Office on Common Ownership Communities "is committed to providing owners, tenants, residents, boards of directors, and management companies of self-governing residential communities with information, assistance, and impartial dispute resolution program." It's staff, including a legal advisor, provide assistance to the . . .
CCOC - The Commission on Common Ownership Communities, 15 volunteers who aim "to increase property values and improve the quality of life in common ownership communities."
HOA - Homeowner Associations collect a tax (the "monthly assessment," $88.25 per month from each townhouse here in Quail Valley), establish "architectural guidelines," and recommend vendors to provide some services like mowing the common lawns and operating the pool and community center. HOAs are our most local level of government, and they enforce local rules. For example, when I called about a neighbor who was behaving badly, feeding rats in his backyard by placing piles of dog food on the ground, the county's Department of Health and Human Services did not take action. DHHS says that I must call my HOA to get assistance with this problem.

Second, I wish to acknowledge the public service done by the staff of the OCOC and especially the 15 citizen volunteers who serve on the Commission, the CCOC. They give enormous amounts of time and life energy striving to not only resolve disputes, but to teach all of us how to resolve disputes ourselves: focusing on evidence (not personalities), knowing the rules and laws (not wishful thinking), and listening carefully to what each person says.

Third, I wish to explain my disappointment with the outcome of my case submitted to the OCOC. Complaints like mine are first considered by a three-person "hearing panel," not by the full commission. I filed my complaint (there's a $50 fee) in December 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. In May 2021, the head commissioner (acting as a mediator) met with QV HOA President Steve Drake, the property manager, and me via Zoom, in a mediation session, which was CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC. The precise records of that are confidential.

After more than an hour of discussion, the mediator offered to hold an all-community Zoom session, advertised with emails and a flier placed in every door of the 592 homes in Quail Valley. At this virtual "town hall," the residents could openly discuss any grievances.

I rejected this offer for four reasons:

(1) We already have Zoom meetings at which residents can (and do) complain. It's called the monthly Quail Valley HOA board meeting. (Attendance is growing since I started posting these blogs.) By the way, good ideas for improving life in QV are also floated at these meetings, not just complaints.

(2) A kindly citizen who had been through this process before advised me that THE ONLY WAY for my complaint to be heard BY THE WHOLE COMMISSION and IN PUBLIC was for me to reject the mediator's offer. This is not common knowledge, and I cannot find it printed anywhere. I want transparent government, and this is not it. I want my complaints to be discussed and debated in public and before a higher authority than the HOA board of directors, which is not acting wisely or compassionately. I think examples of HOA abuse of residents ought to be of high interest to the commission.

(3) I paid $70 for the records of the spring inspections that would list every property address cited with a "property violation" and state what the problem was. I received half the data. In writing, I asked the CCOC to intervene and require the HOA to provide all of us with all of the data--listing the violations from all the courts and streets, not half of them. The public, the residents deserve to know. (Another possibility is that the property management did not inspect all of the properties.) The CCOC failed to fulfill my reasonable request–or to provide clarity in the matter. The residents pay for this "service," for these inspections. Nobody in the mediation room knows what we are talking about if we do not know the scope of the inspections and what was cited. This is not transparency in government. The mediation thus became a sham. The QV HOA negotiates in bad faith, and the OCOC is feckless.

(4) Hello. I will negotiate with you after you take the heel of your boot off my neck. The HOA's "worst practice" of confiscating residents garbage cans fuels a rodent problem, demoralizes residents, wrecks HOA-resident relations, and is the shame of our neighborhood. This is not a matter for a genteel discussion in a Zoom meeting. The practice must cease immediately, and the HOA must return the garbage cans (that are now sitting in the dark in the barn) to the residents. The fact that a physically disabled person must pay $50 to have their trash receptacle returned to them may be a violation of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act. I fear that our HOA board of directors, has made the whole association (we, the residents) vulnerable to a lawsuit, which could lead to yet another costly loss in a court of law.

In short, I did not want a one-shot Zoom meeting where a few, brave residents can begin to voice their complaints, with a CCOC mediator serving as MC. I wanted, and still want, an immediate end to the abuse. A process of amends needs to follow, in which unreasonable debts (perhaps illegal debts, having been imposed by the HOA during a pandemic in this nation) are cancelled. Future property inspections should focus on issues of house & yard maintenance & safety, not whether flower pots are missing their flowers in the month of December.

Been There. Done That.
In the end, my complaint did not go before the whole commission. It was dismissed. Thus, do not have confidence that any further effort at mediation or negotiation under the guidance of OCOC will have a useful result.

Good luck finding any record of my complaint in OCOC records. I think there's a single line of text, somewhere, online. Again, a summary of my complaint (and proposed solutions!) of December 2020 is below; my whole complaint (with illustrations and examples, some of which have been repeated in these "Living on Cuckoo Court" blogs) is 20 pages. Write to me for a copy.

A different dispute, discussed on that same day in May, involved whether a wall (condo unit on one side, hallway on the other) had to be cleaned of mold by the homeowner, or by the owner of the building. The CCOC was able to handle that one.

DEP also Turns a Blind Eye
Concerning our bins sitting like forgotten bones lying in the eerie shadows of the cow barn, I should add that the county's Department of Environmental Protection looked into the matter, reclaimed blue recycling bins from out of the barn (stating that many were broken), but did not step in to return unbroken bins to residents or to return our trash cans to us. That's rather disappointing. I guess HOA procedures trump county health codes, and rats run free in Quail Valley. We would like our trash receptacles to be set free instead. Where can residents turn to for help? The courts? The press?

UPDATE (Added 9/24/2021): In the article "HOA Lawsuits: A Reality Check," you can read about Regulatory Window Dressing. "Elected officials give the appearance of doing something to rein in excessive power and abuse of HOAs, without really doing anything at all."

"After following legal cases and communicating with owners all over the U.S., a pattern emerges. That pattern is that the association digs in their heels and does everything in their power to shift blame to the victim(s) of their abuse. The association must never admit fault, as it might undermine their credibility and authority."

The Hard Work of Reform
Today, I loop county and state elected officials into these conversations and petitions. Senator Van Hollen as well. County councilors must intervene to end the HOA's attacks on our homes and our bank accounts. State elected officials must begin the arduous process of reforming the laws, written in the 1980s, that give dangerous powers to HOAs without the healthy checks and balances that any local government should operate under. And yes, we residents must step up and elect a better HOA board of directors as the slots open up, year after year. We need an HOA board who will choose a better property management company.

Locally and nationally, we are well into a crisis of housing insecurity and economic distress. The COVID-19 pandemic is not over. I did not plan on spending my retirement shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors, on the sidewalks, fighting this particular issue of social and economic justice, but here we are. It is not a bad place to be.

** *************************************** **

This is the summary that appeared on my OCOC complaint. [recent additions in brackets]. The complaint process is described here. The HOA's fake "property violations" against my property during COVID (e.g., "stains on concrete" –caused by the cherries from the neighbor's tree; and "shed does not match house color" –there's no requirement that a PLASTIC shed match the house) now seem trivial compared with what my neighbors suffered at the hands of the HOA during the epidemic.

STEVE LAPHAM Dec 2020. Muskratmusic@gmail.com. 18737 Purple Martin Lane, Gaithersburg, MD 20879

THE COMPLAINTS: During a Covid-19 pandemic and economic recession, the HOA seizes [and “disappears”] residents’ trash receptacles in violation of ADA, state and county health codes, property law, and common community professional best practices (CCAV, FCAR). [There are more than 20 receptacles sitting now in the barn, in the dark.] The HOA also punishes hundreds of families with usurious, erroneous, frivolous, and burdensome property “violation” notices that are costly to residents, as they result in hours of follow-up, trips to the hardware and possible exposure to the Covid-19 virus, damaged credit ratings, threats of lien, and possibly eviction. The notices cause fear and confusion among residents. The HOA has lost records of past AC [Architectural Change] approvals, and the HOA punishes residents for this problem.

THE PROPOSED SIMPLE, LOW-COST SOLUTIONS:

1. The HOA returns residents’ property (trash receptacles) to the residents immediately. In the future, if a resident has failed to return his can to his back yard, the HOA can stick a big, ugly, colorful sticker on the can or recycle bin—as the county does—to educate people about proper trash disposal. Our sign could say, “Return your trash can to your back yard as soon as it is emptied. Do not leave it on the common lawn,” in English, Spanish, and perhaps other languages. (Let’s do a community survey about languages.)

2. The HOA cancels all property “violations” from 2020 and all previous years that might have been answered by past records of AC change approval, which have been lost.

3. The HOA cancels all property “violations” from 2020 and all previous years that do not address dangers or serious material deterioration.

CCAV, https://www.caionline.org/pages/default.aspx

FCAR, https://foundation.caionline.org/