Banning Sex Offenders just got interesting in Michigan

If you are an HOA in Michigan, and you have or hope to have a ban/code/regulation that prohibits sex offenders from living in your neighborhood, your life and enforcement just got tough.

Michigan law now states that having an affair (ie, committing adultery, having sex outside a marriage while you are married), is a felony, first degree criminal sexual conduct, and punishable by up to life in prison.

I predict a LOT of empty houses in HOA's up there, if they have registry rules/laws.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070115/COL04/701150333&&imw=Y

Brian,

Are you implying that there may be adulterous affairs going on in community associations in Michigan? I don't think the board members on the west side of the state would allow that. However, it may be true in the upper peninsula.

Don, since the law is already on the Michigan books, should the proposed new POA legislation give the boards the power to regulate it....maybe something similar to an ACC committee, so they would have to get permission prior to having an affair, maybe even a filing fee, or fines, if you do so without permission?

Joe

I think we would all be surprised at how many laws are on the books from many, many years ago that today seem ridiculous. There is a place where it is illegal to eat ice cream on a Sunday, I am glad I don't live there.

I know, I was just having some fun. What the others don't know about the article was the point that the it was the Attorney General's office which appealed a lower court decision that forced the Appeals Judge to deal with this older law about adultery, and that the Attorney General had admitted to an affair just last year, and, since his office forced the issue, would make the AG guilty of a felony in Michigan. The irony gets lost if you didn't know that.

It's sort of like dealing with the nuisance and morals clauses that find their way into condo and HOA documents. They look like a ridiculous intrusion into personal lives. But, when a neighbor gets a little crazy, you sometimes wish they were enforcable.

A side story just to lighten your day. My first job with a condo was as a resident manager of a small complex on the beautiful island of Grosse Ile in the Detroit River. My wife and I lived in the clubhouse and our bedroom overlooked the swimming pool. The pool closed each night at 8PM, but periodically I would hear splashing and have to go remind someone to go home and sober up. One night my wife awakened me to let me know someone was splashing around in the pool. I dragged myself out the side door and flipped on the floodlights---only to find my Board president and her husband skinny-dipping in the pool. As I thought about my new job disappearing, like they were trying to do under water, I at least had the presence of mind to propose an accomodation -- if she promised not to make my life miserable, I wouldn't send a citation letter to the board, as she had recently taken me to task for not doing regarding the other late night swimmers (I would have asked for a raise, but I had drafted the budget and knew the money wasn't there) and we reached an agreement.

Moral - it would be nice if someone's activities that create an intrusion into your life, could be easily solved by reaching an accomodation with them (it helps if you can blackmail them), but that's not always possible. The unanswerable question is whether the association should have any role in dealing with it, given that the other enforcement agencies seem so disinclined to enforce local nuisance or moral issues, and when individuals try to resolve them, they often turn violent. We've forgotten how to deal with each other, and, in the absence of state involvement, have turned to untrained volunteers and shaky rules to step in.

Joe