CC&R's Have ACC but NO HOA. Questions & Help Please!

Hi all,

I live in a small neighborhood (20 homes) that was first developed about 18 years ago. We still have many of the original owners but as of late we have had some things happening around the neighborhood that have given a good deal of the community pause (developer moved in next door and might be building, more and more rentals and a couple of homeowners who don't seem to believe in the nature of a well-kept home/yard, etc. Our street has always been pretty nice and the neighbors have always pretty much gotten along aside from a few dramas but things are changing. The streets in front and back of our neighborhood with no HOAs and looking worse and worse and it has dawned on many of us that all it takes is one person to move in and start a real downfall. And we're afraid we might already have a couple of those! To make a long story short, our CC&R's run with the land for 30 years with successive 10 year periods after that but when the developer of our subdivision left, he never appointed 4 homeowners to the ACC as laid out in the covenants. The ACC was the only body spoken of or given any power to enforce anything (no mention of an HOA or association and no dues, assessments, etc. as we don't have any common areas to care for particularly). Due to the goings on lately, we many of the homeowners bounced around the idea of trying to start up and HOA but of course we quickly found out you need 100% participation for that. As the covenants clearly intended for an ACC to be set up and to at the very least have some control over the look of the neighborhood including the yard upkeep and fences, buildings etc., we visited an HOA lawyer here who reviewed the documents and suggested that we go forward with setting it up by getting enough owners on board and then nominating and electing the ACC members. Almost all of the owners are wanting this aside from a few who -- ironically -- are actually the problem people in the neighborhood so the support looks to be there. We understand that this won't have the same legal bite as an HOA but we are hopeful with a "strength in numbers" position, we might be a little better off than we could be with nothing which is what we have right now. We're more interested in preserving the neighborhood against what might happen down the line vs. what has been going on, although there are certainly some things that we wish could be enforced and cleaned up.

Regardless, the lawyer mentioned that we could do a petition to get the owner signatures but I have a couple of questions about that process that I'm hoping you all might be able to guide me with.

1) Would a petition be the best way to handle this? As a neighborhood and at a meeting recently we talked about having a vote to see if there was enough support to activate the ACC so if we change that to a petition instead, would that make it less legal or anything? Especially with the neighbors that we know won't be signing the petition.

2) Is there such a thing as a petition where you could still take it to EVERY owner and they could sign and check a Yes Or No as in for or against so everyone could feel as if they had their say?

3) Finally, we have a couple of owners that are out of state so how should handle that legally? They both want the ACC back in action so getting the support isn't an issue but we just want to make sure we do it correctly.

I guess the only other question then would be once we do whatever we end up doing to get the signatures, what would the next steps be? We do understand it's a long road and enforcement is questionable at best, but just having a group that cares about the neighborhood and at the very least tries to keep it up and looking it's best and appears to be organized seems to give a lot of the neighbors some comfort. We have some senior citizens and I think they are the most worried, of course.

I thank you for any and all input and guidance.
The state for this is Idaho.

No, the only "group" of any mention is the ACC. It seems as if when the developer put the whole deal together, they basically saw the ACC as some type of association but they never used the word HOA or Association so it basically leaves us with our only option as using the ACC even though it doesn't have the same legal bite. It feels a bit as if they left us out to dry with the way its worded but I guess we should be happy it had something vs. nothing.

Thanks very much for your reply. I'm not sure I was very clear about some of this but we know that we can't have an actual HOA. However, two lawyers (including a top HOA lawyer in the state) reviewed the CC&R documents and both said that as long as there were a certain amount of owners who wished to "reactivate" the ACC as was intended, we could nominate and elect the set amount of owners for the ACC without having an HOA (they both also said although unusual, we do not need to have an HOA to have an ACC and we do not need to incorporate). Bottom line is, we all know that we won't have the same legal ability as an actual HOA but it will allow the neighborhood to protect itself a little more than we can right now and try to see that the CC&Rs are upheld to whatever degree we can. We were also told that if set up and run correctly and fairly/consistently, we may be afforded a little more "legal standing" in the future should we need it. More info: There are no dues or assessments being asked for nor are we asking for any amendments to be able to fine anyone.

Whatever the case, my question actually pertained more to the process of collecting the owner signatures legally and correctly just to have some documentation of the number of owners who want to have the ACC in place (almost all of them). I am in no way at all saying any of this is absolutely correct but both lawyers that reviewed this are well respected and one of them works for a very large community association firm and practices this type of law exclusively so I would hope that we wouldn't be being led down the wrong path! You never, know, however! It's also the reason I came here to ask about the petition process vs. ballots etc. or for any other ideas in terms of the neighborhood nominating and electing the committee members.

Those are very interesting! Thank you for sharing. Thankfully our covenants don't require any additional restrictions...they cover pretty much everything our neighborhood cares about, although they definitely could be updated at some point to get rid of some things that no longer apply like the old satellite stuff. But baby steps at this point i guess.

Ok, so is there anyone that has any experience with petitions here or does anyone know who I could contact about that process? Is there a National association that can answer questions somewhere? As I mentioned, almost all of the neighbors want to have their ACC in place and we were told a petition with owner signatures would be a good start to getting that done but I am still unsure how to use a petition when we have couple of out of state owners. Would it be better to have actual ballots with a "for" or "opposed" along with signatures and a lot #? Can a neighborhood without an association even vote on an issue and have it mean anything?

Again, thank you to all of you who have commented. Really appreciated.