Apathy Preventing Amendments to Governing Documents

I am sure this is not an issue exclusive to our HOA. We are a single family HOA in SC with 422 lot owners (members). Our documents require 2/3 vote of the total votes in the Association (281votes) to pass any Amendment to our Declaration or By Laws. Proposed amendments are voted on along with our BOD election at our annual membership meeting. The notice of meeting includes a proxy/ballot for members to cast their votes on the BOD election and the proposed amendments. The issue is that we never get a sufficient number of ballots returned to pass an amendment. Over the past several years the highest number of ballots returned was 221, well short of the 281 required.

All of the amendments proposed were thoughtful and would improve our Association operation but could never pass due to an apathetic membership failing to participate in the process. I am considering offering an amendment to change our present requirements - maybe a majority of the total votes in the Association - maybe 75% of the total votes cast.

Amending HOA documents is a serious matter and should require a reasonable threshold of votes in order to pass. I am of the opinion that the votes of those members who participate should bear strong consideration in deciding an amendment (if you don't vote, don't complain!!). Yet, the threshold of votes required to pass should be high.

Any experience in this type of issue will be greatly appreciated.

And yes, I realize that passing this amendment will still require the 281 votes that we have never gotten before!!

Bill,

I'm expecting to face something similar. Due to a high quorum requirement, my Association has not had a quorum at the annual meeting in the past 20+ years.

We are drafting a whole new set of bylaws which, among other things, will correct the high quorum requirement.
However, we also need to meet the quorum requirement before we can vote for a new one.

Our Board chose to also include an amendment to the covenants to allow the board to raise assessments (right now it takes a membership vote).
We are hoping that any amendment addressing higher assessments will get the membership to participate.

We will also keep track of proxies and plan to go door to door as needed to ask if the member will attend and if not, please complete a proxy form while we wait.

I am not on the board but am a homeowner in an HOA community of almost 250 units in California. I attend the meetings, vote, follow the regulations, pay my dues on time and pay attention. Since, I've been here for almost 5 years, our elections have failed to meet quorum, consequently, the board is the same. They don't answer questions, don't communicate effectively and they don't conduct the meetings (the PM does and he is arrogant, rude and mutes people in our zoom meetings) We now are in a predicament to purchase property insurance but it is unaffordable. The insurance problems started 2 years ago and we"ve had to pay an assessment for lesser insurance (but with a premium that was increased 800%.) The board wants to change our CC&R's so they do not have to purchase full insurance and can remove EQ insurance. If the CC&R's are not amended, we each will have to pay a $5600.00 assessment. Only 6% of our community attended the meeting in which this topic was discussed and no agenda was issued prior to the meeting. Few homeowners know this and the minutes will be received in 30 days. Our insurance needs to be effective May 1. To date, no ballot has been mailed and in the past, the last ballot took 1 week to be received. The election failed after 5 months. We barely reached 25% votes and needed 51%. The clock is ticking? What can I do as a homeowner? I have no confidence in this board to get this done and in record time.

Apathy in the membership works very well to reject any amendment to the governing documents. In our HOA, the CCR's require a super majority vote, but the Bylaws require only a majority vote of the membership present at the annual meeting. Because of the low bar, we find it quite easy to get bylaw amendments passed, and will often have one or two on the ballot each year. For CCR amendments, it is nearly impossible to get members or proxies present for a quorum much less getting an assenting vote on anything. I actually have become resigned to the political fact that it can't be done in our situation. In some regards, it is good that CCR's can't be passed without a super majority -- they represent a durable property right that gets enshrined in our property deeds. These rights really shouldn't be changed except with overwhelming community consensus. I must admit that I find it very restricting in your case with Bylaws not allowed to be amended except in this fashion. I would find that impossible to manage and quite untenable. I am hopeful that this post will receive many more replies because I'm curious about how others would deal with this situation.

We are 51% for Bylaw changes and 2/3rds for Covenant changes. I feel these %'s are appropriate.

Having just retired from board service, but having been the lead in restating our 20 y.o CC&Rs my last year of Board service, I worked with the Board to convince our members to vote to approve our restated CC&Rs starting at the end of 2021. We needed 67% approval and 25% of owners are off-site landlords. It took a LOT of hard work by the 6 directors & me.

We campaigned for 5 months and our inspectors of election tabulated all secret in-person & mail-in ballots in 4/22 at a meeting. We only achieved 63% approval, but CA permits HOAs that show evidence they they tried really hard to get enough votes to seek help from the courts IF they achieved a simple majority. The judge ruled in our favor. (I believe we could have gotten the 67% if we'd tried a little longer, but, honestly, we all were burned out.)

We're 200+ Multi-story condo units so much smaller than yours, BillB. I'm very slow at getting things done but will write a list of the steps we took to get such a favorable outcome.

But, First, how do owners vote in SC? Must they attend meetings in person? Absentee voting makes it easier to achieve quorum and enough votes. But I don't know if owners can vote that way in SC. If not, I assume you must get proxies about which I know nothing, but clearly that requires door-to-door campaigning.

Next, what % of owners live off site?

In Calif. and maybe elsewhere, HOA resources may not be used to promote a particular vote, but may be used to promote voting in general. So, in newsletters, eblasts, our PM only urged owners to vote. Period. We individuals who campaigned used our own labor & funds (if any) to campaign for a vote of approval.

This was a complete restatement. None of our amendments were controversial except one and then only for few voters: The new CC&Rs ban smoking everywhere on our premises including in our condo units.

To comply with CA statute, we could only limit short-term rentals to a 30-day minimum, but that’s far better than not limiting them at all so it was a winning section.(We're within 6 blocks of a major convention center, big league sports venue, big outdoor concert venue, Nice-sized theater/playhouse, & historical district of 50+ restaurants)

Many of our steps were still in our owners' protected website. Oh, no--new MC dumped a lot of the older memos, so I'm working from memory. Here are the steps I recall we took.

1. Well attended Town Hall hosted by our president and HOA attorney. Reasons for restatement presented & discussed. Q&A. Pasttie, coffee & waters available
A. Delete confusing “developer language”
B. Add, delete or reword sections mandated by state statutes, which had changed a lot over 20 years.
C. Lenders MUCH prefer up-to-date CC&Rs
D. Eliminate ambiguities
E. Add a Maintenance Matrix as an "Exhibit" to clarify owners’ obligations & the HOA’s obligations to repair/replace. Too vague in original CC&Rs.
F. Tendencies & changes in the larger society, e.g.,limiting smoking materials
G. Entirely new sections, e.g., EV charging stations

2. Summarize results of TH; summarize each change (1 page) & eblast memo to owners. Invite further comments/ questions Attach redline version showing each major changes & clean version.

3. 2nd TH w/attorney--final Q&A. Also snacks and well-attended.

4. Article in monthly newsletter by president. Send out secret ballots.

5. 210+ units divvied into 7 “precincts.” Each director & I ("captains") chose ways to best reach each unit owner. I relied mainly on emails and colorful brief flyers at certain doors. I spoke on the phone with maybe 6 owners. Others campaigned by phone & text. One captain US mailed a very nice letter to his absentee owners. Our PM updated us very Friday re: who voted so we could adjust our lists. (Ballots, by statute, remain sealed till election night)

6. At St. Patrick's Day social event, about 12 weeks into campaign, the president announced we’d hold a drawing; all who voted in any given week were eligible for $100 prize. Notice on elevators & sent to owners.

7 About 16 weeks into the campaign, all absentee owners, who hadn’t voted were sent a new ballot with a stamp on the envelope that voters were required to use to return ballots. VERY successful!

8. Snippet of verbiage in our attorney-written letter to the court: "After having taken significant steps in an effort to get the vote out, the Board met with the Inspectors of Election on April 26, 2022, to open the ballots. A total of 151 ballots out of a possible 213 members were returned. Out of this total, 134 voted in favor of the restated CC&Rs and 17 against, so the restated CC&Rs failed to achieve the required 67% approval or 143 'yes' votes. [9 votes short!] However, approximately sixty-four percent (64%) of the membership voted in favor of the restated CC&Rs. Therefore, in an effort to implement the much needed restated CC&Rs, the Association filed a Petition to Reduce Required Voting Percentage, requesting the Court reduce the percentage of affirmative votes necessary to amend the CC&Rs consistent with the authority set forth by Civil Code section 4275."

There's a lot here but I see a fair amount of interest in this topic so went into perhaps tooooo much detail. I'll add another reply questioning whether "apathy" is the reasons it's hard to get out the vote.

Any luck, Krista????

Bottom line is it will take hard work from a dedicated group to bring about change. One cannot wish for it. One has to work for it. It is also possible to have an attorney draw up a petition(s) to collect signatures over a period of time to make change(s).

Here is another suggestion. I kind of think the HOA rules as "out of sight out of mind". One of the things I did is bring a copy of the documents to EVERY meeting. If someone asked a question, could get them out to reference the answer. If needed more research, then would tell them we need to review the documents before giving an answer. If we wrote a violation letter, we would quote the rule. That way people could SEE this was coming from an actual resource.

If you put it out there, they know not just grabbing stuff out of the air. There are solid documents to reference. This also plants a seed when they read them to see something to change. Once you spark that want for change, then you will gather more with that same spark. Eventually it will flame till the process is done. Good luck!

Promise to give $100 to each person that votes IF and only if you achieve an 80% turn out rate, Or hire door knockers off task rabbit or other gig/task website. You just have to pay people to get involved.

Since we did in the last few weeks of our campaign have a drawing every week for new voters with the winner collecting $100 each week, it really did help us collect more secret ballots.

For HOAs where voting must take place in person (or by proxy), a nice array of prizes could be in a drawing held after the ballots were tabulated. It's in the very best interests of the association amend their old CC&Rs and using HOA resources to get out the vote is imo, very wise.

Though 98% of our votes are sent in or turned in before the annual meeting, we have good turnout anyway. The Social Committee provides nice apps & wine & waters. Our HOA attorney attended fields questions from owners while tabulation is occurring. The attorney also could be present at the CC&R approval meeting and was at ours.

"Door knockers" wouldn't work because owners very well could have questions or concerns that such strangers couldn't possibly answer.

I never circled back to my claim that "apathy" might not the only or even major reason why owners don't vote. In my previous post I wrote that many non-voters with whom I interacted seeking their vote expressed concern that they didn't understand the new CC&R. They were afraid they'd "miss something" when reviewing the 80+ pages of text + several pages of two Exhibits.

While the Board in '22 that sought votes was upfront, transparent, respectful of owners, & welcoming of owners to open board meetings, an abusive, secretive Board, who'd be thrown out by voters at the end of '19, was still on the minds of some. IMO, some voters felt they could not trust the Board to be "fair" to Owners. Not surprisingly this was a concern of voters who normally don't attend monthly open board meetings, i.e., voters who did not "know" the current Board.

Always check applicable statutes first, they may or may not allow such a change.

A couple votes short of what? Reducing the percentage to 51% or amending your rental restriction?

I'll repeat what I said upthread. If you drop this percentage to get amendments you like, you're also dropping the percentage to get amendments you won't like. (It's like the filibuster. It's great if you have it, it's not great if the other guy has it.)

You're also lowering the number of units a corporate investor needs to snap up in order to convert your community to entirely rental property. My community is trying this right now, and since there is no chance that the board will get the rental restriction they want, they're simply lowering the drawbridge and inviting in the "barbarian hordes".

For the life of me, I can't understand why the board doesn't see this.

Ditto CathyA3's statement about how lowering the percentage to amend facilitates investor takeover.