HOA Code of Conduct in Rules & Regulations (long)

Hello all. No, I'm not dead. As several of you suggested back when, I've been taking a mental health break. I resigned as President last December but I'm still on the Board until the next Annual Meeting (August?).

To recap: I'm in Texas and I'm a Board member in a neighborhood HOA that has about 600 single family detached homes.

Recently our attorney suggested that we add a Code of Conduct (CoC) to our Rules and Regulations. I am generally in agreement that people shouldn't be jerks to each other. But there are parts of the suggested CoC that frankly scare me:

- There doesn't seem to be any process or oversight.
- It seems like the Board gets to decide guilt, innocence, or simply whether or not to do anything.
- There does not seem to be any way to hold a hearing or any way to appeal.
- Does this code apply outside of the neighborhood? Outside of Texas? Outside of the country?
- It is not difficult to imagine situations where this could be used for some really serious harassment.
- A lot of the provisions are redundant with the CC&Rs - noise for instance.
- Note that this particular Code of Conduct allows monetary penalties.
- And I doubt half of this stuff is actually legal.

I've searched this forum for past discussions, and yes, I agree that these Codes seem rather worthless. However, the fact that this one would be incorporated into the Rules & Regs and inflict monetary penalties is a new one on me.

I'd like to strongly suggest - somehow - that the other board members not vote to approve this. And I'd like to go back to the attorney and ask for something a bit simpler and gentler - I think our attorney delegated this CoC to an assistant and hasn't really looked it over. I don't think I can count on the other Board members to objectively evaluate this CoC. I'm not certain how to approach the attorney, either.

Your thoughts? Am I just being paranoid?

Thank you,

Bill

[My apologies for the "Irish Goodbye" - 'tapering off' didn't work back when I quit smoking, and it didn't work for this, either. And I wouldn't be here now except something came up that genuinely scares me]

The suggested CoC from our attorney is:

SECTION XYZ - CODE OF CONDUCT

For the beneit of all residents, and in the interest ofallowing residents to both expres their opiions and peaceably enjoy their property andcommon areas, the Board of Director has adoted this Code of Conduct as an Association ule.

This Code of Conduct provides hat Assciation officers and directors, owners, resdents, and guests must conduct themseles ina civil, non-intimidating, and non-threatenng manner when dealing with the Associaton’ agents (including without limitation its oficers, directors, committee members, manae and other management company agents, emploees, contractors, independent contractor seice providers, and other agents), as well a other owners, residents, and guests. No peso has the right to abuse, disturb, or unresonably annoy another, nor does any person ave duty to tolerate abuse or unreasonableannoyance or disturbance.

1. Prohibited coduct. he following conduct is expressly proibited between or among any of the
above-decribed prties:
a. ursing or profnity;
b. verbal abuse, including yelling, ame-calling,or similar;
c. insults, derogatry name-calling, or demeaning comments;
d. use of slurs of a naure that is racial, ethnic, religious, sexul orientation-reated, or gender-related;
e.behavior that a person of ordinary sensibilties would find inimidating, aggressive or hreatening;
f. hostile or unwanted touching physical contact, o threats of physical cotact;
g. sexual harassment or lewd behavior
h. sexually suggestiv language or other laguage that is likely to be offensive to a prson of
ordinary sensibiities;
i. photographing, recording,or video-taping residents, guests, or agent of the Asociation
without their express cosent*;
j. posting ay item, including correspondence, on the dors of any other resident o anywhere in the ommunity without express written permissionfrom the Board, and placing ny item in the rea of the door(s) of any other resident oranywhere else in the communityother than ina resident’s own property;
k. correspondenc, whether oral, written, or elecronic, thatis deemed in the Board’s or manager’s sole iscretion to be harassing or intimdating (te Board and/or manager may without limitatin consider the tone, time, and frequncy of orrespondence, and whether previous reply hs been given to similar correspondence in dtermining whether correspondence is harassig or intimidating);
l. publicly posting n ay forum (by way of example and not limitatin: via internet, text, mail, paper flyer) n comment, statement or remark about an Assoiation employee, officer, director or reprentative that is or may be reasonably interpeted as defamatory, threatening, harassing,orintimidating;
m. calling, texting, or othrwise corresponding with another resident o a drector, manager, or other agent of the ssociation after being instructed not to doso;
n. asking Association or management persnnel to perform personal errands;
o. creatig a firehazard of any sort anywhere in the ondominiums;
p. making loud noises or otherengaging i other activity that unreasonablyinterferes with a resident’s peaceful enjoyent of the cmmunity or is a nuisance;
q. enering another owner’s Unit or that Unit’s Lmited Common Eements without the Unit owners permission;
r. depositing trash, clutter,debris, or otherobjects on another residents property, on the Common Elements, or anywere other than desgnated receptacles;
s. plcing any items on any of the General or Limted Common Elements,except as expressly autorized by the Declaration, the Rules, or th Board of Directors;
t obstructing free pasage along sidewalks and doorways, either inperson or by use of an oject;
u. directly adressing contractors or persons who are perorming work around the conominium in a way hat the person finds to be intrusive, interering, harassing, or threateing. Without liitation, owners may not direct or attempt t direct association’s contractrs actions inany way. Any questions or concerns regardin the work of association serviceproviders mst be directed to management unless an owne is expressly directed to communiction in a alternate manner;
v. interrupting utility ervice to any part of the condominiu withou prior written approval of the board or mangement;
w. causing damage to any commo elemnts, other units, or the personal property f others that is located on the condominum roperty;
x. displaying in any manner weapon such as knives, guns, brass knuckles, or ter similar items, regardless of whether thedisplay is intended as threatening. All sucitems may be transported to the owners’ uni to and from the owner’s car as reasonably ecssary but at all times in a case or otherenclosed carrier.
y. reporting an alleged volaton of a building, health or safety codewhen no such violation exits or is substantated b the code enforcement body.

2. Request to leave. Any resident, guest, director r office who is requested by the Board or mnaging agent to leave the manager’s office r an Assocation facility or meeting shall d so immediately.

3. Communication with theAssociation anager or Board. The Board or mnager may require, in their sole discretionand upon notic to a resident, that all non-mergency communication (emergency being immdiate threat to ersons or property) from th resident or owner be in writing and/or in particular form(uch as, without limitatio, mail or email).

Further, the Associationmay, upon notice to resident or owner, dirct the resident or owner to discontinue allnon-emergency communictions, and may declin to reply to communications except as requied by law. The Board mayrequire all communiations to be through the management represetative or other Associatio agent only (may rohibit direct communication with directorsor officers). For any situaton involving imediate threat of physical harm to persons, 911 should be contacted.

When here are multple owners of a property, the Board may selct one of the owners as the contct person fr all communications. Following notice to te owners that one has been chosen s the conact person, that contact person is the onlyone the that will be deemed authorizd to comunicate with the Association.

4. Communiction from tenants. All communications elate to Association matters should come from owers rather than their tenants. The Boardor anager, in their sole discretion, may declie to reply to communications from tenants.

5. Association employees/contractors. Residnts may not instruct, direct, or supervise h Association’s or manager’s employees, agets, or contractors unless otherwise directe todo so in writing by the Board. Residentsand guests may not harass or interfere withthe prformance of any duties being performe by the Association’s or manager’s employee, agent, or contractors.

6. Owner Responsiility. Owners are responsible, and can be fned, for ll violations committed by residens of their unit, their guests and invitees,as well as heir tenant’s and their tenant’sguests and invitees.

7. Fines/enforcement ction. Notwitstanding any other language tothe contrary in other Rules, a fine in the mount of $100/volation shall apply to each iolation of this Code of Conduct, unless th Board of Directos determines otherwise. Ifan Owner has been cited for a violation of his Code of Conductin the preceding six monhs, the fine shall increase to $150/violatin. In addition, the Asociation may invoke ay other remedy allowed by its Covenant Enfocement and Fining Polic.

* This is not appicable to monitoring equipment installed ormaintained by the Associaion in or around cmmon areas or to other monitoring equipmentapproved with written conset of the Board.

** The board may in its discretion pass a rsolution setting fines for an specific violation case-by-case, at a higher or lower amount, as it believes appropriate.

====

I will add that doing an internet search on the topic mainly addressed code of conduct or code of ethics for board members - not the entire membership.

I've been on record a number of times that I am not in favor of these codes.

* They're not effective. Ethical board members are already following some version of the code, and bad actors won't be stopped by an unenforceable piece of paper if the CC&Rs/state law won't stop them.

* As noted, they're not enforceable unless your state has put something in your state's law to require them.

* They give homeowners a false sense of security, and they may not keep as close an eye on what the board is up to.

* A few lawyers have suggested that signing such a code may make you ineligible for the "business judgement" defense since you've agreed ahead to time to act in a certain way regardless of the merits of the topic under discussion.

* As you suggested, this code can be an effective witch-hunting tool for board members who want to drum out voices of dissent. I think that's a bad thing. And since the other board members will have opinions about their colleagues, they're the wrong persons to hold a hearing.

The list of items you printed has some good thoughts in it. But some of it is just stupid and re=capitulates what's in the CC&Rs, as you said. "Don't throw trash around" - really? you have to tell me that? Effective codes aren't a mile long micromanagement tool. They're a statement of principles that allow people to evaluate individual situations and arrive at a proper course of action.

The homeowners are, or should be, the final arbiters in this - and the ultimate enforcement action should be removal from the board. Ethical, professional behavior - it's not hard.

A code of conduct is useless. As in cheaters cheat.

I see my above crossed with Cathy & Elle.

BillD, Does your HOA have published Rules & Regs with enforcement procedures? Are rules defined in your CC&Rs--perhaps in a glossary at the beginning? Are they a "governing document?" Does Texas HOA code use the language of Rules or Rules and Regulations?

Other Texas posters will know this: Do I remember correctly that proposed new rules must go to owners for their comments before a board approved them?*

* Similar to Calif.?

I bet ChatGPT created it. :-)

Glad to hear you're doing ok and I hope you're enjoying the mental health break. I also hope the rest of your colleagues are getting a taste of what you dealt with last summer and rethinking their attitudes towards you. They may not ever admit they're wrong, but that's fine - karma still knows their address.

As for this topic, years ago, CAI proposed a Rights and Responsibilities of Homeowners and Board members – I haven’t been on that site in years, but I assume they still have it, as some communities adopted some or all of it. The rights and responsibilities of Homeowners might be good because some homeowners grow up to be board members and perhaps, we should start with having some expectations on how they should behave. If you start with being a good homeowner (pay your assessments on time, clean up after your dog, don’t fill your front yard with hoopties, etc.) maybe you’ll remember to do unto others (your neighbors) as you would have them do unto you.

As far as the code of conduct proposed by Bill’s attorney is concerned, some of it would be better suited as a formal rule where you could attach actual penalties, such as appropriate disposing of trash (e.g. no illegal trash, otherwise you’ll have to pay for the clean up). On the other hand, what people consider cursing or profanity can be subjective – some people consider casual use of the word “God” as in “God, I hate this!” as cursing, while others consider cursing as throwing F-bombs or similar. And then you might get into first Amendment issues.

Items like inappropriate language, threats, etc. used when communicating to the property manager and/or Board could be addressed on a case by case basis. One way to start would be to tell homeowners all correspondence to the board or property manager is considered Association property, so if someone were to lose his/her mind by saying crazy things via email, you could use that as evidence against him or her in a defamation or libel lawsuit.

Since your attorney has suggested this, I think you should express your concerns and the board could review them to see what could be kept or reworded or dropped altogether. Limit the code of contact to communications between homeowners and the Board or property manager and boil it down to be civil in your tone, verbal and/or physical threats will not be tolerated and referred to law enforcement, etc. As far as relationships between residents are concerned, homeowners themselves should figure out a way to settle beef (they’re supposed to be adults and this isn’t junior high). The board should only get involved if a homeowner is misusing or abusing the common areas or causing a nuisance that’s affecting several homeowners. Even then, those homeowners should come together and consider taking legal action against the neighbor.

I dealt with an ex-President whom would fail any set of code of ethics. Even with that, there was no way of ever getting rid of the guy. Believe me I tried my best to walk the line of he is/was board member and he is a scumbag human being. It's even harder when this person poisons some of the membership. You got it coming from multiple directions then.

You can't enforce "ethics" onto someone even if it's a signed document. It would be great if you could. All you can work on is to change the "Culture" of which you live to have the ethics of the right people in ethical positions.

This ex President did try to have "ethics" by means of trying to use me or any other board member to feed him HOA money/bids. He did it by claiming he STOPPED being on the board/President so there was not a conflict of interest if he hired by the HOA to do work. What he did instead is tried to convince the board to threaten home owners to paint their houses or do repairs. If they did not he wanted the HOA to pay for those repairs/paint jobs and place liens on their homes if not paid. He said if we did it that way then he would get paid upfront/first by the HOA and then we could collect our money by lien on back end. What a great an ethical guy huh???

You would not believe how many bought into his BS... Of which brought up many issues with these people's ethics as well... (Note he was NOT licensed/insured. I forced him to do it if he ever wanted a dime of the HOA money).

Even with a signed ethics agreement how was the HOA ever going to enforce he get some besides threatening his livelyhood?

In California, nothing in a court filing can be considered defamation.

I'm now thinking that perhaps the attorney is not an HOA attorney?? Ia a legit hOA attorney, they very well may being to CAI (Community Assoc. Inst.)

In CAI's "Board Member Tool Kit," there's an excellent section on "Rules." BillD & the rest of the Board should seriously think about reviewing it. The gawdawful list presented can be altered accordingly. A couple of things to remember are: Make only rules that are necessary. Make only rules that are enforceable.

My HOA restated our rules about a year ago. We added a few new ones and deleted some stupid ones. We do have a few about personal conduct, e.g., "Rudeness or other inappropriate behavior towards Horizons staff is not permitted and is subject to an immediate call to a hearing and fines." Note this must be corroborated by a witness or phone/photo evidence. We also have noise nuisance rules that elaborate on our CC&Rs.

Sonnet all of our Rules are solely for the common areas.

I think that many community associations are encouraged to follow the first amendment as a guideline and not to unreasonably restrict speech.

I'm not defending anybody's right to be rude to their neighbors. And I wish everybody would remember what civility looks like. I just don't believe associations have the right to do anything about it except when the speech is being used to harass people or is creating a hostile environment for protected classes.

One thing I dislike more than rude neighbors are neighbors (include board members) who are self-appointed vigilantes or the morality police. Our attorney specifically called out the Condo Commando mentality - even doing weekly walk-throughs looking for violations is out of line. If boards shouldn't be doing the weekly patrol looking for legitimate in-the-CC&Rs violations, do we seriously think they should be pouncing on people because somebody was offended by rude comments? And even if they could - given how vague and ambiguous some of the code is and how much people vary in how easily offended they are - this whole thing is opportunity to fight over things that can't be uniformly enforced.

I'd be willing to give a pass to a well thought out code, although I still believe it's wrong headed for the reasons I mentioned upthread. This isn't well thought out - it's a grab bag of offenses looking for a place to land. Nobody enjoys living in a police state, except maybe the folks who wrongly believe they're entitled to act as the police.

That reminds me - Bill, whatever happened to Dragon Breath Lady?????

Why not have a Pool Rules policy if that's where the trouble occurs? I've seen such rules posted in pools and other recreational facilities. I'm assuming that the pool is the focus of the bad behavior and that owners aren't just running amok everywhere.

If this is the case, then a code of conduct is heavy-handed and allegedly solves problems that you don't have. It reminds me of some guiding principles I've run into in schools and workplaces. You deal with the person who stepped out of line and the penalties need to fit the offense. You don't yell at or punish the entire class or department because it's unfair and will antagonize the people who had so far been behaving. I also believe that people generally live up to your expectations of them. That endless code of conduct says that the you think everyone will act like feral animals if they're not kept on a short leash.

Frankly, if I were presented with such a code, I'd be one part amused and two parts offended. I neither confirm nor deny that I would engage in a campaign of malicious compliance as a result.

I re-read what I wrote after posting. When I said "nothing" ... *lots* of stuff happened, but no penalties for DBLady. Her landlord got a fine, but never paid it. Our previous PM did some stuff re that that I believe is out and out illegal, but he left and it doesn't seem worth pursuing.

Bill

Bill wrote... stuff is unnaturally complicated for *everyone*, or is it just me?

Bill, just about everything has a lot of complexity these days. I bought a house around two years ago. Now that is a complex transaction. I will be buying a car within the next few months and my expectation is that it will be a complex transaction. I was recently (by default) designated Personal Representative for my recently deceased nephew's estate who had no will. That is way complex.

Complexity is not lost on HOA matters. In fact I think it gets more so as time goes by.

I don't think an HOA Code of Conduct will be very well received as lengthy as what is posted. I like the phrase KISS. Keep it simple stupid.

I am glad to hear you are enjoying your art these days.

I agree all these points are good. My thoughts are evolving.

And I nod to the reality that this CofC has nothing to do with DB Lady. Since the rules were not provoked by anything in particular (so it seems), they are more like Spanky, Alfalfa's and Darlene's clubhouse rules: The kiddos (including this board) like the power. The attorney likes to take the HOA's money. I am not boots on the ground there so it is possible that seeing everything would result in my voting against these rules.

I do still think a fine schedule should be in place for something like "noxious conduct" on the common areas. Of course this will be a judgement call. But some cases will be easy to judge, and I think having a fine for such conduct is better than not having a fine.

I suppose if I were in BillD16's shoes, at the board meeting where this is discussed, I would focus on making a //very short// case for whatever I wanted. I would be ready to be shot down instantly and ultimately having to accept what the majority wants. I do not think it's a big deal.

Appears to be just another way for attorney to bill the association. Does your Declaration say anything about a directors' code of conduct? If not, then it's doubtful one could be made. In CA, the legislature says election rules can require a few things of directors, including not being a convicted felon, but the state doesn't have director qualifications. Aren't there enough rules without having a code of conduct?

I am confused. Are you still the President? Has the board authorized you to speak with the attorney?

Assuming that authority really does exist in the CCRs for the entirety of this set of rules (and I do have doubts on this point), and if per chance a board majority sounds ready to enact this CoC, then I wonder if the owners will show up at the next morning and scream bloody murder. Whence the owners might be the ones doing the heavy lifting, possibly taking a lot of pressure off you (assuming you do oppose the CoC).

ElleN asked:
> I am confused. Are you still the President? Has the board authorized you to speak with the attorney?

Real quick: no, I'm not the President - we don't *have* a President (I resigned in early December 2023). The only Officer we have is the Secretary.

No, I've no authorization to talk to our attorney. But neither does anyone else currently on the Board. Although that has not kept the Secretary from speaking to the attorney.

Realistically, and based on past experience, it probably would come down to our PM setting up a meeting with our attorney.

Bill

PS: I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed!