Unruly/Uncooperative Resident

Maarsha,
Short of a lynch mob, there is not much that you can do except ENFORCE your covenants and rules. If they break them, enforce against them. Every association has a few pains in the butts. We live with them as best that we can. Try getting them invoved in a committee (rules comes to mind). Sometimes they will see another side of how it is to deal with running the association.

Are they within the 55+ rule? Sometimes these folks are just plain cantankerous and you will just need to soften them up or ignore them.

Maarsha, I agree.

The BOD needs to realize that in the long run, it could very well be much more costly to the organization not to begin legal action.

Keep in mind, depending on the violation (was it a Deed Conditions, Covenants & Restrictions violation or Rules & Regulations violation?) that often simply getting the attorney to send a letter warning of impending legal action if XXXX is not corrected in XXXX days does the trick.

In over 12 years, we've only had violations make it all the way to trial (before a judge) on 3 occasions.

In each case the HOA won and the violator had to pay court costs.

The fact that the board will use all remedies to enforce restrictions gets around and results in fewer violations.

We still have some that get to the "attorney letter/warning" stage, but since we have had the court successes, the violating resident gets in line.

We refer to the attorney letter as the CTJ letter (Come To Jesus).

Anymore, it never gets further than the CTJ letter.

Unfortunately, we all have that type of irresponsible things in the HOA(s). Nothing that I know of that we can do about it. Giving in to them is disastrous. I have found no solution except perhaps a whisper campaign against them for which which no one can trace the origin. Ignoring them is the best way even though at times it is very difficult. Keep in mind that they(the disruptors)may want and demand that a chandelier be placed at the entrance. Perhaps one of the best ways is to put out a letter(for example) to ALL the owners stating that person X wants a chandelier at the entrance at a cost of"X" dollars. what do you think? send back your replies.

Well, sorry to be late in responding, but I have been swamped with school and not on as regular as i used to be.

That being said I went to my bookmarks because I had a site marked for an organization that claimed to be able to put HOAs in touch with lawyers willing to take covenant enforcement cases on contingency. Unfortunately, the domain has been sold and there is nothing to share.

I don't know what you can really do about someone trying to undermine the board. What comes to mind concerning this is a lesson on authority and power that I received many years ago in the army. The thing is that you have to stand on your authority and yield legitimate power. And this may involve a costly lawsuit. And nobody here can tell you if it is worth it or not because we just don't know your situation. But understand that you actually undermine your own authority if you don't actually enforce your authority with the power you have.

This is not to say that every violation is worth paying a lawyer to write a letter. But if you fail to enforce the covenant, you should expect that the person violating will tell their neighbors how you spouted and failed to act.

To be honest, there is not a lot of protection from the HOA in Texas. If your covenants/rules are well written then you have a lot of authority in enforcement. That being said, people will generalize to an incredible degree and assume that a weakness in one are has something to do with other areas.