HOA Legi-Slate

The Madison County Journal reports that the proposed Madison, Mississippi ordinance discussed in this post passed, with all members of the Board of Alderman and the pro tempore mayor voting in its favor. This ordinance states that a violation of an association's covenants constitutes a violation of a city ordinance. Homeowner associations may bring claims against homeowners to the Madison Municipal Court, but must have witnesses to testify that the covenants are being violated. In addition, the association must produce proof that the offending individual has been notified several times of the covenant violations.

At this point, we haven't located a copy of the ordinance to review. However, the idea behind this ordinance raises some thoughts. Although it may look like a simple solution to deter homeowners from violating association covenants by providing real sanctions when these violations can be proved, there are some practical considerations that leave us questioning whether this approach would be effective in the Front Range community.

First, it has been our experience that local governments usually want to distance themselves as far away as possible from covenant enforcement issues. In addition, it is unclear what happens when an association covenant conflicts with an existing ordinance addressing the same issue. Since an association's covenants may be more restrictive than a local ordinance, a situation could arise where an ordinance states that residents may have up to four household pets and an association's covenant sets the cap at one dog or cat. Does the Municipal Court ignore the city ordinance and enforce the covenant, strangely giving precedence to the association covenant over its own set of laws? Given these concerns, this type of solution is likely feasible only in small cities with local governments willing to get involved (for the better or the worse) in homeowner association matters.

I think this is a deplorable idea.