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Civility, compromise can help keep disputes under control in association-governed communities

By Elizabeth Rhodes
Seattle Times staff reporter

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES Paul Chiocco, left, a board member at Seattle's New Holly master planned community, and neighbor Jerry Saltzman. Saltzman was allowed to replace his small front lawn with an English perennial garden after he submitted a plan and photos of his past gardens to his homeowners' association.

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One neighbor repeatedly usurps another's parking stall. Another's loud stereo is driving his neighbors nuts. Then there's the neighbor whose robustly proportioned dog appears to be markedly over maximum pet size. And still another who's decided she doesn't care to pay all of her homeowners' dues.

Isn't anybody following the rules around here?

That's a question on many residents' minds as condominiums and detached-home "planned communities" become ever more popular around Puget Sound. Indeed, with situations like these becoming as common as boyfriend-girlfriend catfights on "Judge Judy," there comes another question:

Just where is Judge Judy when we need her?

Sorry, the judge is not available to adjudicate these neighborhood disputes. However, there are solutions, although they may not be as cut-and-dried as a televised judge might make them, because the issues are complex and relatively new.

Until the 1960s, condo and planned community living were rare around here. People owned their own homes and could pretty much do with them what they wanted.

Today that's changing. An estimated 25 percent of all homes sold in King County are condominiums. They, plus untold more within master planned communities such as Klahanie and Redmond Ridge, all come with extensive written rules that homeowners must abide by.

Neighborly ways to solve problems As a lawyer whose practice involves condominium associations, Bob Goff frequently has been asked how best to settle neighbor-to-neighbor disputes. If the homeowners association documents include dispute resolution guidelines — and some do — they're certainly a start. Beyond that, Goff, a partner in the Seattle firm Goff & DeWalt, says there are several ways to resolve disputes. All have pros and cons. They are: Talking. Sometimes neighbors are hesitant to approach one another with a problem or complaint, but taking direct action, in the form of a courteous conversation, may bring positive results. The pros: If both neighbors are reasonable, it can bring a fast solution that allows ongoing cordial relations. The con: It won't work if the approach is wrong, the parties' communication styles don't mesh or one party refuses to talk. Mediation. A trained mediator sits down with all parties and may actively participate in the process. Informal, inexpensive and relatively speedy, mediation tries to find a common ground and base a solution around that. The pros: No attorney needed, no binding decision is imposed, there's no clear winner and loser. The cons: Potentially the same as the pros, which can be a problem if one of the parties insists on being unreasonable. Arbitration.You can pick a single professional arbiter or multiple arbiters. The arbiter decides for one party or the other. The pros: It's less expensive than a lawsuit, the decision is binding, there's no public record, the decision is enforceable in Superior Court. The cons: There's no right to appeal, so the final result may be hard feelings. Lawsuit.Goff describes litigation as "two people throwing money at each other and lawyers in the middle." The pros: There's a defined timeline (usually a 12-18 month wait to get to court), defined rules, a clear winner (and loser) and any award is binding. The cons: It's expensive (expect to spend at least $3,000 just to initiate the suit, Goff says). Litigants have no active participation in defining the process. It's very time-consuming. Ignore it. This may be what HOA board members really want to do when homeowners bring them problems, and Goff understands why. Often there's no easy fix, or the problem seems trivial. "If you've had a bad week and a member comes in yelling about some small thing, you just want to say, 'Get a life. Resolve it.' What's the problem with that? It will come back forever, so you have to deal with it." Elizabeth Rhodes, Seattle Times staff reporter

These governing documents control the actions of the homeowners association — think of it as a mini city government — and the homeowners themselves (and sometimes even their pets and guests).

Something of a double-edge sword, they set boundaries that on one hand aim to promote neighborliness and maintain high property values and on the other take away some personal freedoms. Want to paint your deck Day-Glo orange and stack it high with ratty old sofas? Not if the governing documents prohibit it (no doubt, much to the joy of your neighbors).

Types of disputes

Jim Comin, president of CDC Management Services, which manages 180 such local communities containing 125,000 homes, including condos, has years of experience with the types of disputes that arise in them. He suspects that the percentage of homeowners association (HOA) members who don't get along is about the same percentage one would find in the general population.

"But that characteristic is multiplied in a condo environment," Comin says. "Everything is heightened because people have their biggest financial and quality-of-life investments in their condominium. So the stakes are huge, and they can get a little grumpy."

Comin says most disputes fall into two categories: behavioral and physical. A common behavioral example: a neighbor making too much noise. As for a physical one? Another neighbor storing an old sofa on his deck (in violation of a rule prohibiting using decks as storage areas).

"I think most flash points are related to violations of the immediate personal space," Comin says. "You hardly ever get a complaint from someone in Building A that someone in Building Z has a sofa behind their unit." But a complaint from one Building A dweller against another Building A dweller, now that's a routine occurrence.

The hardest disputes to solve, he says, are those where people have financial or emotional investments. Perhaps they have a pet whose size violates HOA rules. "If the board can make you get rid of your pet, the stakes get pretty high."

Compromise, community

How well homeowners follow their associations' rules depends on a number of factors, starting with the temperament of the homeowner.

"When you live in a community, you have to make compromises," says Jerry Saltzman, a psychotherapist who's a homeowner in Seattle's New Holly master planned community. "A community is not a place for rugged individualists, because rugged individualists are often terribly uncompromising."

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES The view across the street from Jerry Saltzman's home in the New Holly neighborhood.

Owners' understanding of community-association life also plays a part. Computer programmer Orin O'Neill used to serve on the board of his Queen Anne condo. He found the experience frustrating.

"I don't think most people who buy here understand what they've bought," O'Neill says. "Most of the disputes seem to resolve around, 'This is my little spot, and I can do what I want.' Well, no, you can't. A condo is a situation where people have to give up some rights for the good of the group. Very few people in my building recognize that."

(But O'Neill does. To his irritation, his downstairs neighbor's cigar smoke seeps into his unit. "I hate to admit it," says O'Neill, "but this guy has a right to smoke in his unit." A believer that homeowners should first try to solve problems themselves, he's come up with his own solution: "I'm buying an awful lot of Glade air freshener.")

Although HOA members can't choose their neighbors, Comin says it's far from a roll of the dice whether they'll get along.

"A whole bunch of it comes from the board of directors and the management setting the tone for the neighborhood."

Take, for example, two ways of handling a rules violation. A "not-so-good approach," Comin says, would be to send the scofflaw a terse note stating, "The rules apply to everyone, including you." As he notes, "If we deliver a message in a combative mode, we're going to get combat."

More apt to get compliance would be a gracious, "Please consider this a friendly reminder to be sure to follow the association rules."

Principles, flexibility

Homeowners who refuse all entreaties to cooperate can find themselves fined.

Generally it's the board of directors that has the right to create rules and regulations — not the homeowners themselves, says Comin, though they can have input. And often it's the board or the association's management company (if it hires one) that hears complaints and enforces rules.

How they do so is key to harmony, he says. "Respect is really important to gaining compliance to rules. Most of it is gained from your annual meeting. Make that meeting very, very professional."

Still, violations (and the attending friction) can occur when homeowners don't know a rule exists, or when they see it being enforced unevenly, or when the community has basically abandoned it.

That last instance happened in a single-family neighborhood Comin managed. Driving around, he noticed numerous homeowners flouting a prohibition against portable basketball hoops in private driveways. "There were probably 100 violations, but I rarely heard a complaint." That told him "the rule was probably a bad one."

So the hoops ban was rewritten to allow them as long as they didn't interfere with sidewalk space.

"In communities, the more flexible you can be while still maintaining your core principles, the better off you are," Comin believes.

Working together

That's the approach New Holly board member Paul Chiocco says his homeowners association tries to take.

"We're all interested in this community and how best we can make our investment pay off," Chiocco explains. For that reason, New Holly, like most other association-governed communities, has architectural guidelines that regulate such things as exterior paint colors and front-door styles.

"We try to explain why these guidelines are a benefit. There's an overall look we're trying to achieve, and the overall look can help enhance the investment," he explains.

However, they're not inflexible, as Chiocco's neighbor Jerry Saltzman learned.

Saltzman admits that he hates his home's HOA-prescribed color scheme — "some sort of beigeish with an olive-green trim" — and would love to paint it "something to make it stand out a bit."

With that out of the question, he instead approached his HOA with a plan to rip out his small front lawn and replace it with an English perennial garden. "I've designed a ton of gardens, and the landscaping at New Holly just did not fit me."

The HOA asked him to submit a plan, plus photos of his past gardens. Saltzman didn't mind doing so.

"My assumption is, they don't want people to do something that will degrade the neighborhood," he says. "So I gave them reassurance through pictures that it would only enhance the neighborhood."

His plan approved, Saltzman replaced the grass with flagstones, lots of perennials, some shrubs and lots of deep-purple-leafed plants in pots.

"What I can't do with paint I can do with plants," he observes. "There's always a flexible way of handling this stuff."

Elizabeth Rhodes: erhodes@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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