[TowerTalk] CC&Rs

[Bill VanAlstyne]

Jim Lux wrote:

> By the way, not to rain on your parade, but there's nothing keeping
> an HOA board from making a rule prohibiting antennas at any time,
> even if the CC&Rs don't say anything about it, because, generally,
> the CC&Rs contain provisions allowing the board to do just that.

Not only that, but in some states like Colorado, the law could bring you down
even if your land has no CC&Rs attached to its deed and there is no homeowners
association. How? The Colorado law is called the Common Interest Ownership Act
(CIOA), and according to an excellent article in April CQ magazine (Fred
Baumgartner, KG0KI),

"...[A] neighborhood with expired or no covenants at all can elect with a simple
majority to create and enforce covenants under an HOA. Further, the CIOA
provides a means by which the elected members of the HOA can change covenants at
will, without a community vote or even public notice. Many hams assume that
because there is no HOA, there can be no HOA. In Colorado, at least, that often
is not true."

The lot I own and am building on right now in New Mexico, in an area of
singly-owned lots that weren't all bought up together by a developer, is CC&R-
and HOA-free. Hopefully it will stay that way -- but not if a Colorado-style
CIOA law were to take effect in New Mexico. In such a case, as I read it,
neighbors who share my road -- there are only a handful of them now -- could
decide they don't like my antennas, form a homeowners association, adopt
antenna-proscriptive CC&Rs, force my property into the HOA by means of a
CIOA-defined "common area" assertion, and make me remove my antennas under pain
of being foced out of my home by hostile litigation.

Yikes! Is this America? This is the Tyranny of the Majority writ large...

Bill / W5WVO
Albuquerque, NM