Column: Homeowners association horror stories are universal, but this one is special

There has been a lot of talk in this country about democracy lately, but whether you're fer it or agin it, your best evidence in support of your position has to be the friendly neighborhood homeowners association. You can argue it either way. If you favor tyrants and kings, you are impressed with the iron will and oblivion to public opinion and common sense. If you favor popular involvement, you appreciate the ability of so many people to take their common wisdom and distill it into pure, uncontaminated idiocy. As Lord Acton said, power corrupts, and HOAs corrupt absolutely. We've all heard — or maybe been subjected to — HOA horror stories, but it's hard to top the one coming out of Texas where an older couple, George and Kathleen Rowe, has been threatened with foreclosure on their home for the offense of feeding the ducks. According to The Washington Post, "In June, the Lakeland Community Homeowners Association decided it had had enough of the Rowes feeding the waterfowl despite what it said were repeated warnings not to. The association filed suit against the couple in Harris County Civil Court, asking a judge for a 'permanent mandatory injunction requiring Defendants to cease from feeding any wildlife' in the neighborhood." Watch out, Julie Andrews. Feeding the birds could cost you a lot more than tuppence a bag. Homeowners associations are like little boys with BB guns — always in search of targets, and if suitable targets cannot be found, unsuitable targets will do. We've all seen what power can do to even the most meek human being on earth. The kindest, quietest person can turn into an ayatollah the minute you give her an Event Staff T-shirt. "I told you to park over THERE, scum!" Entirely lacking in self-awareness, the HOA was probably not trying to be funny when it wrote that duck feeding "runs afoul of the general plan and scheme of (the) Subdivision." And maybe they're taking their cues from an off-the-rails American judiciary, but it's fascinating that someone, somewhere, thinks that the proper punishment for feeding birds is the loss of your home. "I'm a board-certified real estate attorney, and this lawsuit is truly the silliest lawsuit I've ever seen in my practice," said the Rowes' lawyer Richard Weaver. "(The HOA) has essentially claimed that feeding ducks is either noxious or offensive — I think that's an incredible statement." Yeah, but this is how it starts. First an older woman feeds the ducks. Then she starts hanging out on the street corner. Pretty soon she's down at the marina shooting dice and smuggling heroin. The story does kind of gloss over what seems to me to be the bigger issue: This particular subdivision is crawling with ducks. Weaver said they can even be seen on Google Map street views. It didn't say exactly how many there are, but it almost sounded like the stuff of horror films where screaming victims are incessantly flapped to death. Maybe this is what the HOA should be focused on. Foreclose on a few nests and the others start to get the message. Nor are these normal wild ducks, like what you see hanging out in the lawn of Gander Mountain. They are products of the rather weird habit people have of giving live chicks to children at Easter. When the chicks grow up and cease to be cute, they are released into the wild, thoroughly unprepared to fend for themselves, and dependent on people like Ms. Rowe for sustenance. Wildlife authorities were quoted saying that these fraudulent ducks can out-compete natural ducks, probably because they have been raised in human households where they have likely caught a couple episodes of "Game of Thrones." So these birds are 1. Too helpless to survive on their own, and 2. A threat to everything out there. Got that. Doesn't sound much different from the homeowners association itself. — Tim Rowland is a columnist for Herald-Mail, a columnist and staff writer for Sun Community News, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include "High Peaks; A History of Hiking the Adirondacks from Noah to Neoprene" and "Strange and Unusual Stories of New York City".

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Column: Homeowners association horror stories are universal, but this one is special

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