In the spirit of, “if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” I’ve decided to run for a position on my neighborhood Homeowners’ Association Board of Directors.

I’m the new kid on the block, having moved here from California a year ago, and my first impression of my new community was warm and welcoming. One neighbor offered to mow my lawn, another brought home baked biscuits and homemade jam, a third brought in my trash cans when I was out of town. Neighborly.

Sadly, the sweet Southern hospitality veneer has cracks. Neighbors complain to the admittedly tone deaf HOA Board about other neighbors’ alleged violations of the HOA CC&Rs (Community Covenants and Regulations) such as exceeding the maximum height for fences or the maximum allowance of vehicles, and then complain about the Board over reaching when the Board follows up and about inaction when the Board doesn’t follow up. Public HOA Board meetings are held but nothing ever seems to change, and constructive communication is practically non-existent. Neighbors take to the community Facebook post to personally attack each other.

I hope that I can somehow ease up on the restrictions, cut down on petty complaints, address serious issues, and convince everyone to get a long. Wish me luck.

The one helpful takeaway from all this is the similarity of a homeowners’ association to the Puritan Watch that reigned in Hatfield and other Puritan colonial towns in the 17th century.

Operating somewhat like the “ratting out” and “tattling” of middle school, but encouraged rather than discouraged, Puritans, as a religious congregation and a community, were expected to admonish and then report each other’s transgressions of faith and law.

According to E. Brooks Holifield, “Peace, Conflict, and Ritual in Puritan Congregations”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 23, No. 3, Religion and History (Winter, 1993):

“The censures followed precise forms, determined by biblical precedent: first came private admonition, then warnings by two or three members, and then public accusation before the entire church, which voted, under the guidance of the elders, on the questions of innocence, guilt, and punishment.
Disciplinary proceedings had wide scope. Punishments were given for adultery, fornication, drunkenness, heresy, schism, gambling, trespass, extortionate pricing, contractual lapses, thievery, lying, cruelty, and all conflicts between members of the community.”

Obviously, an HOA is not a church, and its members not a religious congregation, and any accusations are handled privately. But it seems the same spirit of community censure and vigilantism that lead to many an accusation of witchcraft, is alive and well in 21st century HOA communities.

How much individual freedom and privacy are we willing to give up in exchange for community harmony, or in the case of a modern HOA, housing values?