HOAs: From Social Shaming to Collaboration for Behavior Modification?
October 15, 2009 :: Joe LoongLast week, I had to do two things: Trim my hedges, and paint my balcony railing. And when I say “had to,” I mean “was compelled to,” after getting a nastygram from my homeowners’ association (HOA).
I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility — I was very definitely in violation, and since I can be kind of… unmotivated when it comes to fixing things around the house, the letter was pretty much what I needed to finally goad me into action.
Now, most people have a love/hate relationship with HOAs. On the one hand, they handle administrative functions and help maintain property values by enforcing standards. On the other hand, you do give up certain rights, and people often chafe under what they consider overly restrictive, inflexible, legalistic covenants (that they’ve voluntarily agreed to abide by, remember).
Anyway, the point of this isn’t to rehash the HOA debate. Instead, I want to look at ways that HOAs might be able to use social media tools to help modify people’s behavior, as well as provide some concrete benefits that might make compliance less of a pain.
Reporting Violations: Snitching vs. Civic Duty
At the beginning of the process lies reporting and notification: Someone needs to spot the transgression, and tell the homeowner. Sure, you could do any variety of anonymous / identifiable, public / private reporting systems, but context matters, especially when you’re talking about your neighbors. A nifty e-government / Gov 2.0 citizen problem reporting tool (like mySociety’s FixMyStreet in the UK) probably wouldn’t go over so well in the HOA context, since you’re basically ratting out your neighbors (you have to live next to these people, remember), even if it is ultimately for everyone’s benefit.
Relying on social shaming (say, via a public violations bulletin board) is counterproductive: We’re talking about stuff that’s out in public (so it’s redundant — people can already see violations); private reporting is open to abuse; public reporting would probably be seen as nagging and might lead to retaliation.
This is probably one of the reasons HOAs and property management companies are popular — the nasty task of reporting violations is farmed out to a faceless entity who everyone can blame: “Hey, I don’t care that your fence is falling apart, but those nasty so-and-so’s at the management company…”
Turning Sticks into Carrots
On the other hand, maybe social collaboration tools could come into play when it’s time to fix stuff. Say a HOA does quarterly checks — the folks who document the violations could offer people a way to opt-in to partner up with other folks with similar problems. For example, do-it-yourselfers could pool resources (say, buying paint, or sharing tools), so instead of everybody individually buying stuff and having leftovers that go to waste, collaborating on a group buy so people end up paying for just what they need.
Alternately, people could band together to negotiate a group discount on repair services for stuff they can’t or don’t want to handle (say, tree services).
Nothing prevents people from doing this now, of course, but online tools make collaboration and resource-sharing a lot easier, in a way that’s more neutral and that doesn’t require anyone to stand out and call attention to themselves as a violator.
Anyway, depending on where you live, HOAs seem to be a natural target for social media-enabled services — there’s a built-in constituency based on geography and common interest; there’s an acknowledged authority to deal with that (bonus) has mechanisms for enforcement; and each HOA aggregates potential consumer demand for local services.
If you’re a small business that’s tried targeting HOAs, or have a HOA experience you’d like to share (a positive one, please — I think we’re up to our eyeballs in HOA horror stories), please leave a comment.
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