Community Corner

Learning to Fight an HOA at an Early Age

A woman who tutors children in her Casitas de Alipaz garage wants children to learn they may have a right to play outside.

It's a new lesson for the children Louise Gaiser tutors every day after school in her garage: the First Amendment right to protest.

Many of them hang out in garage No. 163 at Casitas de Alipaz on Alipaz Street, because once they finish their homework, they're rewarded with the opportunity to play under Gaiser's watch. Like so many other homeowners associations, the Casitas Alipaz HOA doesn't allow skateboarding, ball-playing or some of the other kids' activities on the grassy knolls and winding sidewalk paths outside.

Gaiser sets out orange traffic cones and signs outside the garage to alert drivers that the kids are playing and said she ushers the children back inside when cars approach. Plus, Gaiser gives them free homework help, lots of Tapatío-smothered popcorn and fruit roll-ups and birthday parties once a month. 

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So when the HOA told Gaiser she couldn't keep kids in the garage, because it was against the rules, she encouraged the kids to hold a protest and to write letters to the HOA board of directors.

"I want them to know they have rights," she said. "At that age, you're going to join a gang; they need a place to belong—they belong to Louisa's Garage."

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"Dear Association,We have the right to be free. We kids want to be healthy but, the most important thing is that we got the right to play outside. Sincerely, Mary Carmen," one child wrote.

"Dear Association, I don't think you have the right to tell us not to play outside. Please let us do homework with Louisa to learn more and go to college please, please, please, let us be with Louisa," wrote another child, who also pleaded her case by drawing smiling stick figures kicking around soccer balls under a sunny sky.

HOA rules, however, are explicit: "No business of any type to be conducted out of garage ... garage doors to remain closed and locked except for entry and exit ... no living or loitering in any garage."

Although she shut down the operation for one week, she said she reopened it at the encouragement of friends who told her she wasn't doing anything wrong. She said she'll move the tutoring center inside her small condo if she needs to but prefers to stay inside the garage, which is set up with a whiteboard, a small library, storage for arts and craft supplies and a table for reading and writing.

Neither the Casitas Alipaz HOA president or Coastal Resources Management returned repeated calls for comments, but Richard Monson, president of the California Association of Homeowner Associations, said that allowing children to play outside of garages is like telling them it's OK to play in the middle of the street or a highway.

"The rules and regulations, in most cases, are very reasonable," he said, noting that the property owners and their tenants should be aware of what they're buying into when they move into a condominium complex with HOAs and rules.

Still, as someone with learning disabilities who said she's been turned away by traditional universities when she wanted to earn her bachelor's degree, and then her master's, Gaiser is used to having to fight for what she wants. And as a child who graduated from high school without learning how to read or write (she eventually learned when she had her own children), she is sympathetic to the these children's plight. Many of them said they have parents who are still at work when they get home from school and can't afford to offer them other after-school learning opportunities.

"Our community is a family community. It was not designed as a family community, but that is what it is today, and kids need to be able to play," she said. "There are rules against skateboarding, using scooters, playing with balls and almost any other activity that kids do. I have told [the board members] that if they will not allow me to do this, I will contact fair housing and file a complaint."

The Orange County Fair Housing Council has litigated similar cases. In 2007, it announced that it reached a $15,000 settlement with the company that managed a 28-unit apartment complex in Anaheim. The complaint alleged that Paolo's Property Management and the property manager routinely discriminated against families with children by imposing "overly restrictive" rules that prevent children from playing outside.

Like the children who spend time in Louisa's Garage and say their balls are  routinely stripped from them by the condominium complex's security guard, the children in this settlement reported similar treatment.

"The on-site manager would continually harass the children, insisted that there by no playing, balls or yelling outside, and would turn on the sprinklers to prevent the children from playing on the grass," spokeswoman  Connie Der Torossian wrote in a statement issued announcing the settlement.

As president of the association of HOAs, Monson said he's aware of these types of family and age discrimination accusations but said he knows of very few whose outcome favored HOA challengers. That's partly because, as he said, many housing complexes are laid out in a such a way that ball-playing and skating is disturbing to residents.

"Even though I have been doing this for many, many years, there may be two or three instances where people have filed, and I will tell you, without exception, the homeowner was in the wrong in filing that action against the HOA simply because the property, the physical layout of the property did not lend itself to the type of the playing the children want to do," he said.


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