Posting Covenant Violations on HOA Website

As a Covenants Committee member and a director on my HOAs BOD, I routinely photograph covenant infractions and put the photos into a monthly Covenants Committee report that I give to the Board at its monthly meeting. Alongside each photo is a block containing the street address and name, issue (antenna, parking, etc.), date/action taken, current status, and notes.

The photos contain no identifying information such as license plates or people's faces, but they do contain a digital date stamp in the lower right corner.

This report is attached to the monthly Board Meeting Minutes, and each Minutes document can be downloaded from the HOA's website.

Is this considered an invasion of privacy since the information is available on the internet to the general public? If so, can I avoid this by hiding the street number from public view?

First of all, your website should not be all public. Meeting Minutes and other internal HOA business should only be available to HOA Members in a password protected area of your website, not the entire world. This is how we build HOA sites for our customers.

As to your question about privacy laws, we can't give 'legal' opinions here, but we can give personal observations.

It seems the photos are of public areas so I don't see how the photos are a problem.

The information provided with the photos may be another matter. However, which privacy laws are you referring to? I wonder if any privacy laws really cover this type of material. They generally cover Social security number, financial info, medical info, etc.

I would also be concerned about civil actions if the material posted causes any harm/damage to anyone. This may be a low risk, but I guess it could happen. Since your site is all public any prospective buyer can see the info. Maybe they Google the address and find your notes on past covenant violations but don't see that they are all resolved or just get cold feet and don't buy the house. Maybe the violations are resolved but not on the website yet? OK, not a great example, but the point is you don't want to openly publish internal HOA docs to the world.

Now should you publish this detail to the members? I'll be interested in what others here have to say.

Just on a technical nature, last time I checked I can easily change the time/date stamp on my digital camera so I wonder how much use that actually provides. Some lawyer would probably also make an issue of this if a violation ever escalated to the court level.

As HOAtalk also touched on, just imagine something happening like a home sale falling through because the information (which is probably not up to the minute up to date) scared off a buyer. Guess who gets sued...the HOA.

Discipline issues (violations, late assessments, personnel issues, etc.)should ALWAYS be handled in private, preferably in Executive Session.

I have read all the replies and I agree with most of them, certainly with all the comments on the photos themselves. I want to thank all of you for your frank thoughts and the time you took to post them. As a result of your comments,

1. When including an image of an infraction in a report I will be sure to crop out all but the infraction itself. (BTW, the infractions of concern are dish antennas mounted too high, and trailers stored in driveways and on the streets for weeks/months at a time.)

2. I will clearly and prominently mark all pages of my reports "CONFIDENTIAL".

3. I will email the reports to the BOD, requesting they not be attached to the monthly meeting minutes.

4. I will not publish those reports to the website.

Lots of HOA sites are available on the web along with their governance documents, minutes, etc. Making my HOA's website private will close it to most of the homeowners, as most of them are not interested enough to want to obtain passwords or other IDs, and the whole purpose of the site is to be a vehicle of information flow both to and from the BOD and the homeowners.

Lastly, this subdivision is over 30 years old and is still a very desirable and sought-after area in which to live. Unfortunately, as time goes on, the prices of properties in older subdivisions become increasingly attractive to people for whom covenants and lot appearances are low priorities. Out of 419 lots, it is extremely difficult to obtain board members (the Board has 7 positions) of any kind, and next to impossible to obtain members who bother to do what they commit themselves to do. As a result, covenants have not been enforced for over 2 years and the appearance of the subdivision has deteriorated noticeable.

Thanks again for your comments. I really appreciate them and I think they will save me a lot of grief. If you want to see the site, browse to wwwdot springvalleyhoadot org.