Using a temp agency to hire door to door knockers to get signatures for rental cap?

Anyone hire a temp agency to get a door to door knocker/s to get signatures for a rental cap? Any better way? 152 HOA. We have about 25 homes that own to wall street rental companies. Pretty soon whole neighborhood will belong to the giant corporations if we don’t do something

Also is rental cap or 2 years before one can rent a home a better rule change?

Question: what is the purpose of getting signatures? Are you putting together a petition to ask the board to have an amendment written to your CC&Rs?

Keep in mind a petition has no legal force at all - the only way to address the rental issue is through an amendment to your CC&Rs, and that will required approval from a majority of homeowners (probably a super-majority of 67% or 75%). Realistically, if you've already got a significant number of corporate owners, that horse has probably already left the barn. You're left with things like strictly enforcing your CC&Rs so that problem tenants become the problem of the landlord. This can be effective in dealing with individual landlords who may not have thought through this whole investment property shtick and who may have borrowed to buy property. It's a lot less effective against corporate owners.

If you've just got a few corporate owners, then you need an education campaign most of all. If you try to amend your CC&Rs, a certain number of owners will vote against it because they may want to rent out their homes at some point. These are the folks you need to convince.

As an owner, I'd be more responsive to a board member or neighbor coming to my door. The board member can answer questions, which someone from a temp agency couldn't do, and your fellow neighbors have a stake in this. But as I said, getting signatures won't accomplish anything other than giving resident owners a wake-up call and maybe giving a board a realistic idea of the likelihood that an amendment would be approved.

I just responded to another conversation on this subject, as did Melissa and Cathy - and I still agree with them here.

If you and like-minded neighbors are concerned, I see no reason why you can't turn off the tv, log off the computer, get outside and pound the pavement. Each of you can divide up the neighborhood to do the job faster.

I'd also ask the board to call a special homeowners meeting to discuss the entire issue and see what suggestions others may have regarding rentals. Right now you have 25 homes that you know of, but there may be more on the horizon because money talks and - well, you know the rest.If

Personally, I think a 2 year prohibition may work better than a rental cap - we tried to add one to our documents, and failed miserably because the rentals were already over 50%. We even proposed grandfathering the current owners, thinking the owner-landlords would appreciate limiting the competition. Apparently not.

However if you put in a two year ban, that might keep the investors out. You would still need to offer some sort of hardship exemption for proposal moved out of the area and have to pay bills on the old house (including assessments) until the house was sold. And likely come up with a way to hear off the people who will try to get around that.

We need to clarify nomenclature here.

Typically rental restrictions appear in the CC&Rs/Declaration and not in the bylaws which deal with governance.

The bar for amending bylaws can be lower, but the bar for amending the CC&Rs can be high (a super-majority or even unanimous approval for certain changes). You need to see what your particular CC&Rs have to say about amendments. There should be an article that addresses this.

Some posters have stated that amendments to their communities' CC&Rs can be handled via votes taken at a meeting in which quorum has been met. In practice, since quorum percentages can be low (sometimes 15-20%) this can put the ability to change the CC&Rs in the hands of a small minority of homeowners. While it may be legal, IMHO it sets up the association for legal challenges in the future. Such challenges are more likely to occur with hot-button issues such as the ability to rent out homes.

As far as rental cap vs. a ban on renting during the first year(s) of ownership, I think the latter may be easier to administer. But none of it is easy, since - shockingly - people lie about this stuff.

Personally, I believe a time frame is a better idea and much easier to enforce.
I've often heard of 1 year.
Your post is the first I've heard of a two year refrain.

Regarding a temp agency soliciting signatures, I'm against it.
The reason is that I would be more inclined to listen to someone who resides in the development (i.e. my neighbor) vs. some stranger.

When I proposed bylaw amendments and solicited signatures, I was able to meet a lot of people and have a discussion on why they were for or against the various amendments. In fact, I actually withdrew one of the proposed amendments because of one of those discussions. I think doing it yourself is a better education process for everyone.

To me, it doesn't appear that the OP, MarkR, is talking about occupancy requirements for directors. That would be in the Bylaws. It appears that MarkR is taking bout limitations that would require a change of the CC&Rs.

Are you on the Board, MarkR?

Augustin, I haven't seen any case law on this. If you have a reference, it would be interesting to read.

My opinion is that this gets to the heart of the matter. WHO is governing makes all the difference in the world. Our COA is about 50% owner occupied and has been this way for over a decade (and will remain this way). We restrict rentals to 30 days or more with a written lease. Is there a difference in engagement between owner occupiers and owner non-occupiers? YES, but it does not prevent us from governing correctly.

Regards,
Steve