Brenda Harris couldn’t believe her eyes.

She had heard that the civic association in Sharpstown, the west Houston neighborhood where she had grown up and now owns home, was thinking of updating its subdivision rules, but she hadn’t given the matter much thought. Then a neighbor began posting the proposed updates, paragraph by paragraph, on a social media platform called Nextdoor. She called over her husband to take a look.

The new rules would convert the local civic association, a group with voluntary dues-paying membership and limited legal powers, to a homeowners association with the authority to impose mandatory assessments and foreclose on homes.

“I just think it’s wrong,” Harris said. “Community is not about pushing people out of their homes. It’s not about threatening people, twisting arms.”

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While HOAs have proliferated in recent decades, they’re generally put in place when a neighborhood is developed, meaning homeowners agree to the arrangement when they buy. And so the Sharpstown Civic Association’s unusual proposal to convert to an HOA 65 years after the neighborhood was founded has roiled the community.

The plan has pitted those who see a more powerful way to ensure the upkeep of homes and raise funds for security to restore the neighborhood’s appeal, alleviate the area’s reputation for crime and, in the process, boost property values against those who fear such tools could ultimately displace them.

Neighborhood divided

Membership in the civic association, which pays for enforcement of deed restrictions, private security patrols and a Fourth of July fireworks display, among other services, is currently voluntary, and for years only a quarter of the roughly 6,800 households have chosen to join. They pay dues, currently $250 a year, that benefit the entire neighborhood.

“It is time for all homeowners to participate and pay their $250 per year,” the civic association wrote in its September newsletter.

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The suggestion shook many in the majority-minority community, where more than a third of homeowners are seniors, according to Census data; 19 percent of homeowners make less than $25,000 a year.

Harris said she’s been a paying member of the Sharpstown Civic Association for a decade. But making dues mandatory and introducing the possibility of foreclosure alarmed her. She thought of her mother, who at 83 lives nearby on a fixed income, with money so tight that Harris and her siblings pay for utilities.

“There’s no way she could pay,” Harris said on a recent Thursday evening, sitting next to her mother on the livingroom sofa. “And I think… if I’m having this issue with my mom, there must be a lot of people out there with this type of issue.”

“It’s an old neighborhood,” said Rodica Petrescu, 70, whose husband’s monthly medication costs account for $500 of his $1,200-a-month pension. “The people are old and the houses are old… I don’t know what the future will hold.”

Both sides mobilized, with neighbors who supported the HOA writing testimonials in the Sharpstown newsletter and neighbors opposing it knocking on doors and passing out flyers. Meanwhile, many of the posts on Nextdoor about the proposed deed restrictions were gathering hundreds of comments.

What started as a spirited civic debate began by unpacking the legalese. Neighbors politely sparred over the need for deed restrictions. Then talk turned personal.

In response to a post asking, “What do you love about Sharpstown?” some brought up aspects they didn’t like. One commenter called out an HOA opponent by name, writing, “i have a rope and two oak trees. call me.”

The neighbor, perceiving the message as a threat, filed in court for a peace order.

Things had spiraled out of hand.

A question of trust

Sharpstown was built in the postwar optimism following World War II. The ambitious master-planned neighborhood, dedicated in 1955, starts just west of Loop 610 and stretches out to Beltway 8, making it larger than some towns. Each of its nine sections would need 51 percent of homeowners to vote in favor of the change for an HOA to form.

The community was developed by Frank Sharp, who also owned a bank named Sharpstown and had a penchant for politics and bending the rules — attributes that culminated in an explosive, far-reaching conspiracy known as the Sharpstown Scandal. The Securities and Exchange commission sued Sharp in 1971 for bribing politicians and manipulating the stock market; the state enacted open meeting and records laws in the aftermath.

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While the Sharpstown Scandal shook the state and the nation at the time, today, it seems, little would surprise some Sharpstown residents.

At the crux of the debate over whether to give their civic association the powers of an HOA is trust.

At a civic association meeting about the proposed deed restrictions, neighbors queued to ask questions about how far the HOA’s powers could extend. Could an offensive smell be interpreted to include ethnic food? Could a neighbor be fined for planting a petunia without permission?

“You could read things to the extreme,” said the association’s lawyer, Casey Lambright. He pointed out that restrictions against offensive smells and changing the appearance of a home were limited to what a jury would consider a reasonable interpretation. “Reasonable means the jury goes, ‘They’re morons for trying to say it says that.’”

“We’re an organization of people,” said Matthew Cowan, one of the civic association’s board members, about fears of foreclosure. “Our job is not to pick up sledgehammer. We can find a way — payment plans.”

Toothless rules?

The proposed $250 annual fee is considerably lower than that of many HOAs, some of which charge hundreds of dollars a month. Becoming an HOA would also oblige the board to follow the open meetings regulations and make it easier for Sharpstown to enforce its deed restrictions.

The neighborhood is currently in the tricky position of having rules without many options to enforce them; while Sharpstown already prohibits homeowners from running businesses out of their houses or making unapproved home improvements, the only ways to stop violations are to ask nicely or take homeowners to court. In 2019, the civic association spent $56,000 in legal fees; losers of such suits pay not only the judgment but also the attorneys costs on both sides.

HOAs, by contrast, also have the less expensive option of fining homeowners.

But in the view of Sharpstown resident Denise Barfield, the proposed rules could be manipulated. At the former Sugar Branch Condominiums in southwest Houston, for example, a family gained control of their condominium association’s board in 2016; within three years, they had purchased more than half of the development’s 180 units, buying many at bargain prices in foreclosure auctions the board members had initiated themselves.

“People absolutely have to read these things for themselves,” Barfield said. “It’s not a question of trusting someone.”

Tough conversations

The January Sharpstown Civic Association meeting ended without time for questions. Residents broke off into clusters to debrief. A group supporting the restrictions gathered inside the lobby of the Bayland Park Community Center; another just outside the doors was against. When an association staff member walked out to his car, Basel Mujarkesh, a member of the opposition, said hello, to no response.

“You see that?” said Mujarkesh. “It’s causing a lot of division.”

Matt Wine, the president of the association, said that when it comes to HOAs conversations about details matter.

“On either side of the debate, when somebody can sit behind a keyboard and spout out whatever they want without looking the other person in the eye… I think that hurts,” he said.

Wine said such discussions had led the civic association to reconsider the issue of foreclosure. “And what I mean by that is either different ways to handle foreclosure or other options that don’t even include foreclosure.”

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He said the association plans to share the next draft of deed restrictions in the spring, then release ballots to vote on them around June — both in English and in other languages commonly spoken in the neighborhood, in response to concerns brought up in meetings and on social media.

Lambright, the association’s lawyer, confirmed edits would likely remove language granting the HOA power to foreclose and make it clear that altering landscaping will not require approval. He compared crafting the deed restrictions governing an HOA to crafting legislation in today’s political climate.

“And that’s the problem there: There are people who are on the far right and on the far left, or whatever you want to call it in the HOA world,” he said. “They’re fear mongering — both sides, I think, are doing a lot of it. And we’re slowly tearing up this country by all this fear mongering. Ninety percent of this the country wants to live in the middle and not mess with anybody and not be messed with.”

When Harris heard that option to foreclose on a home may be removed, she sounded relieved. “That really would be great,” she said.

Then the worries set back in.

“How is that going to work, where they aren’t going to push with the foreclosure, but they’ll still have the mandatory fees?” she asked. “So they would still drag people, the elderly, to court?” She paused. “But the foreclosure off the table is a big thing.”

rebecca.schuetz@chron.com

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