Hi, thanks for joining HRLNG.   I am Patrick Johansen, admin.     This group is different than most others.   We are dedicated to changing the HOA laws in all the states.  We are not a group for people to complain about their HOAs or seek help from others, there are many, many other sites for doing that.   However, I will personally help you if you are having a problem with your HOA or COA, however I can.
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It appears that all the states have bad laws for HOAs.  In order for people to live happily in HOAs, the laws need to be changed.

We are working hard to grow our group.  We need people who are willing to write to their legislators, and others as well as consistently help to grow the group.  What influences the legislators is large groups of people calling them and writing into them asking for the same solution.

In order to manage the group, we need a way to contact you.  That is why we ask for your contact information.   We need to know what state you are in so we can connect you with others in your state, so we ask for your state.

It is good for us to understand what problems you are facing with your HOA and how you would change the laws to fix that problem.  We need to understand why you are coming here so I can try to help you but also so that we can understand where your motivations are. 

If you have not included this information in your application, please send your contact info directly to me Patrick Johansen at Patrick@PK80.com or through Messenger in HRLNG.

The BEST way to learn about HRLNG is to go to our website at HOAReformLeaders.com and read our Proposed Legislation.  This is why we are here, to convince the legislators of every State to write and pass bills to turn our Proposed Legislation into laws.  Then go to one of our Tuesday night meetings where we walk you through our website, discuss the action plan and help you decide how you would like to help change the laws.  There are lots of ways to help, most could take just a few minutes per day.

Most of our communications are through Messenger and Facebook. We will be attempting to contact you in Messenger.  Please set your notifications so that you will be notified by Messenger or email whenever someone posts or comments in HRLNG.  Please also check for Messages on a regular basis.   If you are only using a cell phone, you will need to add the Facebook Messenger app to your phone.

This means emailing, maybe phoning legislators and others to convince them to change the laws or help change the laws as well as putting in a consistent effort to grow HRLNG.

Our goal is to change the HOA/COA laws in all the states to protect and benefit the homeowners.

HOW:

Invite all the people you know that are unhappy with their HOA to Grow you group first by inviting others that you know are unhappy with their HOA to https://www.facebook.com/groups/hrlng

• HOA issues, are NON-PARTISAN issues. Do not bring up ANY other issues on any of the Social Media sites or in any conversation related to HOA. Other political issues will only divide the group.

• Pick on committee where you feel your skills will do the most good. 

• You can change committees whenever you want but please let Patrick@PK80.com know.

• You can do just a little or you can do more, you can change and adjust how much you do as your life needs require, but please, complete what you volunteer for, many people are counting on you.

• We will REQUEST assistance from you on a variety of tasks, you can accept to refuse any request.

• Please volunteer as much as you can, your efforts benefit half the population of the USA and especially those here in this group volunteering their time to benefit you and your family.

• Review the Committee Descriptions below.

• Attend a Tuesday night meeting to get a tour of the Website, answer your questions and help you decide what you can do to help.

• Contact Patrick@PK80.com and let him know committee you want to work with and what time you can put in per day, week, etc. so he can show you what to do,
   

• Membership Committee Description

  • Most other HOA Reform Groups are either information groups or complaining groups. Few take serious action to change the laws. 

  • Take our prewritten posts and post them on other existing HOA Reform groups inviting those WILLING TO TAKE ACTION to come to HRLNG (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hrlng ) and your State Facebook group.

  • If you learn of other HOA Reform social media groups or platforms that are not on our list, please send their name and http address to Patrick Johansen through Messenger, so I can add them to the groups so others in HRLNG will start posting to them also.

  • I know you each will question whether you should put effort into growing your own group or HRLNG.

    • I honestly believe the answer is HRLNG.        

    • When people from your state join HRLNG they will be referred to your State group to help your State efforts.

    • When you post to national social media groups, thousands of people are seeing your post. Your post will cause people to join from many different States including yours, and likely in much larger numbers as it is a much larger audience.

    • As they come on and start posting, they will be bringing on members in all States including yours, but because there are more of them posting, they will bring on more members in total and more to your State.

    • Make sense?

  • All members will be part of their State site and will be ASKED to send emails to their legislators or others at the time they are needed.   Sample emails will be supplied at the time.
     

• State Legislative Committee Description

  • This is your state group.

  • You goal is to get both Republican and Democrat legislators in both the House and the Senate, to write bills for you, get legislators from both parties to co-sponsor the bill and the rest to support it. One of our legislators wrote a bill that encompassed most of our Proposed Legislative Changes. Another said it was a better strategy to write one bill for each issue as it was easier to explain on concept at a time. You might discuss both with your legislator.

  • Convincing your legislators is a team sport. If you are the only one writing to your legislators, it is unlikely that you will be successful changing the laws. Yes, start contacting you legislators right away but also work to build the HRLNG legislative committee in your state. Keep searching for and organizing more people that will contact legislators. We at HRLNG will be helping you. Welcome others that want to join you, especially those who are willing to be leaders. This is not an EGO contest. None of us can achieve this on our own.

  • When you write a letter, you can post it on the main feed of the HRLNG Facebook page and also in the State Community Chat group asking others to cut and paste and send to their legislators and the committee legislators and include the email addresses. The easier you make it for the others the more likely they are to send the emails.

  • Contact your local legislators, the ones in your district. Generally email them first with brief explanation of what you want to talk about. Ask for a meeting. They will likely ignore you or send you a form letter.

  • If you read the HRLNG Proposed Legislation it outlines the problems and solutions. You can use it to summarize the problems but at this point just tell them we have solutions.

  • You should also talk very briefly about how the bad HOA laws have damaged you and others you know but keep it very brief. Don’t try to tell them all the details of your case. Let them know this effects 30-50% of the people in the State.

  • Legislators want you to vote for them but do as little actual work as possible. Most of them have multiple jobs and the legislature is just a part time job for them. Many states have session only in the winter some don’t have session every year. Many of the legislators only want to work during session but then are too busy to talk to you. You need to find out how you state operates. Ask others in the group. Don’t let them push you off to the next session. Keep convincing them to write the bills now so they are perfected by the time the next session rolls around.

  • They don’t like to read so keep anything you send them short. They like to read long paragraphs less than they like to read short paragraphs. They like to read paragraphs less than they like to read bullet point. So use bullet points when possible.

  • When they do give you an appointment, they will likely offer you 15 minutes. Explain that there are many, many problems with the HOA laws and you want to explain the solutions also, and ask for an hour. They may not give it to you but often they do. It is best to meet them personally but if that is not a reasonable situation for you, it is almost as good to meet over Zoom. Most of the legislators have access to Zoom and they can set it up. I am happy to go to any legislator meetings with you over Zoom. You can be there in person, I can be there on Zoom.

  • 3 days later phone and ask for appointment. 3 days later email again, 3 days later phone again, etc. Keep going until you get an appointment.

  • When you call if you get to talk to their staff, explain to the staff the horrors of HOAs and the importance of changing the laws. Get them on your side, they can be very helpful.

  • Also contact the legislators of the committees that the bills would go through. Same process, just keep contacting them until you get an appointment.

  • Same for the Governor as he must sign off on all the bills and can also ask the legislature to write the bills.

  • Once you get an appointment send them the proposed legislation. In that email ask them to read it before the meeting so that you can discuss it. They most likely won’t, so be prepared either way.

  • Have what you want to say in the meeting written out in bullet points like this document or in a list so that you don’t forget anything you wanted to say.

  • Always ask if they can help you to get other legislators, including the other chamber and the other political side (Republican,Democrat) to write companion bills. Ask who and when. Ask them what else you can do to help them get the bills past.

  • Before the meeting ends always ask them if they would write bills for the proposed legislation, and when you can meet with them next. Always discuss next steps.

  • You goal is to get them to write bills that include the proposed legislation. You need someone to write the bills in both the house and the senate and ideally both Republicans and Democrats. As this is not a partisan issue, you may be able to get them to have multiple co-sponsors for the bill vs separate bills from Rs and Ds.

  • Get as many other people from your state as possible to also write to their district legislators and also to the committee legislators asking for the same.

  • Work as a team through HRLNG as you can accomplish a lot more as a team and it helps keep people motivated. The legislators ALL tell us we need a lot of people calling in and writing into their legislators and the committee.

  • If you talk to other members, and they are uncomfortable writing to the legislators, there are a lot of other ways they can help. They can join any of our other committee to help support your efforts. Get them to Patrick Johansen or Carolyn Wefsenmoe to talk to them about how they can help.

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  • You will be emailing and if you are willing, phoning your legislators to talk to them about the Proposed Legislation.  It is even better if you can visit them in person.
     

• State Political Site Posting Committee    This would be part of your local state group.

  • Find as many local political sites as possible on all platforms and share them with the National Membership team. 

  • Post HOA Horror stories, HOA news articles, etc. on the political sites.  This will inform the legislators, other officials and the general public in these political groups of the problems with HOAs and make it easier for the legislative teams when they contact the legislators. The posts will also likely lead to more members joining us.

  • Include invitations for people willing to act to solve these HOA issues to join HRLNG with each post.

  • These political sites would have names like, Democrats of Tennessee, Republicans of Florida, Make Oregon Red, or Paint Wisconsin Blue.  As HOA Reform is a totally non-partisan issue, we want to appeal to both sides and be sure not to discuss any other political issues. 
     

• National Organizations and News Committee  

  • Learn the Proposed Legislation so you can discuss it.

  • Research to find the CEO and legislative lobbying leader of National organizations.

  • Phone or email them and get the phone and email address of the leaders. 

  • Send them the Proposed Legislative Changes and ask for their support and a time to discuss the Proposed Legislation.  We want them to lobby for these changes.

  • Add more State and National Organizations to the list and send them to Patrick Johansen, Patrick@PK80.com, to add to the National list so others in HRLNG will start writing and contacting them also.

  • Teach others to do the same.

  • Contact new media organizations and get them to print stories about HRLNG and/or the problems with HOAs into the National or Local News.
     

  • This group will write thank you sample letters to specific legislators throughout the country that have written Bills or taken actions that helped promoted our Proposed Legislative changes.  They will then coordinate with all our members to have members from across the country write thank you emails to that legislator, spread out over time so that the legislator gets a letter a day from different members thanking them.
     

• National Technical Committee

  • Volunteer to answer questions for the HRLNG group on whatever area you feel knowledgeable; website, cell phones, computers.  Help others who have trouble accessing the website, Facebook or other issues.
    
     

• National Admin and Research Committee

  • This group is national group do to administrative and research work.  Look up and post laws, maintain lists and other information on the website.  You can do small amounts, like just maintain one list, or you can do more.  
    
     

• Please contact Patrick Johansen through messenger or at Patrick@PK80.com and let him know committee you want to work with and what time you can put in per day, week, etc.