What does a group of angry homeowners do when they feel they have received shoddily built homes for their lifetime investments? Do they picket the builders' sales offices? Take their impassioned pleas to the press? Sue the builder for repairs and damages? Sometime they do, and sometimes they do even more.

The Advocates for Quality Home Construction (AQHC) is a non-profit organization of volunteer home owners that began its drive in the city of Hollister, California, by formulating and supporting what would be a slow growth initiative to stop builders from profiting from what they consider structurally unsound and badly-built homes. Their movement has found audiences and alliances nationwide with similar complaints; groups with names like 'Homeowners for Better Building", "Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings", "Homeowners' Organization for Mediation and Education (HOME), etc. And it is through the powerful new cyber-world that these groups have come together to effect change. J.J. Vogel, the Hollister group's president and his constituency are working hard to consolidate all these groups into one, the "National Alliance Against Construction Defects."

Their complaints range from Alkali-Silica Reactions, Uniform Building Code Violations, and grading (drainage) problems, to inordinately widespread stucco cracking and beyond. They concede that all new homebuilders may not be at fault; indeed sometimes it is the local or state bureaucracies that their pleas must reach. Builders will try to satisfy the needs of the various inspectors in the position to give green lights to proceed with construction for their various disciplines unless they are told to correct their workmanship. What the group says it is finding, however, is that code violations and head-turning is rampant and something needs to be done to provide more governmental controls when new homes are under construction.

Vogel claims to have already appeared in over 100 newspaper articles, on Fox and NBC News, and also been involved in a Grand Jury investigation (you can see their report in his web site). He is currently working with some members of the news media and government officials and agencies to push for a wholesale investigation of the construction industry. To take things as far as he can, Vogel is currently on the ballot to run for California State Assembly to get his platform taken seriously.

In cases where angry homeowners have threatened to take more action against their builders (such as in Hollister, where approximately 500 people have been complaining about their homes), disgruntled homeowners are oftentimes placated by the builder's willingness to fix a major problem cosmetically. Sometimes the builder will get the homeowner to "sign-off" on a complaint by installing a new stove or tile floor. "This makes them hesitate to take any further action or get the real problem fixed," says JJ Vogel, leader of the group. " We want to effect real change here, and we're not going to stop until our voices are heard." Some homeowners have taken their complaints to the State Contractor's Licensing Board, others to Arbitration, and some have given up, sold their homes while they could, and moved away. And then there are the silent sufferers who don't want to get involved. "We have to respect everyone's level of concern," says Vogel. "Some homeowners may not want to jump in until we have taken this somewhere much further."

Some of the things AQHC wants to affect are concrete and stucco material composition, so that Alkali-Silica reactions are no longer commonplace throughout the country. Their web sites display graphic pictures homeowners have taken of their own homes to illustrate their concerns. "Builders will come in and completely re-tile or add hardwood to floors when vinyl was revealing buckling and popping of the concrete. It looked okay at first, and then even those surfaces were compromised. They were fixing a symptom, but not the real problem." Vogel explains.

The hard part is getting heard, according to Vogel. With the economy so robust and homebuilding happening at a fever pitch, no one wants to rock the apple cart and look into more quality controls. Literally thousands of jobs rely on the industry of building homes, and when times are good, it's difficult to get the sympathy of those in a position to make a difference.

Vogel is currently taking his pleas to both local and state officials, and wants to see that new legislation is passed to protect the consumer from more structurally unsound homes being built. "We need to come up with the "lemon law", similar to the car industry, so that people have some recourse," says Vogel. "Maybe when builders are forced to change some of their building practices and materials we'll start to scratch the surface. But as things stand, they have no reason to do so." Another of Vogel's goals is to get the state's Insurance Commission involved so that insurers inspect new homes as well.

Stay tuned for more developments from this group, since they have found more and more devotees across the country. They are quick to admit that not everyone has had or will have the problems they are all experiencing, but for their purposes, they have no intention of being silent when they literally have hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake.

To find out more about AQHC and the National Alliance Against Construction Defects, visit their web site and their sea of related of links provided at http://www.jps.net/hollister1

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Published: December 3, 1999

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A veteran of the real estate and homebuilding industries since 1986, Dena Kouremetis first joined Realty Times as a new homes writer in 1998. Since then, she has authored four books, written consumer columns on new homes issues for websites and newspapers all across the country, contributed to builder trade magazines, appeared as a guest expert on several radio shows and even created a ten-chapter podcast for LendingTree.com’s homebuilder website, iNest.com, now available on iTunes, entitled Uncharted Waters; Navigating the Purchase of a New Production Home. Kouremetis recently joined her local Folsom, CA Coldwell Banker office as a broker associate while continuing to write for the real estate industry. For the past three years, she has been training real estate agents for both the resale and new homes industries, putting her experience, research expertise and gift of expression to work to help others entering the business.