The number of foreclosure lawsuits filed annually by Houston-area homeowners associations tripled between 1985 and 2001, according to a database compiled from court records by local activists. 

This trend is attributed variously to lawyers' seizing on a lucrative speciality or to the growing prevalence of mandatory homeowners groups. It occurred amid growing controversy over tactics the groups use to collect past-due fees and enforce rules, notably in the case of an 83-year-old widow, Wenonah Blevins, who lost her $150,000 home for a time last year over an $814.50 delinquency. 

Partly in response, a state Senate subcommittee in January began public hearings on homeowners associations. 

The database -- a record of more than 15,000 cases painstakingly assembled by a 71-year-old Houston woman and her two sons -- also shows that most foreclosure lawsuits are filed in neighborhoods where the median home value is less than $100,000. 

And it shows that a handful of Houston attorneys who specialize in such cases generated thousands of the lawsuits. 

While few of the cases actually lead to people losing their homes through foreclosure, activists say the threat often creates pressure for homeowners to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees and other costs based on relatively small debts. 

"What they're doing is crazy, and there is no control," said Varalyn Williams, a Houston financial analyst who was sued over a $300 association fee that she said has grown to more than $2,000 through legal bills. 

"They can set their amount" of legal fees, said Williams, who settled the lawsuit late last week for an undisclosed amount. "They are judge, jury and executioner." 

Association representatives say they need the authority to file for foreclosure and recover fees in order to maintain income for community services and to enforce rules that make neighborhoods more desirable. Most associations use foreclosure actions only as a last resort, they say. 

"I think there is kind of an impression that associations relish the idea of people losing their homes, and I don't think that's true," said Michael T. Gainer, a Houston attorney ranked in the database as the area's second most active in filing foreclosure lawsuits. 

Over the past three years, Houston resident Beanie Adolph and her two sons have spent hundreds of hours assembling data on foreclosure lawsuits from public records. They have posted summaries and analyses on the Internet at www.hoadata.org. 

As their findings become more widely known among activists and policymakers, Adolph and her sons hope they will influence the debate over the legal tactics used by homeowners' groups. The Legislature adopted a measure last year intended to provide protections against abuses, but many activists and public officials say more reforms are needed. 

"What we're fighting is all the attorney fees that have forced so many into bankruptcy," Adolph said. 

The database shows that the annual number of foreclosure lawsuits stayed below 500 each year in the mid- to late 1980s, from a low of 302 in 1987 to a high of 496 in 1985. A steady increase began in 1991, with the number exceeding 1,000 by 1994 and peaking at 1,540 in 2001. 

State Sen. Jon Lindsay, R-Houston, who heads the subcommittee investigating the issue, said the increase probably reflects lawyers' growing recognition of the fees they can earn in such cases. 

"I think there are always a lot of lawyers out there that are looking for new venues to get into," Lindsay said. "In this situation, to some degree, they have a blank checkbook," because of laws that allow homeowners groups to recover legal fees from the people they sue. 

Sandy Denton, executive director of the First Colony Community Services Association, offered another possible explanation. 

"Certainly there's been a large growth in the number of homes within community associations," said Denton, whose organization represents some 9,000 homes in the Sugar Land-Missouri City area and is one of the largest homeowners groups in the country. "Proportionately, that's going to be a component of the increase." 

While most Houston neighborhoods have some type of civic association, the public policy debate focuses on associations in which membership is mandatory. These homeowners must pay annual fees and abide by rules relating to design, land use and even lifestyle standards. 

A legislative panel that studied the issue in 1998 reported that homeowners associations have "banned political signs, children, spouses below a certain age, pets above a certain weight, day-care centers, the use of back doors, pickup trucks and even goodnight kisses on front steps." 

Attorney Gainer said it is important to consider the number of foreclosure lawsuits filed in the context of the many thousands of homeowners who belong to such groups. 

"I can't really tell you why those increases took place," Gainer said. "But even if you have 1,500 foreclosure lawsuits, that's a small percentage of the total number of homes in restricted subdivisions." 

Gainer, who testified before Lindsay's subcommittee in January, is identified in the database as having filed 928 foreclosure lawsuits, the second-highest total of any local lawyer. Gainer said the figure is low; he estimated he has filed 1,400 to 1,500 suits in Harris County district courts. 

Adolph and her sons collected the data from a legal publication called the Daily Court Review, from Harris County databases available on the Internet and from county district court records. 

Adolph, who also testified at the Senate subcommittee hearing, said she became interested in the topic after she helped block an effort to organize a mandatory homeowners association in her neighborhood. 

As she learned more about the legal authority of homeowners groups, Adolph said, she became increasingly angry. 

"To me, this was so un-American it just riled me from my toes up," she said. 

She obtained copies of several thousand foreclosure lawsuits from Geneva Kirk Brooks, an activist who has been fighting for limits on the groups' authority for years. 

Adolph started going through the cases by hand, tabulating information on index cards and plotting locations on a map. 

"I worked day and night going through files," Adolph said. "Sometimes I would fall asleep and wake up when my pen fell out of my hand and hit the floor." 

The effort became more high-tech when Adolph enlisted the aid of her sons, attorney Tom Adolph, 45, and engineer Bob Adolph, 46. They began systematically searching court records for all cases filed by homeowners' groups that could lead to foreclosure. 

A third generation of the Adolph family got involved when Bob's son, Chris, did research on the subject for his doctoral studies in political science at Harvard University. 

None of the Adolphs has even been involved in a legal dispute with a homeowners association. They said they were motivated solely by their desire to correct what they see as a grave injustice. 

"Neighborhoods are supposed to be about people helping each other," Tom Adolph said. "Instead of helping a person in need, these groups are making their problems worse." 

He said the Legislature should revoke the associations' foreclosure authority or at least require a neighborhood vote before a foreclosure lawsuit can be filed. 

To analyze the value of homes targeted most often in foreclosure suits, the Adolphs determined the names of the subdivisions where they were filed. They obtained median home values for these subdivisions from the Web site of the Houston Association of Realtors (www.har.com). 

The findings showed that residents in modestly priced neighborhoods were the most common targets of lawsuits. More than 6,000 homeowners were sued in neighborhoods with median values between $60,000 and $80,000. At the other extreme, only 41 owners of homes in neighborhoods with median values between $200,000 and $220,000 were included. 

Lindsay said these findings suggest that owners of lower-cost homes have less money to make improvements needed to comply with deed restrictions, or to hire lawyers to represent them when they are sued. 

Denton, the First Colony association executive director, said she found this finding "very interesting." She said homes represented by her group range in value from less than $100,000 to more than $3 million. 

"When we are making a decision about whether to proceed with any type of action against a homeowner, home value doesn't drive it," Denton said. 

Williams said the home that triggered the lawsuit against her and her husband, a rental property in northwest Harris County, is valued at $90,000 to $100,000, placing it within the range of those targeted most often. 

Williams acknowledged that she and her husband, Darren, were late in paying their $300 assessment for 2000 to the Concord Bridge Homeowners Association because of "some personal problems." 

She said they sent a partial payment, for $150, after the Jan. 31 due date, and this check was cashed. But when they sent a second $150 payment in May, Williams said, the association's attorney said he would return it because they now owed legal fees in addition to the assessment. 

"At first, I thought it was not that big a deal, but when I got the bill from the attorney about two weeks later, it was $604," Williams said. "I said, `No way, this is wrong.' " 

As the dispute continued, she said, the attorney, William Gammon, continued to tack on additional legal fees. He filed suit in January 2001. 

Williams declined to disclose the amount she agreed to pay in settling the lawsuit, saying only that it was "substantially less than what they wanted, but more than what we thought was fair." 

Williams said she and her husband concluded that continuing to fight the suit would be too costly. 

"We decided the next battle is going to be with the Legislature," she said. 

Gammon did not return calls seeking comment. His name appears on 1,562 lawsuits in the Adolphs' database, making him the most active attorney in this field in the Houston area. 

Williams said she is willing to pay a fee for the late payment and a "reasonable" attorney's fee, but nothing close to what she said Gammon is demanding. 

"The whole idea of it is so unjust that I just can't stand back and watch this," she said. "If the court tells me I have to pay it then I will pay it, but I will tell my story from every mountaintop."