San Clemente is a picturesqe California coastal town. But the big local controversy is a huge condo complex that went bankrupt five years ago. The empty building attracts rats, drug dealers, and has a massive impact on other homes in the Timbers at Towne Center Homeowners Association. Homes worth nearly $300,000 a few years ago now sell for less than $150,000. That is, when they can sell at all. Homeowners say they occasionally get interested buyers. But they’re chased away at the thought of living next to a garbage dump.
The city can’t do anything. Banks won’t lend money.
One adjacent homeowner says the neighbors complain bitterly about the long term eyesore. But they reject any attempt by the city to raise taxes to help pay for the project’s removal.
It’s so typical of Homeowners Associations, which often seem suicidal when it comes to adapting and finding peaceful solutions to local problems. Sometimes it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
http://www.columbian.com/news/2012/oct/24/condo-unfinished-development-resident-hazel-dell/
Uh, what’s your point?
It sounds like you’re blaming the HOA for something that is happening on somebody else’s property?
What am I missing?
My point was admittedly weak and you picked up on it. But neighbors in San Clemente have complained for five or six years that the city hasn’t abated the nuisance because it doesn’t have the money. Yet every time the city has tried to raise the necessary money for abatement, the voters have rejected it. Voters, of course, could do fund raisers to try to come up with the money to remove the eyesore. They could look for other solutions, i.e. public investment/public profit. But to sit and gripe when there are more innovative solutions just makes it sound like there’s no leadership.