Pennsylvania Widow Loses Home Over Six Bucks

The grapevine is buzzing about a Pennsylvania widow who inadvertently underpaid her property tax by six dollars & change and lost  her house at the county tax auction. This fight’s been going on for several years but now a judge has essentially told her, “The loss of her home was just fine and dandy.” Her $280,000 house seized and handed off to someone else.

When her husband died, she apparently got behind on the bills. She paid the property tax but she says she was never informed about the six dollar interest charge. She’s going to appeal, and who knows, she might win in a higher court.

Still, she was protected by the U.S. Constitution, she had the right to due process and the right to appeal, the right to appeal over and over again.

Across this country the same thing is happening. The record home seizure was in West Boca, Florida, where a single mom lost her home over an inadvertent underpayment of Homeowners Association dues by 78 cents. But day in and day out, Homeowners Associations are attacking residents of the neighborhood for such things as parking the wrong kind of car in the driveway, not getting your trash cans inside within an hour after pickup.

In one paper written by a fellow in the Cato Institute, the author talked about HOA attorneys in Houston running around ticketing cars because they knew they’d make extra legal income by generating extra fines, liens and lawsuits. Talk about a conflict of interest!

The difference between the government home seizure in Pennsylvania and the confiscation of all those other homes by Homeowners Associations… HOA residents don’t have the Constitutional rights to fight back. There’s no due process, there’s no way to appeal, no checks and balances. The guy who tickets you is a member of the board or the HOA manager. So you have to appeal to the same people who are beating you up in the first place.

The typical HOA is based on the private non-profit corporation model, and when you’re attacked by your own corporation you have little or no access to Constitutional rights. 

Welcome to your new life in your HOA.

(link to Associated Press story)

 

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About

Ward Lucas is a longtime investigative journalist and television news anchor. He has won more than 70 national and regional awards for Excellence in Journalism, Creative Writing and community involvement. His new book, "Neighbors At War: the Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association," is now available for purchase. In it, he discusses the American homeowners association movement, from its racist origins, to its transformation into a lucrative money machine for the nation's legal industry. From scams to outright violence to foreclosures and neighborhood collapses across the country, the reader will find this book enormously compelling and a necessary read for every homeowner. Knowledge is self-defense. No homeowner contemplating life in an HOA should neglect reading this book. No HOA board officer should overlook this examination of the pitfalls in HOA management. And no lawyer representing either side in an HOA dispute should gloss over what homeowners are saying or believing about the lawsuit industry.

1 thought on “Pennsylvania Widow Loses Home Over Six Bucks

  1. Caroline

    This is yet another tragedy in home thefts in Pennsylvania and if it is going to be done to anyone, it will be a single female, or single female parent, disabled and/or elder. I don’t know all the circumstances, or if they had even legitimately notified this homeowner. However, I am familiar with the foreclosure frauds in Pennsylvania I the HOA’s, POA’s and COA’s and there, they will set up a scam using their “syndicate,” to take your home for following the law and by laws and simply asking a question. By the way, this is an HOA board that has no ownership interest, maintenance, or other in your association. Ask some of these boards member a question and get no answers, or an obvious lie, or no assistance as is required under their by laws, rules and regulations and is accompanying and included in their deeds filed in the recorded of deeds. The innocent party has no choice but to ask the association attorney who for years oversaw and interpreted their rules, regulations, boundaries of responsibility and all other and the innocent homeowner gets sued, by the very persons who verified what they had to do, so they can start a fraudulent legal battle, war, to take you home, equity, contents and belonging’s. The abuses are horrific and especially the emotional damages, threats of bodily harm, on going costly property damages, those of whom are doing, refuse to take responsibility for, then a fire and all monies going to the COA, or HOA, small mortgage to my bank and not even my substantial equity back, or compensation for the total loss of my contents, belongings, additions and alterations and alternative housing, because I had to move out due to a significant death threat that came, it appears, from someone who was forcing me out of my home. I could not take one more threat, nor any more of the hostility and abuse this HOA board and their accomplices were forcing on us to cover up their criminality, in my opinion and experience. I encourage every reader of this blog to be very cautious, if in fact you would ever think of buying in an HOA, etc., but never, ever buy in at least one HOA/ COA in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t always like this, I believe. The criminality crept in and they willfully decided to set up, victimize who they thought was the easiest to get. The courts, in my experience and opinion there are criminal as well. The mentality among those who are involved in upholding peoples rights and the law, is that “there is no justice for women in Monroe County, PA and they have know since 1962, unless the woman can pay for it,” and if one is witch hunted into one of these scams,
    “it is better for you to lie under oath,” let them do whatever they want to you and take whatever they want. Got that. There is more and more to the discrimination, bigotry, forcing innocent people, families in to vulnerability so the attorneys and their friends may have other motives for them! The attorneys are absolutely and intentionally stealing from people who are supposed to be their clients. Despicable and evil, practices in in my opinion and experience. They lie, commit fraud and other crimes and they use the legal system to accomplish it. Just, throwing innocent people under the bus. They intentionally ill advise, steal and commit a range of crimes, because they can and they know there is no accountability, or investigative and enforcement agency that will do anything to them.

    Reply

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