This one is so amazing it’s not even amazing! I would even go so far as to call the California Legislature racist!
Assembly Member Donald Wagner introduced a bill to make the state’s Open Meetings law apply to the boards of Homeowners Associations. The CAI and its minions of lawyers and lobbyists descended on the Legislature like flies on a carcass. Only one member of the Housing Committee voted in favor of allowing homeowners to know what their boards were doing.
California has many homeowners whose English-speaking skills are limited. Under current California law, you’re not even allowed to bring an interpreter or representative to a board meeting.
There are lots of reasons not to live in California. This is just another of them.
It’s ugly to say it, but rich people really do think their rights are superior. At least, that’s what it looks like in drought-ridden Southern California. The entire southwest is facing one of the worst droughts in its history. Yet members of the Blackhawk Homeowners Association have been told to green up their lawns…or else!
There are new state laws that prohibit California HOAs from fining residents who have brown lawns. But do you honestly think the average Homeowners Association has any respect for state law?
The former treasurer of the Summit Ranch Homeowners Association in Chino Hills, California is going to jail for up to a year for embezzling more than 128,000 dollars.
For every one they catch, there are ten thousand others getting away with it.
CBS-LA reports that one homeowner in the ritzy Bel Air area used 12 million gallons of water in a single year during the worst drought anyone can remember. TWELVE MILLION GALLONS! The water bill was 90,000 dollars.
I have no idea what it costs to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool, but I would bet you could fill a swimming pool at least once a week with that budget.
The real stench, though, is that public officials won’t release this person’s name or address “for privacy reasons.” This one homeowner needs to be targeted and his name and address publicized. With a drought so severe it really threatens our national stability (agriculture), there’s no need to respect privacy. Drought shaming. Someone should do it.
They got him! A couple of days ago a longtime HOA manager in San Mateo, California was arrested and accused of stealing 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. Now they’ve arrested her partner, a man who allegedly wrote fake invoices for construction work that was never done. It sure sounds like a copycat of the decade-long swindle of homeowners in Las Vegas.
And it sounds a lot like the multi-million dollar organized crime racketeering swindle of Homeowners Associations in Colorado.
And Homeowners Associations in Florida.
In Alabama.
Virginia.
Texas.
And every other state.
Still, you keep hearing from Realtors, and Congressmen, lawyers, city officials and state representatives that this kind of swindle is extremely rare. What are these guys smoking, anyway?
