Jan Bergemann describes himself as a retired chef from Germany. I’ve never tasted his recipes but I have long admired his hubris in standing up to the national disgrace known as Homeowners Associations.
Jan, not in a million years would I have thought this bill would pass out of the Florida Legislature’s Rules Committee. How the heck did you pull this off? Florida has some of the worst HOA nightmare stories in the country. But somehow, someone, somewhere is starting to pay attention.
Congratulations!
Still, I remain a skeptic about this bill actually becoming law. If it does, I’ll start a movement to build a monument to Cyber Citizens For Justice (ccfj.org).
Who doesn’t love omelettes for breakfast and chicken sandwiches at other times of the week? But just keep those chickens out of my backyard!
Backyard chicken coops are one of the privileges of rural living. Two or three laying hens can feed a family forever. But the astonishing growth of Homeowners Associations has led to a pathological contempt for any neighbor who dares keep a pet chicken.
We’re not talking about roosters crowing at the crack of dawn, here. Just chickens.
But for many of the growing number of condo commandos and lawn nazis a backyard chicken is about as attractive as ticks on a picnic blanket.
Those Southern Mississippi boys shore know how to screw up a state!
The new community of Diamondhead is holding its first city election. The law allows political signs to be placed anywhere except city property. But the Diamondhead Property Owners Association doesn’t allow any political signs either. Unless you’re a Republican. Mayoral candidate Carl Necaise put his political signs out in the yards of people who weren’t actually in the POA. And he’s ordered his opponent’s signs removed because they happened to be in the front yards of people who actually are POA members.
In my forty years doing investigative reporting for all three major networks, I don’t think I remember even hearing of a Homeowners Association problem more than once a decade. All of a sudden that’s just about all anyone’s talking about.
There are newly proposed bills in Colorado, Texas, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, California and a half dozen other states I can’t immediately bring to mind. Most of these proposed laws are aimed at curbing the rampant abuse by Homeowners Associations against individual homeowners.
Did you get that? HOA boards abusing homeowners? Individual citizens who theoretically should have certain God-given rights under the Declaration of Independence and the entirety of the U.S. Constitution?
They’re often called SLAPP lawsuits, a frivolous suit filed just to shut up an annoying critic. The acronym stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” SLAPPS were sometimes used by major companies to hush up environmentalists. Sometimes it was used the other way around. The bottom line was that lawyers were hired to cause the other side great expense and great anxiety, nothing more, nothing less.
