Tag Archives: FBI

Wow! Any Doubt a Housing Collapse is Coming?

This blog post is, indeed, a little esoteric. But many experts have predicted that another financial bubble is going to collapse, this one involving the HOA housing industry.

You really have to dive in between the lines of the story linked below. But this financial expert is predicting societal changes which actually could lead to a housing collapse in suburban America. He says the most dynamic part of our growing financial culture is the diversity of thought and creativity that’s only found in our inner cities and not in our stale suburban neighborhoods. He claims that our societal focus on suburban life is destined for failure and calls it “…the primary reason for global financial crisis.”

I’m no economist and my own predictions are far less sophisticated than his. But it boils down to the same conclusion: Sir Thomas More’s vision of Utopia is exactly backwards and is destined to collapse simply because the human spirit is not designed for life in Paradise. It’s evolutionarily designed for survival of the fittest. And the HOA Utopian model was never designed to handle the harsh realities of life. 

When those institutions which underwrite home loans discover that the typical Homeowner Association model does not protect or stabilize property values, when they discover that homes outside HOAs actually rise faster in value than those inside gated neighborhoods, when they finally discover that embezzlement is the Achilles heel of covenant controlled developments, then investor money will start flowing out of homeowners associations and back into more traditional neighborhoods.  

(click here for Richard Florida’s interview)

 

Screw Christmas!

If you want any proof that Americans are living in a post-Christian era, you need look no further than Highlands Ranch, Colorado, one of the largest Homeowners Associations in America. Almost 100,000 people live here, and tonight I am dying in shame over the gutlessness of this community.

For years, Highlands Ranch has collected Christmas toys for needy children across the world. Among those organizations sponsoring the toy drive are Samaritan’s Purse and Operation Christmas Child.

But the American Humanist Association, an atheist group, has sent a cease and desist letter to the school district saying that allowing Christmas toys to be collected on its properties is unconstitutional and if it doesn’t stop immediately the atheists will file a lawsuit. It seems that donations are being left at a curbside which may or may not be on school property.

The schools, fearful of the cost of litigation with the atheists, are shutting down the toy drive.

As I sit here at my desk, my blood pressure high as a kite, I’m devestated by the reality that the same threatening letter would not have been sent if the toys were being collected by al Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, al Fatah, or for that matter the Yakusa. I couldn’t care less if donations were collected at that curbside for tsunami or earthquake-hit areas by the Salvation Army, the Mormon Church, Scientology, or the Purple People Eater Society.

Atheist organizations, of course, have the right to threaten lawsuits because they’re offended by the revolting thought of a Christian organization collecting toys for kids. But to see one of the richest homeowners associations in the country cowering over the thought of challenging this group in court just nauseates me.

The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…..” That’s all! There’s no question the court, in recent years, has interpreted that wording to ban certain expressions of religion on public property.

But if the gutless Highlands Ranch Homeowners Association and this even more gutless school district asked for ten bucks per household to fight this tiny atheist organization, and sued for damages against this group for trying to stifle their rights to collect toys for needy kids, at least we’d get a clearer reading from the Court on what the First Amendment really says.

Highlands Ranch is not a place where I’d like to live.

(click here for toy donation story)

 

Great Asset For Arizona Homeowners

I like to pass along good resources and blogs whenever I run across them. Here’s another.

Roger Wood heads a law firm in Arizona which recently filed a class action lawsuit against more than two dozen HOA management companies accusing them of illegal collections efforts against homeowners. That case is still pending.

Wood maintains a website where he occasionally writes blog entries, two of which caught my attention. One is a clever paraphrase of a passage from the Book of Matthew. The second is a discussion of a ‘cone of silence’ or force field that HOA attorneys put between board officers and homeowners, essentially to shut homeowners up…and increase their legal fees to the HOA of course. I wish we had a Roger Wood in each state in the nation.

Wood has given me permission to send you to his blog.

(click here for J. Roger Wood, attorney)

 

Teen Football Team Sets Example For Adults

guest blog by Nila Ridings
 
Hopefully, by the time these boys are buying houses HOAs will no longer exist.  But if they do, I doubt they would even think of bullying their neighbors.
 
This video speaks for itself.  
 
Warning:  Strong message. Tissues advised.
 
 
BTW, if you want to give a shout-out to these wonderful kids, here’s pertinent info:
 
Olivet Middle School
255 First Street
Olivet, Michigan 49076
 
Mike Flood, Principal
floodm@olivetschools.org

Was This Embezzler Reading My Book?

A newly elected HOA treasurer in Georgia allegedly siphoned 43,000 bucks out of the checking account of his Homeowners Association. At some point he must have panicked and he started slamming money back into the account 10,000 dollars at a time!

I can just picture him picking up a copy of Neighbors At War at the airport bookshop, reading it on the plane, and then scrambling to pay back the money before he was accused of a felony.

Too late.

Even if you pay it back it’s still felony theft. Of course, he’s innocent until proven guilty.

(click here for Fox Atlanta story)