Run get the tissues and prepare to watch this video!
Nobody will forget Ella Schultz and her Make A Wish playhouse dreams. As of April 1st Ella’s wish came true! JE Dunn built a beautiful playhouse complete with a Dutch door, porch swing, loft, kitchen, and a sweet pink mailbox! We wish her thousands of hours of happiness, laughter, and fun in her special playhouse that is currently restricted to “girls only.”
KCTV5 says the Stonegate HOA caved under the pressure of the public outcry to allow the playhouse. Nothing has been reported regarding the HOA not being in good standing with the State of Missouri. It’s fair to assume the Stonegate board of directors has learned more than one lesson from this experience.
And thousands of people are asking questions about HOAs and wondering why anybody would buy a home in a place like this?
This is why activists stand up and speak out against HOA abuses, because often times it makes all the difference.
If you live in an HOA, remember you don’t actually own your own home. It’s owned jointly by every member of the neighborhood. That means when your HOA gets sued the damage judgments are shared equally by every member of the neighborhood. If your board does something outrageous enough to precipitate a lawsuit you could face an outrageous special assessment to pay the damage award.
With that in mind, read this next link. An HOA cuts off the water to a disabled resident. A lawsuit? Get ready to shell out big bucks.
Sometimes, this blog will stray far afield. But this one is still about human conflict.
American kids are not taught about Gallipoli. It was one of the most disastrous battles in the history of the world. A half million men were killed or maimed during the WWI attempted invasion, sort of like an Omaha Beach that lasted for eight bloody months. It was Winston Churchill’s biggest defeat.
As a war-baby in an American family that lost one dad in WWII and had another dad who was wounded and taken POW, I’ve always been sensitive to stories of war. And this video absolutely blew me away.
These stories just get wilder and harder to believe. The video linked below is beyond shocking. The only good news is that newspapers and TV stations are using HOA horror stories as regular features. Yep, it’s going to be a bad, bad time for these HOA board officers.
There’s a case awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that could increase the risk for individual HOA board members and property managers. It involves passive and overt discrimination against certain protected classes. Overt discrimination needs no explanation. But passive or indirect discrimination, which often happens when no one intentionally means to discriminate, can lead to huge lawsuits and massive judgments against individual board members and homeowners. More and more protected classes have been filing lawsuits based on easier-to-prove passive discrimination.
If the Supreme Court declines to narrow the scope of federal discrimination laws then Katy bar the doors. Passive discrimination happens all the time in Homeowners Associations and it can only encourage more plaintiffs to make such claims. Insurance companies usually won’t pay for legal costs or judgments under federal or state discrimination laws.
When they begin to realize their personal liability HOA board members all over the country might start fleeing like rats from the Titanic. And many neighborhoods may decide to dissolve their HOAs forever.
The article linked below explains it far more intelligently than I did.
