I’ve written about this before. But here’s another great column from the Aspen Times. Wages are so out-of-control in this Eastern Hollywood Town, that the City of Aspen is using taxpayers’ money to pay for the maintenance of Homeowners Associations where all the ‘low-income’ workers live. The whole system is warped in more ways than can be easily discussed. But the columnist linked below does a pretty good job.
Homeowners Associations are a national scandal waiting to burst. But making the taxpayer pay the cost of keeping this scam going is just stretching the imagination too far.
Many homeowners are dismayed when they start looking for a lawyer to represent them against a Homeowners Association. Such law firms are close to non-existent. Lawyers who align themselves with such organizations as Associa and CAI make a massive amount of money. But defending individual homeowners against HOA abuse is almost always a money-loser.
So I’m happy when I can pass along the name of a homeowners’ rights law firm. The Herb Milgrim Law Firm in Fort Lauderdale is a name you Florida homeowners should keep track of. They don’t blog often but their blogsite, linked below, is worth checking every so often. And I’m still collecting names of other good law firms around the country. If you run across a lawyer or law firm that stands for the rights of individual homeowners, please email me their names.
I have enormous sympathy for people who buy into an HOA. Heck, I was dumb enough to do the same thing. Three times! But in retrospect, I was STOOPID! I was a lamb among the wolves. Never had a clue.
The biggest unreported financial crime in America is embezzlement from an HOA. The following story isn’t even extraordinary, it happens in city after city, day after day. But homeowners (like me) are just too witless to ‘get it.’ The HOA scam is beyond any reasonable explanation. If you’ve bought an HOA property you’ve just donated your life savings to a massive national criminal enterprise that the government will never investigate, expose, or end. Kiss your life savings, ‘Goodbye.’
Egads! I’ve never met Sara Benson, never even talked to her on the phone, but I’d have an affair with her in an instant, if she’d agree! (Yep, I’m not very classy, but I’m sincere!)
This incredible Illinois Realtor has discovered that up to 80% of Illinois Homeowners Associations are unknown and untracked by the state! The implications are massive. It means that huge numbers of Americans have signed away their access to rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution by buying homes in private corporations where they’re lying naked in front of all their fellow homeowners. They think they’ve bought private homes, but what they’ve actually bought is shares in unregulated corporations in which they can be taxed, liened, sued and bankrupted with their life savings going into a common pot owned by all their fellow neighbors.
It’s amazing how much kids improve our lives. And since the typical Homeowners Association has no interest in improving the lives of families it’s not impossible to imagine that some HOA boards will do everything in their power to drive families out.
