It must seem like embezzlement from Homeowners Associations is the most unreported crime in the country. These crimes happen with stunning regularity.
Why, oh why, do America’s homeowners allow their neighborhood banking accounts to be handed over to board members and management companies who have no financial accountability?
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Yes, indeed, certain Homeowners Associations are actually doing unannounced mandatory inspections for hoarding. Among the items not to be hoarded are books! Scary, isn’t it?
I have to make a confession here. I hoard books. I still own just about every book I ever read. None are piled on the floor, but my shelves are packed. Somehow, I just thought my grandkids might someday wonder how their old grandpa got the nutty ideas in his head for some of the directions in life he took.
My mother was a wise old bird. She had a ‘secret compartment’ on her shelves that held some books my brothers and I were forbidden from reading. Of course, as soon as I discovered the ‘secret section’ I made a good inventory and went back as often as I dared. So at the age of ten, I started making my way through a number of naughty writers like Ayn Rand, Gore Vidal, D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. I don’t remember many turned down pages, but I do remember that Ape And Essence was kind of titillating,
Among the forbidden books were some by James Madison and Charles Dickens. Ah yes, there was also a book called Fahrenheit 451.
It was about people who hoard such things as books. And the local HOA squad goes out and torches the illegal collections.
In my forty year career as a news reporter, I’ve walked into hundreds, perhaps even thousands of homes. Some were clean. Some were not. But in all those years I never saw anyone’s book collection that should have been confiscated.
Hoarding is a problem. But isn’t it the wildest form of arrogance for a private non-profit corporation known as a Homeowners Association to do surprise inspections and make random decisions about what is and isn’t ‘hoarding’? I don’t like mice. Or termites. But just keep your hands off my books!
These words were once penned by one of the mightiest men in our movement. Understand, of course, there are still miles to go before we sleep. But read, Dear Friend, and take heart.
In the beginning
There was the land,
And the land was good
And the people were happy.
Soon upon the land
Came the moneychangers
In the guise of builders
Of the community.
And the moneychangers said
Behold, the covenants, conditions and restrictions
Were sacred and holy works,
And the people shall flourish and prosper.
And the legislature looked upon these CC&Rs
And said they were sacred and holy,
And that land values shall multiply ten-fold,
And the people shall flourish and prosper.
But the moneychangers were not content,
Seeking laws that forced the people
Against their judgment and wishes
Into mandated planned communities.
Soon, the multitude became angry at their plight,
Yet the moneychangers and legislature
Cast the people into involuntary servitudes
With continued tithes while disputes went unresolved.
The child-like people, seeking paradise
on earth and the gates of heaven,
Were not permitted audiences
With the magistrates.
And so the multitude suffered
A long and terrible time,
Praying for a savior one day
To deliver them from their existence.
One sect sought the accommodation
With the ruling powers and moneychangers.
Another sought a cleansing
Of an unworkable oppression upon the people.
Those seeking accommodation held fast to their desires
To see their fortunes on earth multiply ten-fold,
And that all such plans were good and just,
For the land values increased for all the community.
But many saw the desecration of the beliefs, values and ideals
Of the founders of the Great Nation that covered the land,
Saying behold the society that thou hast created,
Where Me First has replaced Love Thy Neighbor.
A babble of communities arose
By the followers of the moneychangers,
With beliefs, values and ideals of the Old Ways,
Once rejected by the Founders of the Great Nation.
Woe unto the followers of the moneychangers
For the sins of the fathers shall be cast upon the sons.
Repent now and restore the beliefs, values and ideals
Of the Great Nation and make the land good once again.
An ancient police axiom says, “Bad police work makes for bad case law.” A parallel in journalism is, “Careless writing makes for bad libel law.”
Somehow, you’d think some semblance of that wisdom would get through to some of the 335,000 Homeowners Associations in our country, especially those who’ve been well-described as “the lawn nazis” or the “condo commandos”. In many such neighborhoods people don’t talk to each other or have folks over for dinner.
Maybe that’s why so many state legislators are beginning to pay attention and talk about enacting laws to tap down the “little hitlers’ who seem to enjoy causing pain and distress among their neighbors.
Parking on the street overnight can bring such fines as $650, or for a fellow in Buckeye, “$1600”! Yes, there’s a madness afoot in this country, but at least one state, Arizona, has passed new parking legislation that says, “You can’t fine somebody for parking on a city-owned street.
Gosh, you’d think some bits of wisdom would be second nature!
But they’re not.
Thus, the law.
(original source)
Yep, nobody’s guiltier than this long-time reporter. So many times over the past four decades the real import of a story has just sailed over my stupid fuzzy head.
But it’s fun to be a witness when a reporter suddenly has that head-thunking moment when he or she realizes that they’re actually reporting on a story that has real national significance!
Today’s ‘head-thunker’ is Jodie Fleischer of “Channel 2 Action News” in Forsyth County, Georgia. She’s just discovered that private HOA security guards are embued with the same powers as police officers in making traffic stops inside Homeowners Associations. Now try to understand this: Homeowners Associations are private non-profit corporations which have ZERO government powers, ZERO government enforcement abilities. Yet these sleazy little white-bastion gated communities are acting like they have all the Constitutional Powers customarily reserved for trained police officers. Every trained cop in the country should be mightily offended.
We’ve already had the Trayvon Martin disaster where an untrained ‘HOA security cop’ killed a kid who was walking through the neighborhood. Again, I have no opinion as to whether the fault was Trayvon’s or George Zimmerman’s. But this is like a ticking time bomb in every one of the nation’s carefully coiffed gated communities.
Trial lawyers are broke right now. Their phones have stopped ringing. The recession has eaten deeply into their personal savings. They are birds-of-prey at this moment, floating and circling over the countryside looking for any available carrion in these HOA communities. Every single time a private security guard pulls his lights, siren, badge and ticket writing stunt on a detained motorist, there’s a lawsuit in the making.
Every time a lusty young private HOA security guard takes a sideways glance at a low-cut blouse on the most recently detained motorist, there’s gonna be Hell to pay.
And it ain’t Hell that’s going to be paying the legal bills. It’s each and every member of that private gated Homeowners Association.
Jodie Fleischer, take it from a long-time fellow reporter. You’re hanging onto the threads of a donkey’s tail. This story will kick you into the mud, or into the Big Leagues.
(original source)
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/do-security-guards-issuing-traffic-tickets-overste/nXXbD/
