Tag Archives: Foreclosures

The Bimbo Rides Again!

      2 Comments on The Bimbo Rides Again!

The Good Lord knows I love Republicans. Truth be told, I’m pretty Libertarian… stay out of my life and I’ll stay out of yours.

But this Legislator in Arizona is either smoking too strong a brand of ‘stuff’, or somebody has slipped a Haight Ashbury tab into her punch. What is she thinking? She’s now painting a legislative bull’s eye on the back of every ‘gimp’ in the state. (If you’ve read my book, Neighbors At War, you’ve read my ‘gimp story. It’s pretty outrageous.

But back to the ‘Cute Young Thing’, aka, The Bimbo. The opinion of an Arizona attorney linked below shows The Bimbo’s other side. Her face may be pretty but looks can fool you. The position she’s putting her constituents in is pretty hideous. I would readily vote for a Republican, but this one is worth sending to the trailer out back of the big house.

(link to lawyer’s opinion of Ugenti legislation)

BTW, we’re now getting 50,000 new readers a month. No wonder she’s talking to all those reporters and fellow legislators and blasting Neighbors At War! Keep blasting, Cutie Pie. I like your smile.

 

 

 

 

How Can We React?

      6 Comments on How Can We React?

It has dawned on me several times over the past few years that HOA outrages are most often reversed when a rogue HOA gets a ton of phone calls and email from angry people across the country. If you know that you, as a board officer or manager, are being watched by the whole country, you might be a little less rotten to your neighbor. In a well publicized case where an HOA official’s viciousness is widely publicized, would that official be more willing to step back and mull over the action he or she is planning to take? Certainly, when you lift up a big rock the vermin tend to scatter in the light of day.

We currently have more than 31,000 people regularly reading this blog. That means an army of folks in every state. Should we begin publicizing home phone numbers, HOA phone numbers, email addresses and management phone numbers whenever we hear of the actions of a rogue HOA board?

I’d like to hear your thoughts publicly or privately. And if we ever began such a policy it would require your help to look up and verify any numbers or addresses of those we publicize.

Your thoughts?

Nevada Can’t Make HOAs Obey The Law!

      No Comments on Nevada Can’t Make HOAs Obey The Law!

A wild story was broken this morning by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. A member of the Nevada state board which oversees Homeowners Associations says financial conflicts of interest on his own board essentially render it impotent and dysfunctional.

Jonathan Friedrich is one of the most prominent Homeowners Rights advocates in Nevada. Earlier this year he was appointed as one of seven members of the Commission for Common Interest Communities and Condominium Hotels. But Friedrich has been frustrated in his efforts to reign in some of the more outrageous behavior of many Homeowners Associations.

A prominent example is the habit of Homeowners Associations to tack on huge collections fees and legal costs on fines issued to homeowners. A fine of a couple hundred dollars often soars to thousands of dollars, far exceeding what state law allows. But HOAs really don’t bother to follow state statutes. They just want the money. And four of the seven member State Commission in Nevada apparently have no intention of enforcing the law.

HOAs have super-priority liens on all housing meaning they collect their money before the mortgage company gets a chance to collect. And that’s led to a vast number of Nevada houses sitting vacant. No prospective buyer wants to invest in a house which has thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in liens that have to be paid off. Even the federal government, which owns a large number of foreclosed homes, can’t get rid of its Nevada inventory.

Friedrich says a majority of the members on the state panel have conflicts of interest: They are representatives of the Homeowners Association industry. They personally profit from sheltering HOAs and their illegal fines. And they oppose any move to force HOAs to abide by state limits on how high a homeowner’s fines can go.

Not covered in the Review-Journal article linked below is that one of the commission members who’s thwarting HOA reform has said he’s a founding member of CAI, the powerful money-guzzling Community Associations Institute. And at least two other commission members are CAI members.

Conflicts of interest, illegally excessive fines, flouting of state and federal law: It’s really no surprise in the HOA industry.

(click here for Las Vegas Review-Journal story)

 

Darcy Spears Pitches A No-Hitter

      2 Comments on Darcy Spears Pitches A No-Hitter

Yes, it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out…..

And for a third time, Darcy Spears of KTNV TV has gone to the Southern Highlands Country Club area and learned it’s a community of frightened homeowners with a leadership of gangster-minded bullies. Maybe that just comes naturally for people who move to Las Vegas: Find out how to join the Mob! In her latest HOA Hall of Shame report she tries to locate the skunks who are trying to chase a black man out of the neighborhood.

Even though Louis Washington is one of the original residents of Southern Highlands, the HOA is demanding that he plant a couple of trees in his yard. Never mind that the country club just behind Washington’s house, has a few trees that clearly look like they’re dying, this monstrous HOA tyrant wants the homeowner to plant a tree right in front of his picture window, or they’ll fine him out of existence.

Darcy says this is the third time Southern Highlands has been on her Hall of Shame report, Readers of my book, Neighbors At War already know about Southern Highlands for the way it treats black families. Just go back and re-read chapter eight where I document the shameful history of Homeowners Associations and minorities. Southern Highlands is featured. In 2006, Troy McMullen, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal Online did an investigative story on how blacks are treated at Southern Highlands. It was called “Trouble in Paradise: Minorities Report Bias in Vacation areas.”

Some people just have no shame.

They’re too ignorant to have shame.

 http://tinyurl.com/mbcbgog

 One footnote: the management company which runs Southern Highlands brags that it sends out a thousand violation notices per month. Am I wrong, or does that sound a little fascist to you?

 

Our National Tragedy

      No Comments on Our National Tragedy

With all the madness surrounding the George Zimmerman verdict Americans are having to deal with a whole series of tragedies. First and foremost is the death of Trayvon Martin. The second tragedy is that the Sanford Police department, inexperienced at handling complex crime scenes, just did a poor job of thoroughly processing the area of the murder. They should have canvassed the entire neighborhood looking for every possible witness. They simply didn’t have all the evidence that could have been gathered and presented to prosecutors.

But there were more tragedies: The political involvement of Florida Governor Rick Scott, who was pressured to appoint a special prosecutor, Angela Corey.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, in an interview with CNN, said Angela Corey has a horrible reputation in Florida for overcharging suspects. And there’s now plenty of evidence that Corey intentionally hid important evidence from the defense, a massive violation of legal ethics. It took a whistle blower to come forward and produce the evidence that Corey was illegally holding back. And she has now fired that whistle blower. In fact, Professor Dershowitz says Corey’s misbehavior borders on “criminal conduct.” Dershowitz is certainly no fan of George Zimmerman or of racial profiling. But he notes that all the racial profiling in this case was done by the news media.

And that’s the greatest tragedy of all. In a country where racial sensitivities are raw, a huge opportunity is being lost. The search for mutual understanding is being drowned out by the activists and the noisemakers and by those who have no understanding of how our legal system works. The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial was not the place to have those conversations. The ‘show trial’ just ginned up more disrespect for the law on both sides of the fence.

 http://tinyurl.com/pwjzs5h