Tag Archives: foreclosure

CAI Organizes to Lobby Congress!

One of the most articulate, knowledgeable Homeowners Rights advocates in America is Arizona’s George Staropoli. When he makes a prediction you can bet on it. In his current blog, linked below, he says the Community Associations Institute (CAI) is turning its massive lobbying arm into a lobbying effort specifically targeting the U.S. Congress.

CAI is an extremely deceptive organization that turns George Orwell’s Animal Farm on its head. Up is down and down is up, good is bad and bad is good, all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. CAI is drowning Congressmen and Senators in the blatant lie that it represents the ‘collective’ rights and interests of all homeowners.

CAI’s website has a more honest depiction of its own organization. It says it represents 44 billion dollars worth of American real estate. What CAI will NEVER tell you is:

     the billions of dollars in fines against homeowners it has encouraged or precipitated,

     the hundreds of thousands of American homeowners it has helped bankrupt,

     the massive numbers of embezzlements from Homeowners Associations by HOA insiders,

     the numbers of murders and suicides precipitated after raw harrassment of homeowners,

     the billions and billions of dollars in HOA dues and homeowners’ legal fees it helped divert to private pockets,

     the complete fabrication that HOAs protect and preserve property value.

During the years of prohibition, Al Capone and his cronies made a fortune in illegal activities surrounding the illegal importation of alcohol. His corruption and his ability to corrupt public figures led to the explosion of La Cosa Nostra. Our Thing. The Mafia. It would be outrageous to think of such an organized crime effort creating a legal lobbying arm to twist the arms and the minds of the dimwits in Congress.

But anyone who takes a closer look at the Community Associations Institute will see how it got its start as a public ‘education’ organization, and then twisted itself into a private lobbying group that made massive profits referring HOA matters to its own ‘preferred’ phalanx of lawyers and service providers. If you’re anywhere close to the CAI, you’re going to get rich. Money from the pockets of dismayed homeowners will pour directly into yours.

CAI won’t tell you that dozens of its members or affiliates were indicted, arrested, committed ‘suicide’, or are facing racketeering charges in the current federal investigation in Las Vegas.

CAI won’t tell you that.

But I will.

And our movement is growing.

http://tinyurl.com/lv3fxhh

Have We Lost Our Minds?

guest blog by Nila Ridings
 
This story may serve as a mind-bending psychological trip when a prospective homeowner has to “win” over the board to be granted the right to buy into a place to live. 
 
Medical students stress over the LSAT, MCAT, and Step One, Two, and Three before they qualify for a medical degree. All of those tests induce stress beyond comprehension. But it’s more understandable when you realize these positions require a great deal of commitment and little room for error.
 
Many prospective home buyers are going through similar agony over their “interviews” with co-op boards as if acceptance into one of these places could mean life or death.  Are they really providing employment details, financial records, and having their pets “interviewed” just to be able to put a roof over their heads?
 
What if they get laid off, change jobs, or their company agrees to a merger that doesn’t meet the acceptance of the board?  Or their dog goes to a new groomer and the new haircut isn’t to the liking of the uppity board president?  What happens if their uncle’s cousin is convicted of bank robbery?  Could these changes push these “lucky” homeowners into homelessness?
 
Ridiculous.  Outrageous.  Insane.  Who would, and why would, anybody ever sign on to such nonsense…and pay for it? 
 
 

Little Pleasure On Pleasure Island

People move into lush-looking Homeowners Associations thinking they’ve bought a little slice of Utopia. But few people know that there really is no workable Utopia in this life. In fact, the original Utopia, written five centuries ago by Sir Thomas More, was actually a farce; a comedy about the inability of the human race to get along with one another. Homeowners Associations founded along the same lines of More’s Utopia have built into their own structure the probability of failure and decline into despotism and tyranny.

There’s an old bit of survivalist wisdom that teaches if three men go into the wilderness, two will always turn against the one. So any government which is allowed to use tyrannical rules against a minority is doomed to failure, disaster and a complete loss of justice. In fact, the genius of our country’s Constitution is that it doesn’t create a ‘majority rules’ ethic. It’s not a Democracy. It removes the people several steps from the rulers, and it divides the rulers into several separate but equal bodies of government. Our Congress is divided into a House and Senate. But the two must work together to pass legislation. The Executive has veto powers over Congress, yet Congress has the ability to overpower the Executive by gathering together a super-majority. And when everything goes to Hell in a hand basket, there’s a Supreme Court which can overturn or delay the implementation of bad legislation. All states except Nebraska have a similar structure (Nebraska has a unicameral instead of a bicameral legislature).

With all this in mind, we sadly turn our eyes to the Pleasure Island Mariner’s Cove Homeowners Association near Port Arthur,Texas. We’ve discussed Pleasure Island before. Like every other HOA in the country, Pleasure Island is just one vote away from disaster. If an HOA attorney needs a little extra cash, he advises the board to use minor violations of covenants to fine, seize and foreclose on straying homeowners.

Deborah Dommert got behind on her HOA dues. Then the late fees and legal bills started rising too quickly for her to catch up. Remember that HOA covenants invariably order a homeowner to pay all the legal bills of the Homeowners Association. And like thousands of other homeowners across the country, she now faces the seizure and foreclosure of her home. She has no court of last resort. She has no Congress which can pass laws shutting down these neighborhood tyrannies. She is without access to real justice.

HOA attorneys are taught by huge HOA management conglomerates to never allow a homeowner to negotiate a way to catch up on dues. In national legal seminars, attorneys learn how to boost their income by abusing those who can’t afford legal representation.

Deborah Dommert will most likely lose her home. But some investor in future weeks or months will make a tidy fortune out of her personal disaster. The investor might even turn out to be a close ‘friend’ of the HOA board or law firm.

The biggest disaster of all is the loss of personal freedom for all of us.

http://tinyurl.com/ln2pxdk

Fiddler On The Wrong Roof!

guest blog by Nila Ridings

From my previous Wichita, Kansas story you might recall folks there have some weird and wicked things happen to them. 

Rozalin Taylor was away from home for a few hours, and stunned by what she saw when she returned. Half of her roof was gone, not because of wind, but because of a lost roofing crew. At first, Rozalin thought she was being surprised with a new roof compliments of members of her church.
 
Reality set in and she went searching for whoever had done the damage and left truck tracks in her lawn. The roofing company working right down the street claimed no knowledge of ever being on her roof.  Finally, some helpful friends papered the bare roof to help protect her from an approaching storm.
 
Rozalin learned she wasn’t the first homeowner in the area missing part of their roof simply because a roofing company couldn’t read addresses!
 
Could somebody please buy these guys a GPS?
 
 

Nuclear Power: Coming To A Homeowners Association Near You

With the burning of fossil fuels being blamed for global warming, scientists are madly scrambling to come up with new ways of generating energy to power the planet and its massive population growth.

Nuclear power has long been predicted to be the only real escape from the current energy crisis. The problem is that nuclear power plants are horribly expensive, terribly dangerous, and used fuel rods can remain radioactive for millions of years. But changes are coming.

The June issue of Popular Mechanics has a brief article about plans by Westinghouse to produce a miniature nuclear power plant that can produce 225 megawatts, enough to power more than 200,000 homes. This is a completely new kind of plant that can actually be buried underground in a ‘cooperative’ and ‘understanding’ community. It’s been more than three decades since the last approved reactor in the United States. Westinghouse promises that this reactor is different: It’s only 89 feet tall, it can be buried underground to minimize radiation release, and if it goes into shutdown (meltdown?) mode it doesn’t need electricity to cool down.

The word ‘meltdown’ is still pretty frightening to folks who remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. So there’ll be massive resistance by the public to bringing a mini-nuclear reactor to their neighborhood. Which brings up Homeowners Associations!  They’re a perfect fit. HOA neighborhoods are private non-profit corporations which do not have to follow most governmental restraints in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. HOA boards pretty much do what they want to do, and three votes out of five on a board can control neighborhoods of thousands of homes.

Since a great many HOA board members are ethically challenged (as repeatedly documented in my new book, Neighbors At War), it would take almost nothing for a nuclear power producer to ‘buy’ the swing votes on an HOA board. Those board members could be slipped a few thousand shares of company stock. Or better yet, they might be given nice annual salaries as the Neighborhood Utility Technology Spokesmen, or N.U.T.S..

In any event, Westinghouse hopes to get federal approval for its first project in 2014.