Tag Archives: foreclosure

The Worm Turns…. (Henry VI – Wm Shakespeare)

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The victories are precious and few, but once in a while homeowners win a small victory against the fascists in HOA Amerika. An appeals court in California has issued a ruling that’s making the lawn Nazis twist in their graves.

The court ruled that all Homeowners Associations, when holding elections, must give homeowners with opposing views equal access to association media, when and if the board itself is taking a position in the election.

Amazing! This is one court in the nation that now says homeowners have rights. They cannot be shut out of the neighborhood newsletter or website. They cannot be shut up when trying to speak at the local board meeting when a campaign is in progress. The really stunning thing here is that a lower court ruled the exact opposite. But the Court of Appeals overturned the junk ruling from the lower court.

The Adams Kessler law firm, representing the HOA boards, adamantly opposed the Constitution’s Free Speech provision arguing that HOA boards have the right to stifle dissent during campaigns to amend the association’s by-laws. It argued that the HOA board was only “providing information” when it stomped on equal access provisions in California law.

The Appeals court essentially ruled that an association “board” is only a “member” of an association and does not have greater rights of access than any other member of the neighborhood.

Yes, it’s a subtle distinction, but no so subtle as to dodge the outrage of the Adams Kessler law firm. The Community Associations Institute routinely holds training seminars (think brainwashing) of the officers of HOA boards, during which it trains its puppets to always deny homeowners any access in newsletters, community bulletin boards or common areas if they hold an opposing view.

The Community Associations Institute is going to work its little black heart out to get this decision modified or overturned. CAI makes billions of dollars for its lawyers, its managers, its contractors, and its ‘training’ of board members. It simply cannot allow homeowners to regain any rights they lost to these fascist empires known as gated neighborhoods. And those billions of dollars will be thrown into the fight against this decision.

Still, my thoughts towards Adams Kessler: On this day, my friend, you lost.

The homeowners won.

 

Frivolous. Idiotic. Probably Partially Insane.

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Yes, sometimes I like to take my mind off of the national scam known as Homeowners Associations. But this is one of those rare departures you may always remember. You’ll make fun of me, of course, but it’s just a weird thing that occurred to me during a recent long, boring spell.

You’ve heard all the stories, of course, of Homeowners Associations that try to restrict your rights in incredible ways:  A Miami condo association that will sue you for ‘improper and offensive cooking odors’, e.g., cooking in a wok. And there are all those HOAs that have fined, liened or foreclosed upon homeowners who’ve tried to set up a backyard barbeque.

So, yes, you really can lose your home because of the wrong kind of cooking.

Which all leads to one of the most bizarre dinner parties I’ve ever had. Fortunately, the guests were mostly family. But if you ever try the following recipe, you’ll never do it another way!

Get two slices of aluminum foil about 24 inches long.

Take a fresh salmon steak, about a half inch thick and place it on one of the pieces of foil.

Squeeze an entire half of a lime over the salmon steak.

Put a pat of butter on the salmon.

Liberally sprinkle the salmon steak with salmon seasoning, garlic powder, salt, pepper, lemon/dill, chili powder, oregano.

Wrap the salmon steak, envelope style, in the aluminum wrap.

Turn the packet upside down, and wrap it again, envelope style, in the second sheet of foil.

Put however many salmon steaks you’ve prepared on the top rack of your dishwasher. Run the dishwasher through its entire regular cycle.

When the cycle is done, open all the foil envelopes and serve to your guests. It’ll be the best, most tender salmon you ever tasted!

Just don’t use that nasty wok. Or the barbeque. They’re too ethnic.

 

G-L-O-R-I-A Wins The Lottery But Loses Her Mind!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings
 
Who doesn’t dream of winning the lottery?  Ms. Gloria MacKenzie was the lucky winner of $590,000,000.  She is set for life…well most likely not.  She paid 1.175 million for a house in a gated HOA with a private golf course near Jacksonville, Florida.images[2]
 
Gloria, do you know those CAI-trained HOA board members are drooling on their Brooks Brothers shirts and dripping on their Armani shoes just waiting for you to make one little mistake so they can start assessing you with fines?  My dear, don’t you dare plant one flower of the wrong color or park your car outside of your garage on your driveway for even five seconds.  You are a retired single woman with a target on your back. You’re in an HOA, remember?  You’re the ultimate bull’s eye.  You’ve paid cash.  You have cash.  And everybody knows it.
 
The only consolation is:  Gloria has enough cash to buy the whole darn neighborhood if they provoke her enough!
 
 

Ohhh, I Like Cato. But I Just Don’t Know…

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Well, I’ll cover all kinds of subjects on this blog, even if it sometimes turns my stomach.

Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus Share are smart enough people. Like the rest of us, they’ve watched the rise of private gated communities and Homeowners Associations. And as representatives of the Cato Institute, they’ve filed a fascinating Friends-of-the-Court brief against the federal government under the ‘takings clause’ in the Fifth Amendment.

Quick background: Hurricane Katrina slams into Louisiana severely damaging the Mariner’s Cove Townhomes Association. 14 of the 58 homes are seized by the federal government as uninhabitable. But the feds refuse to pay HOA dues to the Association on behalf of those 14 properties it now controls. The Mariner’s Cove Townhomes Corporation claims that the refusal to pay dues amounts to an illegal uncompensated ‘taking’ under the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment. Mariner’s Cove sues the People of the United States.

Along comes the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the justices rule against Mariner’s Cove, saying the interrupted income stream does not amount to a ‘taking’ of real property.

The usually conservative leaning Cato Institute has filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and rule in favor of the homeowners.

Whoa! This gets into some uncharted territory with a panel of unpredictable Justices who can turn the whole world topsy turvey. Remember Susette Kelo? What started out as a simple ‘save my property’ case…. turned into a ‘damn your little pink house, girl’ kind of case.

While my initial thoughts are that my heart should be with Cato, the Mariner’s Cove property owners, and with hapless homeowners like Kelo, a friend on this blog had my head spinning with questions, twists and turns that Cato and this court case don’t seem to address or even consider.

This lawsuit is not necessarily brought by the Mariner’s Cove homeowners, it’s brought by the Mariner’s Cove Homeowners Corporation. Although the homeowners have a relationship with the corporation that claims to represent their interests, they are indeed different entities. How often does an HOA corporation actually represent the interests of the homeowners?

Many times, we’ve witnessed HOA corporations taking actions that are directly opposed to the wishes of homeowners they claim to represent.

Homeowners Associations are private non-profit corporations. At the same time they are an odd form of de facto government that refuses to recognize 230 years of Constitutional rule of law.

Homeowners are often told they don’t have access to governmental limitations contained in the Bill of Rights. The right to Free Speech, for example, is often denied. The right to ‘due process’ is routinely mocked in the typical HOA. Homeowners Associations frequently harass and mistreat handicapped homeowners despite the federal ADA. Across the country homeowners are fined, private homes are liened, seized and auctioned off in a process that is best described as bizarre.

So now a corporation which refuses to grant Constitutional rights to its own homeowners is coming before the court waving a copy of the Constitution?

So, while my heart may be with Cato, common sense would dictate that the government not be allowed to stomp on the rights of any homeowner.

We’ve learned that a bankrupt homeowner cannot discharge his HOA debt in his bankruptcy. We’ve also seen multiple cases where a fire destroys a home, but that homeowner is held responsible for his HOA dues in perpetuity. That kind of unfairness doesn’t exist outside of gated neighborhoods.

And now one of these private HOA corporations asks the court to order the People of the United States to obey the same byzantine rules it imposes on its own homeowners? Is a corporation asking the government for powers it would never grant to one of its own members?

Whew! My head spins!

I don’t have the faintest idea how the Supreme Court will act on this lawsuit. What I do wish is that Cato would someday take part in a massive effort to get the Supreme Court to recognize that all homeowners inside and outside of ‘incorporated neighborhoods’ have equal access to traditional Constitutional protections.

 

Prosecutor in Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman Case

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With the national tragedy that is the death of a 17 year old boy at the hands of an HOA neighborhood watch volunteer, it’s only fair to examine why this case was prosecuted at all. As noted by this blogger before, there are many tragedies in this case, not the least of which is the killing of a boy on a rainy night as he zig-zagged through an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Still, the elements for a successful prosecution of the neighborhood watchman were never there. They were never, ever there. And exculpatory evidence that should have freed George Zimmerman immediately, was illegally withheld from defense attorneys.

If America is not a nation of crystal clear laws, then it’s not a nation at all. It’s a rogue state just as unstable and as unethical as the worst example of out-of-control leaders in Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Ruwanda, and Libya, and Venezuela.

If we don’t have the law, the set of rules and restraints on our government set out by our founding fathers, then we are the worst of the worst. Of course, we have stains on our past, but what country emerging out of the chaos of the 18th Century didn’t?

But in one of the most celebrated criminal investigations of the new century, we have a prosecutor with blood on her hands and murder in her heart, who was willing to sacrifice her career over taking a pound of flesh that was never hers to take.

Angela Corey was not one to find justice for George Zimmerman, she was there to make sure that the national race machine did not fail to bleed the Zimmerman team for every political point it could. Damn who’s truly guilty or innocent. “Just bring me  St. Paul’s Head on a Platter. I’ll be satisfied with nothing less.”

This case is really taking on some ugly tones.

It’ll get uglier in the days ahead.

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