Tag Archives: George Staropoli

Hilarious! An Anti-HOA Drone Hoodie?

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As readers of my book and blog already know, I’ve long been predicting that HOA boards would begin buying surplus military drone aircraft to spy on homeowners to ensure nobody in the neighborhood had installed an unauthorized hot tub in the back yard.

LOL! There’s already a prankster out there in the cyber world who occasionally pops up with a phony HOA-drones-for-sale website. His last posting was on April 1st, which might give you a key to his mindset. He even provided his phone number and it must be a hoot to answer calls from HOA board members who are actually serious about buying a drone to cruise for covenant violations.

But the story linked below takes the prize. It’s a company that’s come up with a ‘hoodie’ that can defeat air photography by drones. It’s still so close to April Fool’s Day that I’m not sure what to believe. But for some fun reading pretend that you’re really paranoid of neighborhood spying and figure out how to use this new ‘hoodie technology’ to cover your whole house!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/mar/31/anti-drone-hoodie-big-brother

HOA Murders! Again!

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Professor Gary Solomon, one of the prominent national voices in the Homeowners’ Rights Movement, has long predicted that the nation will see a wave of violence in Homeowners Associations. There’s no doubt this man is precognizant. This weekend’s news proves him to be a real prophet.
 
In Harrisburg, North Carolina, Anthony Charles Hardy lived exactly between homes of the president of the Windsor Forest Homeowners Association and a house occupied by another member of the board. This weekend Hardy murdered both board members, and then committed suicide in a subsequent standoff with the SWAT team. Three people dead.
 
Do you want to be a prophet? Just go to your annual homeowners association meeting and watch the fury and frustration vented by homeowners against the board of directors. It really is a little scary.
 
Of course, there’s absolutely no excuse for murder. None. But is this violence just wildly coincidental?
 
Arizona resident George Staropoli, one of the pioneers of the Homeowners’ Rights Movement, points out in a recent blog the arrogance of the national HOA lawsuit industry with the artwork on the covers of industry magazines from several years ago. The industry, the CAI in this case, is absolutely mocking the coming wave of homeowners who are screaming about the rights they’ve unexpectedly lost by signing the CC&R papers for a new home.
 
While realizing that homeowners are turning to murder and mayhem in states like North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Florida, Arizona and others, try to comprehend why leaders of the HOA money scam would mock simple homeowners who are just trying to understand how and why they lost all their Constitutional rights.  Please, please read Staropoli’s blogpost linked below (all the way to the end to see the magazine covers) and make sure you take in the full impact of the HOA industry’s attitude toward the rest of us. They owe us a huge apology.
 
 

My Typos

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I usually write these blogs in the middle of the night when I’m barely awake. So I’m constantly finding embarrassing typos. Of course, I realize you’re never supposed to admit these things publicly, but after forty years in a TV newsroom I’m used to having others correct my spelling and grammar. We’re all on the same team, here, right? And we all want to be credible, right? So please don’t hesitate to point out errors that need correcting.

I’m easy to reach at Ward@NeighborsAtWar.com.  And I will correct any and all errors when I get the signal. Egads, I love the Internet!

 

“Kansas City, Here I Come!”

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Actually, it’s “Kansas City, there I was.” Doesn’t do much for the old Chuck Berry/Beatles tune. “They got some crazy little women there, and I’m gonna get me one.”

In answer to the many emails, yes, my website was crashed/hacked a week and a half ago. Sadly, this time the intruder so corrupted each file that my poor webmaster has been sweating blood trying to rebuild the old site line by line. This time we’ll make sure it’s mirrored in several places to keep us up and to keep this vandal frustrated. It’s rather wild, but I’ve learned that several other anti-HOA websites were trashed the exact same hour as mine. Of course, that’s only a coincidence, isn’t it?

On that same weekend my computer motherboard was fried and I had to make some quick, new purchases.  The Geek Squad was here early on a Sunday morning to set it all up.  Windows 8/Windows 12 is an impossible program for an old guy to learn <Ward, quit whining, wouldja?!?>.

The trip to Kansas City was actually a total surprise to me. It all started with a request for me to overnight a thousand pounds of books for a show that opened the next day. That was impossibly expensive and wouldn’t have made any economic sense. So, in a moment of questionable judgment, I was in the car within an hour. Fourteen hours, two ice storms, and five Red Bulls later I was lost and driving in circles through Kansas City and Overland Park. By some miracle, I finally got to my hotel. And yes, the back of my Blazer was full of boxes of books.

I met some great people at the Kansas City book event, tasted the best barbequed ribs in the world, and heard some war stories you would not believe. In fact, I gathered enough information for a full year’s worth of HOA horror story blogs. More to come on that subject. I thought the worst states in the country for HOA lunacy were Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But nooooo. Homeowners Associations in Kansas and Missouri have a level of corruption, violence and fascism that could rival any of the other states. It all boils down to this: the absolute worst, most horrible HOA in the country happens to be…..wherever you are!

Another thing: I learned of a few really wild happenings/events/stories that have to be kept confidential for the time being, but they’ll ultimately appear on this blog. I’m an open book, of course, but I do respect a source’s request for confidentiality. It’s an old newsguy’s habit.

In any event, for new visitors to this blog, we are desperately trying to get everything working again. Thank you for buying my book. And please email me any links to HOA horror stories you think I might have missed. My email address is:  Ward@NeighborsAtWar.com and I do read every single email. Since I’m a lifelong insomniac I also respond to as many emailers as I possibly can.

 

Finally, A Good Court Decision!

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Reston's Shadowood

Reston's ShadowoodIt’s not often that the lowly homeowner has much of a chance of getting a fair hearing in court. The vast majority of all rulings are against the homeowner and in favor of the private non-profit corporation. And many’s the judge who’s told a miserable homeowner that he or she should have read his covenants before signing the real estate documents.

Last week’s ruling, though, by the Supreme Court of Virginia was a clarion call to the National Homeowners Association Movement that it can’t stomp on the homeowner’s Constitutional rights forever. Basically the court ruled that the Shadowood Condominium complex in Reston, Virginia cannot assess fines against residents because there was no such permission granted in the development’s master deed. Bam! Pow!

Stone-faced attorneys in Virginia said the ruling will have a profound impact on 10,000 Homeowners Associations across Virginia. It certainly will have a profound impact on lawyers who make a fancy living from dragging homeowners into court over stupid covenant violations.

Just reading about the wrongdoing by certain Shadowood officials over the years is enough to make one weep. Millions of dollars spent on ‘improvements’ with no accounting oversight. Tens of thousands of dollars paid to certain HOA board members for ‘services rendered’. Towing cars right before Thanksgiving. Turning off the heat and air conditioning to ‘punish’ rule-breakers. It’s ugly, and I’ve linked to the Washington Post’s story below.

Law professor Evan McKenzie predicted in his last book, Beyond Privatopia, that Homeowners Associations were going to face a day of reckoning. He was precognizant, a man of real genius.

Folks, the mightiest dam in the world can collapse. The collapse, no matter how large, starts out with a microscopic fissure somewhere.

This dam has not yet collapsed.

But it will.
Read the original article here …