Tag Archives: HOA Abuse

Victories Are Rare!

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It’s not often when a beleaguered homeowner gets a chance to beat up a bullying Homeowners Association, but I do love to see it happen.

I remember my own battles with a Homeowners Association in Morrison, Colorado. My wife had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She had no visible symptoms whatsoever, but the president of the HOA said he would not allow ANY accommodations for a disability. He told us, “well, you’ll just have to move downtown.” I was blown away at his bluntness. But this HOA president, Hatch Wroton, told me, “You know, in a restaurant people just kind of lose their appetite around gimps. They don’t want to see them.”

That was my new awakening that HOAs were too exclusive for blacks, gays, Jews and ‘gimps’ like my wife. Wroton was the former Martin Marietta scientist who designed some of the spacecraft which were destined to land on Mars. But this neighborhood will never escape from the legacy of this anti-Semitic, anti-homosexual, anti-Negro board and its president. There are others to take their place, of course, and the hatred will wax and wane.

But the message is that the extreme bigotry of my HOA is NOT unique. It goes on everywhere.

The story linked below is about a disabled Marine pilot from California who was also treated horribly. They wouldn’t give him access to the community swimming pool. It apparently made the other residents uncomfortable. Never mind that the federal government found their actions illegal. There’s a settlement. The HOA insurance company will pay the elderly couple a hundred thousand bucks if they just take their disabled, disfigured military hero to some other neighborhood.

Photographed in July 2013, Cynthia Campbell kisses her husband, Allen Campbell, to calm him down after he talked about his complaint with their homeowners association. The retired South Natomas couple have settled the case for a six-figure sum – provided they move out after they accused their homeowners association of denying Allen Campbell, a disabled former Marine pilot, access to the community pool.

(link to story on disabled Marine)

 

Embezzlement Allegations

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Well, prosecutors in San Mateo finally nailed a 64 year old HOA manager. She’s accused of embezzling 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. She’s facing a growing heap of charges while police continue to investigate her partner.

Suspect Susan Marie Lambert

My question is, how the heck do you steal nearly three million dollars from a bunch of condo owners? Do you just assume that because they live in condos they must be stupid? Let me put that loss in actual numerals:  $2,800,000.00! Where do you hide it? It can’t be in your pillowcase. It can’t even be under your bed. It would completely fill one of those condo units you supervise!

The big hoot in the story linked below is a quote from Chief Deputy D.A. Karen Guidotti, who says, “It’s obviously an enormous embezzlement. We certainly don’t see them of this magnitude very often.”

Well, Deputy Dawg. You’d better take off those rose-colored glasses and start looking across America. Denver, Colorado, Overland Park, Kansas, Las Vegas, Nevada, just about anywhere in Texas or Pennsylvania, Virginia or Florida. Really, 2.8 million dollars is just an average take in the HOA embezzlement business.

(link to HOA embezzlement story from San Mateo Journal)

 

Backyard Chickens? NIMBY! NIMBY! NIMBY!

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Whew! The racket coming from Clay County, Florida is pretty funny. The county is considering an ordinance that would allow homeowners to own up to four chickens apiece, just no roosters.

Backyard chickens are a growing fad all over the country. But three Homeowners Associations on Fleming Island are kicking up a fuss. They don’t mind chickens elsewhere, but just no chickens where gentrified people can see them. The excuses they give (in the story linked below) are pretty amusing. They’re afraid if a dog sees a chicken and jumps the fence it might injure a child. (Huh?) They’re also afraid a county ordinance would supersede their contractual covenant rights. (It won’t.)

But the squawking and henpecking is really something to behold.

I’ve got a great solution for chicken lovers. Just release a truckload of chickens and roosters into the middle of these HOAs. If you’ve ever vacationed on Kauai you’ve undoubtedly seen some of the tens of thousands of chickens and roosters running wild. Seems a hurricane or two knocked down their pens and they’ve been breeding faster than anyone can hunt them. The screeching and crowing is beyond description.

To me, that sounds like it would be a hoot!

(link to story on Florida chicken controversy)

 

 

Failed Condos: Tax Burdens, Social Problems

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

For many months I have been following multiple news reports involving Blossom Park Condominium in Orlando, Florida. Blossom Park is a former motel that had been converted to condos about a decade ago. Its units were sold at “affordable” prices, most of them promptly leased to tenants. When the recession hit, so did mortgage defaults. Many owners stopped paying their condo assessments. The condo association couldn’t pay its water utility bills. Within a few years, the aging structure began to deteriorate. The stairways have been deemed unsafe by Orange County building inspectors. The building has been deemed hazardous. The pool has become a slimy green swamp.

For the past 4 or 5 years, no one has served on the Board, and the court had to appoint a receiver. The first receiver was later ousted and replaced by a second receiver. For several years, a criminal element has taken up residence in some of the units. Drug dealers prey upon the residents, mostly tenants, and now Blossom Park has become notorious as a site for drug overdoses. Several fatal shootings have occurred there as well.

Orange County has been trying to relocate residents for months. At this point, only about 40 remain, and half of those are reportedly squatters. Just take a look at the deplorable living conditions. The County has already poured millions of dollars into emergency services, crime control, relocation services, and social services.

But the social costs to condo owners, affected residents, and the surrounding communities are immeasurable.

What if you were one of the owners who bought into this condo conversion back in the early days, the very first person in your family to ever own a home, hoping this would be your small piece of the American Dream? And what if that dream became a nightmare, when you could no longer afford rising assessments? What if your home became worthless as your community started to crumble around you? What if you could not feel safe in your own home?

Imagine if you were a child forced to grow up in this environment, because your family had nowhere else to go. How would you feel? What would you do?

The sad fact is that Blossom Park is but one example of many failed condominium (and homeowners) associations. The housing concept that was supposed to improve upon financially impoverished cities – common ownership governed by private homeowners associations – has ultimately resulted in the lowest home ownership rate since the 1960s.

(link to home ownership in lowest level since 1960s)

(11 heroin overdoses at Blossom Park Condos)

(55 arrests since heroin overdoses near Blossom Park)

 

How To Fight Your HOA? Education!

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I get email every day from frustrated homeowners who are being bullied by out-of-control HOA boards. I only wish I could tell all their stories.

The advice I consistently give is for people to recognize that by moving into a Homeowners Association you have essentially bought shares in a corporation where you have no rights under the U.S. Constitution. You have essentially put your net worth and the equity of your home up as collateral against all debts, legal judgments, and legal expenses racked up by your board members and its management company. You’re legally and financially responsible for paying expenses related to embezzlement and racketeering activities by board members. We saw that in Las Vegas over the past few months with the forty or so federal convictions of HOA thieves.

I tell people over and over again, learn what you’ve gotten yourself into. Educate your neighbors. Learn what and who the Community Associations Institute (CAI) is. This organization is one to be despised since it turned in the early 1990s from a homeowners’ informational group into a perverse lawsuit referral machine. Still, CAI testifies before state legislatures that it’s benign and  “represents all homeowners.” It’s a blatant lie. Even one of its founding fathers, Lincoln Cummings, has some dismay about the direction his organization took.

Cummings was interviewed by Shu Bartholomew about the origin of this organization.

(link to a fascinating inside look at CAI on a recent OnTheCommons.net)

Scroll down to the September 5th interview with Linc Cummings.