Tag Archives: HOA Embezzlement

The Drugging of an HOA

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There’s a new high rise luxury condo on Mission Street in downtown San Francisco. Built in 2009 with every classy aesthetic feature, it was high-priced and all the units on its 22 floors sold out quickly. It’s called The SOMA Grand. It’s governed by an HOA, of course.

Residents of the new building say almost immediately after they bought in, they started having problems with flooding during rainstorms, cracks in walls, and failures of sealant joints. The HOA has scrambled to get into court to sue everyone connected with the construction. “Going for the deep pocket”, as lawyers say.

The HOA is suing for four million dollars. And millions of bucks will be spent by both sides in legal fees. These brand new HOA residents will find their monthly dues are going to soar. If they win the suit, the biggest chunk will be taken by the lawyers. And if the residents get anything back, it’ll be pennies on the dollar.

The SOMA Grand.

You’ve gotta love the name.

What is SOMA?  It’s a high powered drug. It’s a drug that leaves you stoned and stupid. Then again, half of San Francisco is already stoned and stupid. And San Francisco sits on one of the largest earthquake faults in the country where they’re all waiting for ‘the big one.”

Soma.

Yeah, I do love the name.

http://tinyurl.com/laq5yp8

original source:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/05/soma-grand-homeowners-file-lawsuit.html?page=all

 

A Pretty Poopy Idea

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A number of Homeowners Associations across the country are demanding that all dog owners have their pooches’ cheeks swabbed so the HOA can have a DNA database to catch homeowners who fail to pick up poops. The doggie DNA thing is ludicrous on its face. It’s expensive and too easy for the lawn Nazis to abuse the system.

A town in Spain has come up with a much better idea. A number of volunteers in Brunete, twenty miles west of Madrid, are walking the streets watching for violators of the dog cleanup rules. They scoop the poop and mail it back to the dog owners in a package labeled “Lost Property.” Such a lovely idea. The town now reports a drop in doggie doo of 70 percent. Here’s the link: But keep reading. There’s more!

http://tinyurl.com/n4gnpdo

original source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/10098430/Spanish-town-posts-dog-mess-back-to-offending-hound-owners.html

Paris has an awful problem with poopie dog people. A walk in the park is sort of like the game of Hop Scotch, jump here, jump there.

But now, two Parisian students have come up with an app for just that problem. It’s called Poople Maps. The smart phone user maps offending poo and emails Paris authorities about ‘problem areas.’

Oh, American HOAs will continue using their expensive DNA tracking systems simply because it allows them to assess fines and legal expenses which pump up their budgets in some very poopy ways. But if you really want a nice neighborhood, you should take some lessons from our European neighbors.

http://tinyurl.com/cagbdj6

original source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9961554/Paris-students-launch-Poople-Maps-dog-mess-app.html

 

“Utopia: Kill All The Lawyers” -Shakespeare

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After more than 40 years as an investigative reporter, I’ve sat in hundreds of courtrooms and watched thousands of lawyers up close and personal. And I have many friends and two family members who are lawyers. But I make no secret of the fact that the legal practice is in desperate need of reform. Over the four decades I’ve watched defense attorneys lie their butts off in the courtroom. And I’ve seen the same thing from prosecutors. Sure, the Constitution guarantees that each accused suspect gets to have the best possible defense. But if that defense is an outrageous and provable lie, then something is fundamentally wrong with the American legal system.

F. Lee Bailey claims in his book, The Defense Never Rests, that he has never defended a guilty man. “If they’re guilty, I plead them out,” he says. “But when I take their case they’re all innocent.” OK, OK, I get that. Every suspect is innocent until proven guilty, but that begs the point. The entire world knew that O.J Simpson was guilty as sin. But through manipulation, distraction, and lies, Bailey and his phalanx of fellow attorneys got the contemptible Simpson off of his murder charge.

The civil arena is just as corrupt. How else could lawyer Senator John Edwards earn 40 million dollars in his pharmaceutical malpractice case? That forty million bucks came right out of the pockets of the common man who has to buy prescription medicine. It led pharmaceutical companies not to release new medications which could have saved thousands of lives.

This perspective leads me to link you to a recent story from the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky. The writer wonders about the rash of Kentucky lawyers who’ve committed suicide in recent months. Although suicides are rarely tallied by profession, the reporter discovered that since 2010 fourteen lawyers in that state took their own lives. And across the country, the number of lawyers who kill themselves is way above the national average among all other occupations.

Suicide is tragic. It will always be tragic. But one wonders if some of the guilt and depression among those in the law might be eased if all lawyers honestly believed their profession was always ethical and above reproach.

http://tinyurl.com/161

original source:

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130602/NEWS01/306020065/Rash-of-Kentucky-lawyer-suicides-concerns-colleagues?odyssey=underbox%7Ctext%7CHome&nclick_check=1

 

About Doggoned Time!

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Never, never, never did I think this would ever happen. But the American Civil Liberties Union is finally taking a peek at the fascist practices of a Homeowners Association.

Like many other HOAs across the country, the Diamondhead Property Owners Association in Southern Mississippi forbids political signs and door-to-door campaigning. Suddenly, an ACLU lawyer thinks a de facto government like a Homeowners Association kind of, sort of, maybe, possibly, should recognize that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of speech and political expression.

HOA board officers like Diamondhead’s president, Marshall Kyger, don’t like the First Amendment, or the Second through the Fourteenth, or any of the rest of those Constitutional thingy-ma-jigs. All that Bill of Rights stuff really restricts the power of HOA board members to act as lawn Nazis.

I’m just not sure the ACLU won’t chicken out.

http://tinyurl.com/lk5hyck

original source:

http://www.clarionledger.com/viewart/20130515/NEWS01/130515024/Diamondhead-Property-Owners-Association-under-ACLU-scrutiny–

Solving HOA Problems With A Gun!

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Violence rarely solves a problem. But as Arizona psychologist Dr. Gary Solomon has long predicted, we’ll see ongoing increases in the number of angry HOA members using violence against board members and board members using violence against homeowners.

Thus, you have a homeowner beaten with a crowbar by an HOA board member in Kansas, angry homeowners in Arizona and Kentucky shooting and wounding or killing multiple board members during public meetings, a Colorado homeowner setting fire to a board member’s home, also a Colorado board member’s adult son setting fire to a homeowner’s home (in this case, mine). You have multiple instances of violence in the turbulent HOAs in Florida. In fact, that’s where the latest case happened.

Police in Port Orange arrested 67 year old Ronald Lovejoy for firing gunshots into two homes in his Countryside Homeowners Association. He was in some kind of dispute with his HOA and he apparently discharged his anger along with a few bullets. The homes were occupied at the time, but no one was injured.

Life in a rogue Homeowners Association can be incredibly stressful, and every so often some lunatic uses a weapon to settle the score.

What we really need is a national database of HOA related violence. Not emotional violence, there’s no way of ever accurately keeping track of that.

But physical HOA violence? That might be a little easier to track.

It’s also a reason to avoid life in HOA Amerika.

http://tinyurl.com/l2pmjzl

original source:

http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20130601/NEWS/130609984?Title=Port-Orange-man-shoots-into-homes-after-disagreement-with-HOA-police-say