Slowly, but surely state legislators are hearing from bullied homeowners that the national HOA scam is ruining lives. And more news agencies are doing stories on out-of-control boards. The story linked below is from South Carolina which has a growing number of homeowner complaints.
Legislators tell themselves, “Of course, we can pass some laws.” Only problem is they can’t. The U.S. Constitution guarantees the ‘right to contract.’ And you certainly can sign a contract to give up your constitutional rights. That’s the rub. Florida’s Deborah Goonan has it right when she says at least we can license HOA management companies. That’s a good start. But it won’t end the nightmare of board members who feel entitled and empowered to throw their weight around.
Still, the more people who complain to legislators, the better. Ultimately, though, the solution has to come from the courts.
Anybody who’s seen the ugly insides of the national HOA scam knows that Homeowners Associations are lawsuit machines. In most lawsuits and criminal actions Americans have access to the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution. In the typical Homeowners Association each member unknowingly contracts away that access. Bam! In Pennsylvania Dutch, “there goes the egg money!”
Throw away your access to Due Process and every lawyer within spitting distance knows there’s money to be had. Free money. Your money. Paint your door the wrong color and you get fined, liened, sued and you pay all the HOA’s legal expenses. Lawsuit machines. No other possible description.
In Arizona, a prominent HOA law firm is all upset by a court ruling that says lawyers can’t tack on extra legal fees they rack up trying to garnish the wages of a losing homeowner.
Rest assured, though, this law firm has a number of sneaky plans to hijack this decision. The lawyers win. The lawyers always win.
They got him! A couple of days ago a longtime HOA manager in San Mateo, California was arrested and accused of stealing 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. Now they’ve arrested her partner, a man who allegedly wrote fake invoices for construction work that was never done. It sure sounds like a copycat of the decade-long swindle of homeowners in Las Vegas.
And it sounds a lot like the multi-million dollar organized crime racketeering swindle of Homeowners Associations in Colorado.
And Homeowners Associations in Florida.
In Alabama.
Virginia.
Texas.
And every other state.
Still, you keep hearing from Realtors, and Congressmen, lawyers, city officials and state representatives that this kind of swindle is extremely rare. What are these guys smoking, anyway?
The Community Associations Institute (CAI) is famous for testifying before state legislatures that it represents all homeowners living in HOAs. Absolute nonsense. In the beginning it probably did. But in the early 1990s a conscious decision was made to turn the organization into a referral group, sending high-dollar referrals in HOA disputes to its member lawyers, property managers and contractors. Under its phony non-profit shield it sent out surveys on how satisfied Americans were with their Homeowners Associations.
Whoa! Any legitimate, honest survey of homeowners living under the HOA yoke should have told a far different story. Finally, some in the anti-HOA movement are releasing studies which appear to be far more legitimate than the pablum being spread by the CAI. It’s hard to get legislators to pay attention to what they see as a non-issue. But surveys like the one linked below tell a more interesting story about homeowner dissatisfaction and abuse.
Also, housing consumer advocate Deborah Goonan was interviewed about this story today by Shu Bartholomew, host of OnTheCommons.net. It really is worth listening to.
Yes, that’s pretty much the new code word for Homeowners Associations: Gentrified or Gentrification. And it’s the word of the day in Denver where brand new HOAs or condo associations are trying get rid of some homeless shelters and rescue missions. The missions have been in the lower downtown Denver area almost forever. But Coors Field changed everything.
The now-famous home of Colorado Rockies baseball was built where land was cheap, right at the intersection of skid road and the nation’s central railroad hub. The rescue missions continued to do their work but suddenly the ‘gentrified’ wanted to live near the ball park. Century-old slaughter houses were turned into luxury condos. A two-bedroom setup where cows were once butchered can now cost millions of dollars.
The bums still lie around on the streets where they always did. The City of Denver issued a permit for one mission to improve its homeless shelter. But the ‘Newly Gentrified’ went nutz and took the whole mess to court. The judge issued his order this week. Gentrification is in. Bums are out.
