Yes, most of us would like to see the Homeowners Association Movement go extinct. But the kind of violence in the story linked below is unacceptable. Anyone who tries to take another’s life and property deserves a life sentence in prison.
This incident happened at the Pointer Ridge HOA in College Park, Georgia. If you can help identify this suspect, please call police.
(arson attempt at HOA president’s home)
Whether you agree or disagree with the Wall Street Journal columnist linked below, the term ‘hate speech’ is a constantly sliding scale. And it usually slides in ways that benefit the current political power. The first act of dictators is to ban some kinds of speech. Certainly, some speech is in bad taste but if you allow any ruling power to regulate what can and cannot be said in public, then you’re on a decidedly slippery slope.
On the Neighbors At War blog we frequently take note of certain Homeowners Associations where a battered neighbor who tries to run for the board is banned from speaking out, banned from handing out campaign literature, forbidden from expressing opinions to neighbors. That kind of fascism threatens the very homes and neighborhoods in which we live.
At the same time, censorship of any kind is a double-edged sword. On a website like this, the moderator has the power to permit or to edit out language or thoughts that he deems are simply in bad taste. But this website is not a government institution. It’s a place where we share concerns, thoughts, feelings.
Our Republic is unique in that the very first right granted to Americans was the right to express thoughts without government censorship. Are there limits? Of course. And we granted the Supreme Court the power to analyze certain kinds of speech to see if they constituted an endangerment to others. In some cases (yelling fire, libel, slander) the Court ruled that freedom of speech is not absolute.
Although Wall Street Journalist Bret Stephens is being pilloried for writing this column, in my opinion he should be congratulated for his analysis.
Your thoughts?
This guy must be a living nightmare to Abusive HOA Boards!
http://www.sueyourhoacheaply.us/
It’s hard to believe that it was once legal for Homeowners Associations to outlaw the sale of homes to anyone of the ‘wrong’ race. But that’s the shameful racist background of the HOA movement. Homeowners Associations across America once banned the sale of homes to most minorities. It took some brave pioneers to break the HOA racial barriers.
Now, one of those pioneers has died at the age of 85.
Dorothy Mae Adams and her husband are black. Their HOA in San Francisco, Westwood Park, had a deed restriction against the sale or lease of any home to people of African descent. But in 1959 the Adams couple fought for their home and won. The only sad part of the story is that HOAs didn’t die along with the racial restrictions that got them started in the first place.
(link to story on Dorothy Adams)
