Tag Archives: HOA Hell

Tequila Tab (Unknowingly) Paid By The Homeowners

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 guest blog by Nila Ridings

Far too often board members are using the HOA funds to make personal purchases.  This LA Times reader, who appears to be a board member, questions how to stop other board members in the HOA from buying booze, cigarettes, dog food, and chewing gum with the dues.
 
This may seem like a no-brainer to most of us.  You know, like if a friend hands you $50 and asks you to pick-up a copy of Neighbors At War! by Ward Lucas at the Tattered Cover you wouldn’t buy a copy of The Boy Who Was Raised By Librarians by Carla Morris and Brad Sneed for your grandson with your friend’s money.  Why?  Because you have integrity and your friend trusted you with their money.  But some board members think you should trust them with your money and never question what they do with it.  They ignore the fact that as board members they have a fiduciary responsibility.
 
My HOA encountered this a few years ago when the board president died.  His successor sent a $180 floral bouquet to his funeral.  This was discovered when some homeowners were reviewing financial records.  When it was addressed during a board meeting the board justified it as being only thirty-five cents per homeowner.  The question was not raised to be cost-justified! It was raised because dues are not to be spent on funeral flowers!  And since our community has TEN MILLION DOLLARS unaccounted for under this guy’s “leadership” many of us would not have willingly donated two cents to his flower fund.
 
Living in an HOA should not come with a blind faith and trust that your board member neighbors are honest people.  Far too often it has been proven they are nothing but liars and thieves.  Making purchases for non-HOA related items is a form of theft.  And it cannot be justified in any other way.  Ask to see the financial records and go over them closely…you just might be very surprised to learn what you’re paying for.
 
http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-associations-20140126,0,3432150.story#axzz2s69SwcGT
 

Important Letter From George Staropoli

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George is one of the early champions, and one of the great minds in the Homeowners Rights Movement. This email made the rounds this week, so I’m posting it to try to bring more people into his fold.
 
From George:
 
I’ve been following your emails and blogs reflecting your activism in your state.  It’s refreshing.  Keep the dialogue up you guys and remember:
 
Illegitimati non carborundum (Don’t Let The Bastards Wear You Down) — Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell (WWII)
 
I am pleased with the criticism and exposure of CAI and its puppet associations of HOAs and managers.  I refer to CAI as the Evil Empire, because its miniscule majority of HOA members is less than 1% yet  it dominates and shapes all state legislation.  The question becomes: how to effect favorable HOA legislation in your state?
 
Talking between ourselves is great for unity and a better understanding of the extent of the “virus.”   And by doing so we can better reach out to the legislators and educate them to offset the years of the Ministry of Propaganda and National Enlightenment, which in today’s world refers to CAI (was Goebbels’ NAZI agency).  In my mind the broadest impact lies in reforming the 5 issues contained in my  HOA Common Sense: rejecting private government.  Of course, we must also deal with the existing unjust laws that affect HOA operations on a daily basis. 
 
But, we cannot lose sight in all of our debates, discussions, statements and emails where we want to be, and that’s getting HOA reform legislation enacted. That is the only place where change can come about (note how the AZ legislature ignored the court decision on the unconstitutional HOA statutes of last year and has allowed them to remain un-repealed).  It would be nice if policy can be set through your efforts under the name of some national unity group. 
 
I urge you to try to include this awareness in your battles with the Evil Empire.

 

-George Staropoli

 

Blondie & The Bimbo Ride Again!!

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And here comes the magnificent trio, Blondie, the Bimbo, and now the Wack Job! The newcomer is Sen. Gail Griffin. (Wiki definition of a griffin: “a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and an eagle’s talons as its front feet.” Actually, a griffin sounds like one screwed-up animal! But that’s beside the point.)

All this time I thought Republicans were smarter than this! Aren’t Republicans generally for smaller, less intrusive government? Preservation of Constitutional rights? Maybe there’s something in the water in Arizona to make Republicans stupider than the rest of the country. But this trio is something else, bringing back a fundamentally unconstitutional and illegal HOA bill, over, and over, and over.

Representative Michelle Ugenti (the cute young thing) is somehow getting her strings pulled by the powers-that-be in the HOA industry. Remember, politics is about nothing more than who gets how much of the pie. Looks like these three might be carving out a larger slice for themselves than anyone else in office. If Ugenti’s proposed law ever gets passed and signed by Governor Blondie it’ll be challenged in the courts. And once again it’ll be rejected.

Hopefully, Republican voters in Arizona will realize how off-the-wall this trio is and try to get more responsible legislators into office, people who will carefully consider the legality of the bills they try to get passed.

Just remember, the outrageous tyranny of the out-of-control Homeowners Association industry has nothing to do with political parties. You don’t have to be left, right, or center to be mightily offended at the trampling on the rights of all homeowners.

George Staropoli is the expert on HOA politics in Arizona, and his blog should be part of your must-read material tonight.

(link to Staropoli’s current blog)

 

The Baby Is Sick!!!

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I’m late getting this one up on the blog, since most of those-in-the-know already read this in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But for the record, another of the Las Vegas HOA crooks has pleaded guilty. That makes thirty down with at least eight more to go. Ah, and four suspicious ‘suicides.’ And there’s absolutely no word about the judge or the other police officials who were supposedly implicated.

The latest HOA crook to bite the dust is Las Vegas lawyer Barry Levinson. The Feds got him for stealing a million bucks from his clients, failing to report 28,000 in income taxes, wire fraud, mail fraud, and….oh yes, conspiring to fraudulently pack the boards of Las Vegas homeowners associations with phony members so his organized crime ring could completely take over those associations. Thousands of homeowners got hurt. Many lost their homes. The Las Vegas housing industry went right into the sewer.

Look for Levinson to get an extremely light sentence, though. That’s because he agreed to testify against his racketeering buddies.

PERSONAL NOTE: As a decades-long investigative reporter with CBS, ABC and NBC affiliates in two states, I am personally embarrassed and disgusted at how the national media have almost completely ignored the HOA mob story in Las Vegas. This investigation into the organized corruption of Homeowners Associations, the legal system, the judicial system, the police system is one of the largest organized crime and racketeering investigations in the history of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office. How could the networks overlook it?

This investigation cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and it’ll cost tens of millions more before it’s over. Hold your breath: only 11 Homeowners Associations are named in this investigation.

Folks, there are 335,000 HOAs in the country. Organized crime is rampant throughout HOA Amerika. Don’t believe it? Just google “embezzle homeowner association.” You’ll get 54,000 hits. The search term “homeowner association fraud” will get you almost a million hits. I understand the limitations of Google searches but still it’s mind-boggling. And those terms don’t count a myriad of other types of HOA crimes like extortion, death threats, fraudulent liens and foreclosures and funneling money off to your brother-in-law to cut the grass at the front entrance.

The FBI probe into these 11 HOAs is what’s often called a “show investigation” or a “show trial.” Because of the expense of this eight-year-long investigation the Feds have absolutely no intention of carrying out similar research in other cities. No, this investigation was just for ‘show.’ It’s meant to demonstrate to other police departments that this kind of investigation and trial can produce results anywhere.

Remember that first FBI sting operation in Washington DC back in 1975? Undercover FBI agents set up a phony fencing operation, bought stolen goods from the underworld, then busted dozens of crooks on camera. It was widely publicized and police departments all over the country began doing their own stings. In a subsequent sting in Denver, police even arrested an Army officer, Capt. Gregory Alberico, for trying to sell nerve gas from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal!

But that’s overly dramatic and straying off topic.

The one news agency in America which has been doing an adequate job reporting on the Las Vegas racketeering scandal is the Las Vegas Review-Journal. And in this week’s story, reporter Jeff German actually brought up suspicions about connections between HOA crooks and the mob. It takes guts for a reporter to include details like that. And I’m linking his latest stories below.

German will get accused of hyping this story when it supposedly has no relationship to what’s going on in HOAs across the country. In fact, German is being hammered with comments from readers that go something like: “If you don’t like living in an HOA, then don’t move into one.” You’ll read similar comments on HOA blogs all over. Please forgive people who say things like that because they’re just pathologically stupid.

Again I’m straying.

But permit me just one more bad metaphor. If your baby is running a sky-high fever don’t fool yourself into thinking that the baby is sick only where the thermometer is touching. No, folks, the whole baby is sick!

Yes, the Feds have only gone after 11 Homeowners Associations out of 335,000.

But I promise you, folks: The whole baby is sick.

(link to latest Las Vegas guilty plea)

(link to mention about possible mob ties)

 

How Bizarre Are Transfer Fees?

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Activists in Colorado are gearing up to fight one of the most bizarre expenses on your closing papers when you sell your HOA home.

Most people have no idea what that mysterious charge is that appears on your real estate documents. Transfer? From who to whom? It’s a transfer of money from your pocket to the checking account of a ‘mysterious stranger’. The fee can range anywhere from fifty bucks to several thousand. Question the fee and your closing agent will just pack up her briefcase and leave.

Some transfer fees are set up by the neighborhood developer. The fee is mandated as a permanent kickback to him whenever a neighborhood property is bought or sold. Some argue that a perpetual fee paid to the developer effectively lowers the price he charges for developed lots or built-out homes. But it’s simpler than that. It’s a slush fund set up by the developer to benefit the developer. It’s welfare payments to millionaires.

Some activists in Colorado are trying to get the State Legislature to ban transfer fees. There actually was a law passed to ban such fees a few years ago, on all residential real estate… except Homeowners Associations.

Huh?

Yep, Homeowners Associations.  This one’s a little hard to explain. In Colorado the transfer fee goes to the HOA management company. It doesn’t go into the coffers of the HOA to benefit the neighborhood, it just slides into the pockets of the community association manager. Theoretically it pays for research into the status of the homeowner who’s selling his property, such as whether his HOA dues are up to date. But that means the homeowner is paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for the thirty second act of photocopying a piece of paper.

Why would any Legislature ban transfer fees on all properties except Homeowners Associations?

The answer may have to do with the CAI (Community Associations Institute). CAI pretends to be a benign organization set up to protect homeowners. But its actually a 55 billion dollar a year referral organization which lobbies against any legislation meant to protect the property rights of individual homeowners. And CAI is currently staging a massive lobbying effort to defeat any change in Colorado law. Now why would they do that?

Follow the money.

(link to opinion column in Denver Post)

(link to Colorado HOA Forum)