guest blog by Nila Ridings
Facebook has lots of HOA, COA and cooperative ads that pop up and most I ignore. This one I could not because it said Village Cooperative a 55+ housing community. And wouldn’t you know Facebook has it blocked so I cannot make any comments. A year or so ago I did comment on some sort of HOA advertising and since then I’ve been blocked from making comments on all things HOA. Coincidence? I think not.
My heart sank. They are building several of these in close proximity to where I live! Who are the poor fools who will fall into this trap? Did they not read the Kansas City Star HOA Hell series that Judy Thomas wrote back in August? Were they on vacation? Were they packing to sell their house and move into this Village Cooperative? Or did they believe the sales pitch and not the journalist?
This is when I wish our advocates had massive amounts of money for advertising to purchase billboards next door to these places warning buyers to run like their hair is on fire!
Read their website. They make it sound like Village Cooperative is as close to heaven as you’ll get on earth. Makes me gag!
(link to Village Cooperative website)
guest blog by Nila Ridings
Like most HOA issues outside of the one I live in, someone sends me something to take a look at. Shadowmoss was today’s “Take A Look At This!”
It appears in the first video that an older person with one leg and a wheelchair has been contacted by an attorney over $200 in delinquent dues. The process has begun to foreclose and take his home. There is one really decent man among the homeowners that says he’ll pay the $200 on behalf of that homeowner because the money means nothing to him. THANK YOU MR. CONCERNED NEIGHBOR WITH COMMON SENSE AND A BIG HEART! He does question why nobody on the board bothered to talk to the homeowner before unleashing an attorney on him. The answer seems to be the property manager did it!
This is one of the many millions of problems with HOAs. Board members do not want their time occupied with the daily operations of the HOA. So they hand it all over to a property manager who has not been vetted or had any background checks done on them. In the second video you will see how a homeowner took her time to investigate and uncover the truth.
I commend this group of homeowners for trying to recall their board members, investigate the property manager, and get answers to their legitimate questions. They have a nice website with an appeal to their neighbors to get involved. They have posted several videos on youtube of the board meetings as well. I hope they are successful in taking control before they get hit with some big surprises like so many of us living in nightmare HOAs have been.
(link to video on an HOA board vs. a disabled serviceman)
(Shadowmass board embarrassed that they hired an unvetted management company)
The video associated with this news story is actually pretty funny. But the subject matter isn’t funny. Killer mosquitoes actually do exist!
In Smyrna, Tennessee, a homeowner is furious because the town won’t do anything about an outbreak of giant mosquitoes in the retention pond behind his house. With Zika, West Nile, Chikungunya, dengue fever and who knows what other diseases carried by these bugs, the lawsuits are going to be flying.
More amazing is the size of these bugs. The homeowner in the video captured one and said this is the size of the mosquitoes that are biting him and his family. The retention pond is owned by the developer, which means there’s probably a Homeowners Association involved. With a few multi-million dollar verdicts it’s not hard to imagine that massive special assessments will soon start hitting all the homeowners. A situation like this can end up bankrupting an entire neighborhood and the typical HOA homeowner has no access to basic Constitutional rights.
(link to stories about the outbreak of giant mosquitoes)
guest blog by Nila Ridings
Purely by accident Mr. Plumbean changed his neighborhood. I think if he would attend some HOA meetings across the country he could change the mindset in HOA Amerika!
Like many of you, I follow the HOA stories that Judy Thomas has been writing in the Kansas City Star’s HOA Hell series. The comments that people make are very interesting and most are supportive of the homeowners, not the HOA. One comment read something like this: “This story reminds me of a book I read in elementary school.” I was so curious I asked for the name of the book and she wrote back The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.
The orange splot starts a chain reaction of major change in the neighborhood by Mr. Plumbean. Prior to its appearance every home looked exactly alike and that’s the way everybody wanted it to be. They liked the “neat street” sameness. I will not give away the story line but I think the HOAs of Amerika desperately need Mr. Plumbean! And I feel sure the author was a victim of an HOA at some point in his life.
While this is a children’s book it’s one that HOA homeowners will no doubt relate to and hopefully learn from. The answers we have been seeking can be found in just 32 pages!
Egads! I hate to publish links to CAI press releases. As I do this, just remind yourself that CAI rhymes with lie. The Community Associations Institute just loves to help struggling seniors, right? That’s what they’re trying to pretend right now. They’re going to help pack meals for low-income or struggling old folks.
If CAI really wanted to help seniors, then they’d start advising some of their hundreds of thousands of member Homeowners Associations to quit fining, liening and confiscating the homes of seniors who are too weak to fight the petty dictates of the local lawn Nazis.
Want to really help seniors? Give them back their access to Due Process and the Bill of Rights.
(link to press release on CAI’s amazing lie)
