You might have heard me bloviating about the Andover Forest Homeownes Association in Kentucky. Seems they were going to start fining and/or suing the family of a three year boy named Cooper.
Cooper has cerebral palsy, you see, and several family doctors have recommended that he be allowed to have a playhouse of his own to help with his therapy.
BAM! That ran into a brick wall of stiff necks at the HOA Board Meeting. “Nobody gets an exemption from the covenents, not even a sick kid!” you can just hear that kind of language being hurled about.
Gather a group of people who are members of different homeowners associations and you’ll hear tales across the spectrum of human behavior. Some HOAs are run by groups of well-intentioned, reasonable people who want to help their neighbors and see to it that their association quietly performs the duties of mowing grass, doing repairs on common areas, maintaining a certain level of neatness, watching safety. They try to do their duty without interfering much in neighbors’ day-to-day lives.
This blog credits honesty. And in the HOA quagmire that is North Carolina, one lawyer has raised his head and taken an extreme moral, social and safety risk by speaking his heart. He says he’s seen the HOA mess from both sides and has strong opinions about the need for reforms.
If you’re a Christian, you’d better drop to your knees and thank God for this Jewish lawyer. He speaks the Truth, and is certain to be crucified for it.
I’ll link his editorial right here. And if you know this guy, tell him you appreciate his honesty.
Ah yes, how I remember singing the Texas State Anthem when I was eight or nine years old and studying the Blue Book. Do Texas kids still study the Blue Book, or is that an antique of the 1950’s? “Remember the Alamo, remember San Jacinto!”
Since life in Texas, I migrated to Washington DC, and Germany, and Seattle, before finally settling in Colorado.
But after learning about the national HOA movement, I began thinking that Texans were wimpy little pea-brains who’d passively turned their life savings over to the trial lawyers by moving into covenant-protected neighborhoods. Texas homeowners were being raped by the tort system and weren’t even fighting back.
Sometimes a blogger should just shut up and pay compliments to the work of others.
My readers have learned over the months that I’m massively angry about how easy it is to embezzle money from Homeowners Associations. And because it’s easy, it happens everywhere. In fact, my upcoming book, “Neighbors at War: the Creepy Case Against Your Homeowner Association” provides a list of hundreds of HOAs where board members have stolen millions and millions of dollars from their neighbors. And yes. I do publish names and kick butt. In fact, the new definition of a Homeowner Association Board may be “five arrogant people running wildly through your retirement savings!”
