Tag Archives: HOA residents

How to Create Conflict & Drama in Your Community

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

A Tongue-in-Cheek Guide for HOA Boards & Managers

1.     Create as many rules as you can, the pickier, the better.

a.     Be sure to create rules in closed session rather than an open meeting.

b.     Optional: provide an announcement of the new rules only AFTER you  have put them in effect. Then ignore any objections.

c.      Rules created hastily as a knee-jerk reaction are guaranteed to cause maximum conflict.

2.     Be inconsistent about enforcing the rules.

a.     Allow friends and family to break rules. They will help you stay in power.

b.     If you are a Board member, you can make up your own rules. If anyone challenges you, tell the resident you are entitled to special privileges for doing such a thankless job.

c.     Use penalties for breaking rules as a weapon against residents you do not like, especially disgruntled troublemakers, or anyone who does not “fit in” with your expectations.

3.     Drive through the community actively looking for violations, so you can start sending nasty letters and charging fines.

4.     Encourage residents to turn in their neighbors for various violations of rules.

5.     Be especially vigilant about citing the following groups with rule violations: the elderly, people with disabilities, single parents and their children, veterans, racial and ethnic minorities, and any resident that dares to question your competence, ethics, or authority.

6.     Treat members like wayward children. Play the role of Strict Parent by scolding or talking down to them.

a.     Post stern reminder notices about not breaking rules in public places and in the newsletter.

b.     Repeat the mantra “the rules are the rules, and must be followed.”

7.     Alternative: treat members like insubordinate employees. Play the role of Authoritarian Boss. Use bully tactics, swift and harsh penalties, and always speak in condescending tones. After all, you must keep the residents in line.

8.     Find an unscrupulous HOA Attorney, and then keep him or her busy escalating disputes and running up legal fees for violators and the HOA.

9.     Authorize expensive contracts for unnecessary “emergency” repairs and renovations, without a vote of residents.

a.     Do not waste money on “boring” maintenance and repairs such as cleaning gutters, fixing plumbing leaks, or seal coating roads.

b.     Focus your attention on “window dressing” and “fluff” instead.

10. Issue a special assessment to cover excess legal and maintenance costs.

a.     Then move swiftly to lien and foreclose on residents that cannot afford to pay the special assessment.

 

Jack English Is Loving Life Until The End

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guest blog by Nila Ridings 

93 years old, living in the wilderness, splitting wood, and making violin bows.  Will that be you?  Or me?  Jack English has loved the wild areas of California since he was a young boy.  And his wife’s dying words and his sentimental heart led him back there with plans to stay until the end.
 
Jack mades me think of Dorothy.  She lived in my HOA.  When it was discovered the audits had not been done, and  $10,000,000.00 was unaccounted for, and the bills weren’t paid, and the houses were rotting before our eyes, Dorothy invited me in for a talk.  She was 93, frail, but with fight in her eyes.  In my mind’s eye, I can still see her sitting there in the power blue velveteen chair with her walker at arm’s length.  Her eyes were locked with mine.  As the tears ran down her cheeks she said, “Nila, if I was younger I would be fighting as hard as you are to get to the bottom of this, but I’m too old and too weak.  Something sinister is going on here; you know it and I know it.  If you don’t get this mess straightened out, I am going to figure out a way out of here!  I don’t want to spend another day of my life in this horrible nightmare of a homeowners association.”  Sadly, Dorothy ended up in a nursing home and not long ago I read her obituary.  It still makes me sad to think that Dorothy, at nearly a century old knew she was being ripped off, but she was helpless.  She could be nothing more than a victim and hand over her money every month.
 
It’s really refreshing to see Jack English’s story.  Knowing he was one elderly person who didn’t get caught in some HOA maintenance-provided propaganda sales pitch like so many other 80 and 90 year olds.  And, it’s a reminder that when we fight these HOA battles it is not just for ourselves.  It’s for all the Dorothy’s across this country who have no clue that when they bought into an HOA they signed away their twilight years into a hellish nightmare like they have never known in the decades they’ve lived before.  We must never forget that their silence doesn’t mean they are not fully aware of the corruption.  Father Time has just weakened them enough to make them easy prey for the HOA monster.
 
Now, take a look at what life at 93 and HOA-free can be!
 
 
http://solarburrito.com/blog/93-year-old-man-lives-in-wilderness-cabin/
 

Are HOAs Facist?

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I like pondering this question. Sadly, I can’t find the link for proper attribution. But the blogger talked about a statement made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a 1938 session of Congress. Here it is:

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”

Whew! Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? By casually stepping into a new form of government called the Homeowners Association movement, are we not giving away all of our Constitutional freedoms without giving it a second thought?

Sure, we’d all like to live in neighborhoods where property values aren’t brought down by some goofball with the muscle car on blocks and a trash can that never leaves the curbside. But at what cost? In the 1930s millions of people joined the Nazi party because they truly thought their membership was bettering themselves. They were truly enthusiastic about where their new party was leading them.

But are we going to sit back some day and ask ourselves, “did we once have something very special in this country, and we gave it all away?”

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Texas Takes Aim Against Another Serviceman

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Bill Fry, an officer with the Army National guard, was returning from fighting in Iraq. All of a sudden he learned his HOA, The Spring Lake HOA of Mineoloa, Texas, had filed a lawsuit against him and his family because they put up the swingset to keep his kids company while he was gone.

It’s not an outrageous swingset. It’s not candy apple red and doesn’t flash with florescent colored lights. It’s just a nice wood and canvas politically correct swingset. But the officials at Spring Lake have gone apoplectic. They want it taken down, NOW!

Fry says the HOA approved the swingset before he left for Afghanistan. But the new board claims Fry’s wife didn’t get final approval and obtain final plans. It’s not that the swingset is wrong. It’s that someone on the board had a bruised ego because she wasn’t personally asked for her permission. There’s a chapter in my upcoming book, “Neighbors At War” which scientifically shows the changing chemistry in the brain when someone feels they’re not being awarded enough power over others.

In any event, whatever compromise Fry attempts to make, the HOA turns him down flat.
Spring Lake HOA, in Mineola, Texas. It might be nice to visit. But I sure as Hell wouldn’t want to live there.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

My Mistake, My Apology!!

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I don’t know why I made such a horrible mistake, My error in judgment just baffles me. But for some reason, I always thought that people from New Hampshire were a little more reasonable, a little more gentlemanly in solving neighborhood disputes with more kindess, diplomacy and friendliess than the rest of us.. It was just a personal thing I always believed about people from New Hampshire. It just seems to have a ring to it, the abilty to believe that people from New Hampshire were above the common fray, just a little more reasonable than others.

Now, I’ve discovered that folks from New Hampshire don’t have any more class or honesty than the rest of us.

A lady name Kimberly Bois planted flowers in her yard. It was just a tiny garden in a townhome association. It couldn’t have attracted much attention. But her Portsmouth, New Hampshire Homeowner Association just decided that Kimberly was in violation, and they’re now fining her fifty bucks a day for trying to show some of nature’s beauty, that others could enjoy.

The fine is now up to $6000, not counting legal fees. But her HOA has every intention of taking her house if she doesn’t dig up and kill all those wonderful flowers. The goal, of course, to to make every home look identical, regimented, the thing you might see in front of an typical Army Barracks.

There’s nothing in the bylaws. It was just an arbitrary decision by a board majority.

Bois says it’s just not a happy place to live anymore. It just feels like a case of bullying.

Kimberly, just get out of there! Your beauty and grace is wasted on these lawn nazis and their lawyers. The HOA system is not based on traditional home ownership. It’s not based on raising the value of your home. It’s a legal scam where the lawyers insist on showing no mercy for covenant scofflaws. Keep each unit identical and file profitable lawsuits and foreclosures against every resident who shows any individuality. It’s all about finding an excuse for depriving you of your home equity. A perpetual cash machine for lawyers. No other explanation.

Kimberly, you’re needed elsewhere in neighborhoods where people actually love their neigbors and applaud their efforts to improve their homes and gardens. Get out before these parasites take you for every dime you own. Your talents, and your ability to bring about beauty is something that will be well respected elsewhere.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association