I love to hear stories of really rotten, really contemptible things that Homeowner Association boards do to certain “targeted” members of the neighborhood. Every ghastly story just reinforces my belief that there’s something desperately wrong with these phony Utopian neighborhoods govered by deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants.
Seven years ago, homeowner Gregg Harcus hung about a half dozen birdhouses around the area. Suddenly, Harcus was ordered by his HOA board that the birdhouses were illegal and had to be removed.
Nobody had complained about them, but the board just decided to remove them.
It’s incredible, really, how common embezzlements are from Homeowners Associations. With 320,000 HOAs across the country, you’d think there would be a major push to clean out the corruption that seems endemic in such HOAs as the latest one in the link below.
There are many fundamental problems with the structure of the modern HOA. As private non-profit corporations, the HOA is typically beyond the law. Restrictions against government, the protections we’ve grown accustomed to in the U.S. Constitution, don’t apply to the average HOA. As such, dictatorial edicts against such things as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and due process happen all the time.
I wonder if it’s hard for these people to sleep at night. Stealing from neighbors? The ones you say “hi” to on the street each day? Maybe it’s just me, but I could never get used to the guilt. Your neighbors are trying hard to pay their bills, to put the kids through college, some of them even struggling to pay HOA dues. Other neighbors have lost jobs in this economy, and are wondering where the next bag of groceries are coming from?
Then some runny-nosed, gambling-addicted, coke-head of an HOA treasurer grabs all the neighborhood’s money for a quick run to Vegas.
Sometimes people get to own their dream home, complete with fine furnishings, a swimming pool, and a well-guarded community, where they believe they will live forever. Unfortunately, neighborhood squabbles can make those dreams vanish. All too often, that moment of horror is delivered on a silver platter by a homeowners association.
Technically, a homeowners association is an organization of homeowners that looks out for the common good of all neighbors. But sometimes, the interpretation of “common good” turns into a nightmare. And a new resident finds the community is not so neighborly after all.
Leave it to the Las Vegas crowd to figure out a way to intimidate a police informant!
David Amesbury, a lawyer, is one of ten suspects who’ve pleaded guilty in the Las Vegas HOA corruption case. His guilty plea means he’s going to be a star witness against a massive scheme to rig elections in Las Vegas Homeowners Associations, and steer hundreds of millions of dollars in construction defect litigation to certain attornies and building contractors.
