Tag Archives: HOA Stories

HooRay for Florida!!!

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Boy, howdee folks, this here Colorado cowboy never thought he’d see this day. But it looks like another fascist HOA state has just dipped its little toe into the waters of a free man’s land.

Governor Rick Scott has just signed HB-7119 into law! This law isn’t terribly radical. It just requires that all Homeowners Associations (or common area maintenance communities) in the state get registered. They have to report their federal tax I.D. numbers, the number of parcels within their subdivison. Most radical of all? They have to report their mailing and physical addresses. Ah yes, and they have to report their annual revenues and expenses for each association.

Sounds suspiciously like Open Government, doesn’t it?

Guess who viciously opposed this bill and demanded that the governor veto it? Two guesses? OK, three guesses. It’s the HOA board members and the industry that manage the HOA scam. Somehow, financial transparency scares the crap out of these people. Somehow, transparency unravels embezzlement, extortion, kickbacks, and pay-to-play schemes.

There are some heroes who stood up to the many bullies in the HOA industry.

Jan Bergemann. God bless you.

Rep. Michael Larosa. God bless you.

Rep. Debbie Mayfield. God bless you

Sen. Alan Hays. God bless you.

And God bless the American people who are slowly waking up to what has to be one of the most massive financial scams in the history of our country.

Sadly, there’s still such a long way to go to bring freedom to all of our people.

Such a long, long journey.

But it begins with a step.

A Las Vegas Reporter Who Just Doesn’t ‘Get It’

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A reporter for Channel 8 News in Las Vegas tried to help a homeowner in the Terra West Homeowners Association. It seems the woman, Esther Sardina, had inadvertently underpaid her HOA dues by twenty cents. The woman wrote a check to the HOA for a dollar but they started hitting her with late fees anyway. So this reporter swung into action, confronting a board member.

Terra West dropped the fine. But that’s beside the point. This HOA board simply doesn’t want this woman living in the neighborhood. They want her gone. No HOA puts a 42 cent stamp on a fine for 20 cents…unless they’re intentionally trying to provoke an expensive fight where both sides have to run out and hire lawyers.

Now that Terra West has been publicly shamed the HOA will go out of its way to torment this woman in perpetuity.

Has this kind of nuttiness ever happened before? Oh yes, as I document in my new book, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association. A woman in West Boca, Florida had her house seized because she underpaid her dues by 78 cents.

Good Friends, there is no such thing as a benign Homeowners Association! Every one of the nation’s 335,000 Homeowners Associations is just one board election and one tyrant away from disaster.

When will the nation’s news reporters learn that? Someone tip off this reporter that he’s a fruitcake.

http://tinyurl.com/nqpnbkw

original source:

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/22383065/8-on-your-side-helps-woman-fight-hoa-charge

On Hiring the Cops to be Cops

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Houston’s Oak Forest Homeowners Association is discussing hiring off-duty sheriff’s deputies to patrol their neighborhood.

There’s an obvious and historic conflict-of-interest in hiring off-duty cops to perform the exact same duties in the exact same neighborhoods that they patrol during on-duty hours. And over the years there’ve been plenty of scandals involving off-duty police work.

Additionally, hiring police officers will not give the Oak Forest HOA immunity from any lawsuits in lawsuit-happy Texas. In fact, it may even be even more tempting for the litigious to sue for excessive force or other alleged ‘bad cop’ behavior. They get to sue the cop, AND the police department, AND city/county government, AND the HOA. Each entity has insurance to ‘buy off’ the lawsuit. Nice!

That being said, it would sure be comforting to know that someone providing neighborhood security was a real professional and not a private HOA security guard who suddenly finds himself being given police powers. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled recently that private HOA guards have the power to ‘arrest’ motorists. In other parts of the country, private security guards pull over speeding motorists and order them to write a check to the local HOA. How absolutely scary! In one Colorado HOA, security guards even use a police radar gun to ‘arrest’ and ‘fine’ speeders.

Given a choice, I’d sure be tempted to hire the professionals.

http://www.theleadernews.com/?p=9124

 

Kind Of Funny, When The News Media Begin To ‘Get It!’

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Yep, nobody’s guiltier than this long-time reporter. So many times over the past four decades the real import of a story has just  sailed over my stupid fuzzy head.

But it’s fun to be a witness when a reporter suddenly has that head-thunking moment when he or she realizes that they’re actually reporting on a story that has real national significance!

Today’s ‘head-thunker’ is Jodie Fleischer of “Channel 2 Action News” in Forsyth County, Georgia. She’s just discovered that private HOA security guards are embued with the same powers as police officers in making traffic stops inside Homeowners Associations. Now try to understand this: Homeowners Associations are private non-profit corporations which have ZERO government powers, ZERO government enforcement abilities. Yet these sleazy little white-bastion gated communities are acting like they have all the Constitutional Powers customarily reserved for trained police officers. Every trained cop in the country should be mightily offended.

We’ve already had the Trayvon Martin disaster where an untrained ‘HOA security cop’ killed a kid who was walking through the neighborhood. Again, I have no opinion as to whether the fault was Trayvon’s or George Zimmerman’s. But this is like a ticking time bomb in every one of the nation’s carefully coiffed gated communities.

Trial lawyers are broke right now. Their phones have stopped ringing. The recession has eaten deeply into their personal savings. They are birds-of-prey at this moment, floating and circling over the countryside looking for any available carrion in these HOA communities. Every single time a private security guard pulls his lights, siren, badge and ticket writing stunt on a detained motorist, there’s a lawsuit in the making.

Every time a lusty young private HOA security guard takes a sideways glance at a low-cut blouse on the most recently detained motorist, there’s gonna be Hell to pay.

And it ain’t Hell that’s going to be paying the legal bills. It’s each and every member of that private gated Homeowners Association.

Jodie Fleischer, take it from a long-time fellow reporter. You’re hanging onto the threads of a donkey’s tail. This story will kick you into the mud, or into the Big Leagues.

http://tinyurl.com/c3fbb7k

(original source)

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/do-security-guards-issuing-traffic-tickets-overste/nXXbD/ 

 

Hoo, Boy! Here’s The Next Lawsuit!

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Those Southern Mississippi boys shore know how to screw up a state!

The new community of Diamondhead is holding its first city election. The law allows political signs to be placed anywhere except city property. But the Diamondhead Property Owners Association doesn’t allow any political signs either. Unless you’re a Republican. Mayoral candidate Carl Necaise put his political signs out in the yards of people who weren’t actually in the POA. And he’s ordered his opponent’s signs removed because they happened to be in the front yards of people who actually are POA members.

The CC&Rs in Diamondhead also prohibit solicitation. Any homeowner who puts out a political sign or goes door-to-door faces a $100 fine.

Dang!

It sounds like a hundred different variations of ‘illegal.’

But that’s how a political machine operates.

Just grease the skids and git-outa-the-way!

http://www.sunherald.com/2013/04/06/4575951/covenant-overrules-diamondhead.html