Tag Archives: HOA Stories

Ten Million Dollar Kick In The Teeth!

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The HOA world is buzzing about a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed against the Henderson, Nevada Police Department. It’s a lawsuit that could throw a massive punch in the face of the American HOA movement, especially those which use coersive tactics to intimidate HOA critics.

This really is a wild case. Two elderly residents of Sun City Anthem HOA in Nevada, tried to warn other homeowners that the board was illegally stashing millions of dollars of excess dues instead of returning them to residents. Any organization that doesn’t report such excess collections can face heavy IRS fines.

The board refused to pay attention to the complainants, so the two ‘agitators’ reported the apparent tax fraud to the Henderson Police Department. Keep in mind that a Federal Grand Jury was already prosecuting massive fraud among Nevada Homeowners Associations.

According to the mens’ lawsuit, the Sun City Anthem HOA filed a complaint with Henderson P.D. accusing the two men of filing a false police report. The cops then busted the two men, stripped them, handcuffed the two men to a vertical bar in the city jail, and left them for four hours. The men, one of them a retired Air Force officer, were appropriately outraged.

Their outrage grew as the IRS agreed that the HOA was indeed operating illegally and levied some heavy fines.

Now Col. Robert Frank (ret’d) and Tim Stebbins are suing the City of Henderson for false arrest, false imprisonment and a number of other allegations. The reverberations from this lawsuit could be massive; and massively fun to watch.

Can’t you feel the squirming among HOA board members everywhere?

Future HOA Hero

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I’ve said it before and will say it again. One of the upcoming heroes of the fight against rogue HOAs is Rodney Gray, from Texas. He’s now got a rough cut of his upcoming documentary, “The HOAx.” It’s wonderfully filmed and edited, and Rodney is an expert movie maker. He’s got an update on the documentary, and I’ve linked his site below.

http://thehoaxfilm.com/2012/11/07/how-production-of-the-hoax-began-in-my-own-neighborhood/

 

Rent out your Las Vegas Home, go to Jail

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Rent out your HOA Home, Go to Jail

So you thought your HOA home was such a sweet investment. After all, if you had to move to a smaller home in this economy, you could always rent out the HOA home to help pay the mortgage couldn’t you, Bunky?

After all, that’s an age-old way of diversifying an invesment and keeping its value high during a recession.

But many  HOAs are deciding that HOA rentals are cheapening the neighborhood so they’re arbitrarily passing rule that say, “You bought it, now live in it, damn it!”

Florida has been especially hard-hit. Tiana Patterson decided to sell her home. She has had to cut prices over and over again. Putting up a For Rent sign might save her investment until the economy improves, but the pushback from the Madison, Miss. HOA is so strong that she’s having to spend $36,000 a year for upkeep, andbut that money is now down the drain.  The HOA In Madison, Miss.HOA is so strong that she’s having to spend $36,000 a year for upkeep, but that’s money down the drain.  HOA Advocates say it’s an age old way to protect your investment, so why are HOAs threatening finds and foreclosures for people who rent their homes?

That’s a puzzling question.

The only real answer it that power-drunk HOA board members backed by power drunk HOA lawyers see money rolling into their pockets in the short term. They don’t give a flying fig about long term property values. They care about only the sort term. And that’s why you’re hearing so many nightmare stories abount unnessary fines ad foreclosures. When someone else’s money is at stake, you have very little incentive to protect your own property values.

And shame, shame, shame on the contrarians.

Two Important Updates to our List of Friends in Texas

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Harvella Jones, a real champion in the struggle for homeowners’ rights, has a new website. It’s at:

         http://thenationalhomeownersadvocategroup.com/

Second, independent film maker Rodney Gray is working on a documentary, The HOAx. This kind of project is extremely expensive to produce, but we’d like to help him as much as we can A film like this can be an incredible catalyst for a movement that depends on mass education. On this site you can see his trailer, and help him raise the needed funds. If everyone in the fight would link to his website, his fund raising will be almost self-working.

               www.indiegogo.com/thehoaxfilm

We are growing. You can tell that from the attacks by HOA industry insiders who refer to us as “whiners.” No, we’re not whiners.  We’re awakened.

Star War’s Revenge!

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Movie producer George Lucas must have incredible patience. But even the most patient man in the world burns out sometime.

Lucas has owned a large ranch in Marin County for the past forty years. His dream was to create a 300,000 square foot movie studio that would have brought 300 million dollars worth of new economic activity to that part of California. Despite the fact that his studio would not have been visible to his rich neighbors, the adjacent Homeowners Association has spent two and a half decades fighting him every step of the way.

Lucas is well-known for his previous environmentally sensitive projects. He has planted thousands of trees on his properties and spent millions making sure his movie developments were low key. He has also built many miles of hiking trails for his neighbors.

But George Lucas has finally given up. A press release from his office says, “The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbors.”

But then comes the zinger that’ll be talked about by Lucas fans for many years. He agrees that Marin County is a bedroom community. So he’s now going to use his ranch to build housing for low income families. It’s a perfect movie plot ending, as his foul-mouthed millionaire neighbors watch all those “po’ folk” move into their new double-wides. This blogger seriously doubts Lucas will plant trees to screen off the view.

Lucas’s press release is linked here:

http://gradyranch.com/pdf/Grady_Ranch_4_10.pdf

And it’s priceless.

And if you know george lucas, Please tell him we’d love to talk to him!  He’s our hero. We’d love to complete the circle! There’s not much time to interview him for our blog! God loves those who take a public stand! Help us if you can.