Tag Archives: HOA

ULI Promotes Urbanization, While Developers Prefer Rental Properties To Condos

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

Members of a recent Urban Land Institute (ULI) panel are reporting high demand for urban housing, both within existing city cores and in densely populated “instant cities” (HOAs), created by developers in suburban locations near mass transit.

The attached article highlights how the major players in American housing policy and the real estate industry are not all on the same page.

Housing policy makers still push home ownership as the endgame, while NAR and CAI lobby Congress to pass FHFA proposals to relax mortgage standards. Meanwhile, developers and investors are shying away from less profitable, more risky condominiums, and engaging in new construction and redevelopment for the rental market.

Housing is becoming less affordable, across the board, as cities become more and more gentrified. If left unchecked, the majority of Americans will left with few housing choices: rent for the long-term in an apartment community, or buy or rent a single family home in a private, corporate-governed HOA.

(link to Urban Land Magazine: Changing Face of Residential)

(link to Urban Land Institute – mission and priorities)

 

The Ghost of Christmas Past

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guest blog by Dave Russell

In 2011 a friend of mine sent me a news report about 3-year-old Cooper Veloudis who has cerebral palsy. Cooper’s therapist suggested that a playhouse be built in the backyard of the family’s home. The playhouse cost about $5000.

However, the Andover Forest Homeowners Association in Lexington, Kentucky, said little Cooper’s house had to go because the HOA says it’s a structure and is prohibited. Cooper’s parents were fined $50 a day until they complied. What the HOA didn’t say is that there are other such structures in the same development. But nobody seemed to really care about those.

This story literally kept me up at night thinking that little Cooper was basically being foreclosed upon by the HOA. Where were the folks down at Fair Housing or the Americans with Disabilities Act people? Couldn’t anyone have stepped up to the plate and defended this little tykes therapy house?

As usual, the Homeowners Association won, and little Cooper’s playhouse was ‘foreclosed’ upon by the big, bad and powerful HOA. Somehow, this story still haunts me like the Ghost of Christmas Past, but also reminds me to be a little more understanding with the children in my own HOA community.

I sure hope I’m not the only one who’s haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past. In time, just like in the Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens, each board member and the pond-scum attorneys who represented Andover Forest Homeowners Association deserves a visit from one of Dicken’s ghosts.

If you are going to watch the news report linked below, you might want to have a Kleenex handy. I sure needed one.

(link to disabled boy’s therapy home on KTSM-TV)

 

Amazing Thanksgiving Story

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Because of my family’s long association with the military, I will occasionally do non-HOA stories and links on this website. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the occasional side road. Just remember that intentionally taking side roads is the key to happiness and fulfillment in this life we lead.

Don Brookins was one of my longtime photo-journalists while I was working in the TV news business. During long stakeouts in my undercover van he used to tell me stories about his dad and his connection with the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. I was moved by his story and hope you will be moved, as well.

(link to story about the American Saint Nick)

 

 

New Website Numbers!!

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Folks, you’ve helped us blow right through another milestone. The 12 month running average shows that as of last night there’ve been 500,000 logins to this website, and those people have read 4.1 million pages of material. Those are fabulous numbers. So keep telling everyone you know about this site, and let’s get the word out to even more people.

If you have a friend who’s thinking of buying a new house or condo, tell them to read my book, Neighbors At War!  

If your friend or relative already lives in a nightmare HOA, buy him or her a copy of Neighbors at War! And (hint, hint) Christmas is coming.

I keep hearing of libraries that are carrying or re-ordering copies of Neighbors At War. I can probably thank our frequent guest blogger Nila Ridings for a lot of that. She makes regular visits to her library in the Kansas City area to find out how many people are checking the book out.

Speaking of guest bloggers, some of the country’s top thinkers are submitting guest blogs here. You won’t find a better treasure chest of must-read material dissecting the nightmare of living in a covenant controlled community.

Living in an HOA makes me think of an experience I had many years ago when my parents took my two brothers and me to see the cliff divers in Acapulco. These young men and women stand on this amazingly high cliff and inspect the waves as they noisily crash against the rocks below. They hook their toes on the edge, looking down, watching for the highest wave. Their timing has to be perfect. Diving into a trough means a chance of breaking your neck on the bottom. Hitting a crest might provide the diver two or three feet of deeper water and thus a safer dive.

“Only the experts can do that,” my dad said. “Only the experts and crazy people would risk it.”

I won’t state the obvious. That’s your conclusion to make.

 

HOA TV Interview in Denver

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Ward Lucas on HOA Madness

Ward Lucas on HOA MadnessHi Folks,

This interview got out to our network a little bit early, mainly because I was still learning how to embed videos directly on the Neighbors At War website. Now that I’ve learned how, I may be able to link to more interesting HOA related videos. One possible subject that comes to mind is videotapes of fights and assaults in Homeowner Association meetings! That might be educational for those who are skeptical about our claims of rampant abuse of homeowners in the HOA system. So feel free to send me links to such videos.

My interviewer this past weekend was Jon Caldara, a radio and TV fixture in Colorado and host of Devil’s Advocate, a PBS show in the Denver area. Caldara is also head of the Independence Institute, an activist conservative think tank. Many of those reading this blog are liberals or libertarians. This interview gives me another chance to emphasize that our cause is not liberal OR conservative.  It’s about the loss of Constitutional rights in neighborhoods which were built only because they were mandated by local government.

We have to continue spreading the word that real government institutions should never be allowed to mandate the formation of quasi-government or faux-government organizations that consistently deny Constitutional rights.