Tag Archives: Home Assoc

North Austin Homeowners Decide to Quit Being Stoopid!

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Hallelujah! It took years, but members of the Sunchase Condominiums in North Austin have decided to quit being stupid. Sunchase homeowners have been paying dues for years, but their HOA board and the property manager, Nancy Thompson, refused to show them the books! Last time I looked, Texas law mandated that HOA members be allowed to see where their dues are going.

Homeowners have poured more than a million dollars down a black hole that hasn’t been audited in more than five years. Readers of this blog know that I’ve got a very low tolerance for the stench rising from tens of thousands of HOAs in almost identical situations. And Sunchase stinks to high heaven!

Investigative reporters from KXAN followed the skanky trail behind the property manager and found that it leads to some other HOAs in Austin where large sums of money vanished like some magic trick at Circus Circus. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of checks have been written to various members of Nancy Thompson’s family. Damn, those no-bid contracts sure are profitable.

Someone at Sunchase should consider calling the huge FBI unit that’s rooting out identical corruption in Las Vegas.

BTW, great investigative work by reporter Chris Willis and KXAN, Austin!

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/homeowners-fight-back-against-hoa-board

Chalk it up to HOA Stupidity

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Everybody else has reported on this already, but I should at least get my take on the record. So here it is:

In Aurora, Colorado, a Homeowners Association is threatening to ruin the family of a three year old girl who uses colored chalk to draw flowers and hearts on the sidewalks in front of her home.

Seems that some wicked witch in the cul-de-sac complained that the chalk drawings were against the covenants and destroying the value of the neighborhood. The child, Emerson Cohen, is mystified at the dispute, but her mother is furious.

The Stapleton Master Association is furious because the HOA was originally identified as being a Stapleton Homeowners Association. They’re working overtime to lobby the media to say, “It’s not Stapleton, is an HOA within Stapleton. Additionally, Stapleton is saying “We have no rules against sidewalk chalk drawings by children. And the Master Association is pointing its collective finger/fingers? at a member HOA called ”the Innovations and Courtyard Traditions at Stapleton Homeowners Association.”

Still, you’d think that Stapleton Master Association could show some leadership and throttle a few complainers by the necks. This little Nazi-like neighborhood is now in the national news for beating down a three-year-old girl whose artistic efforts were all going to be washed away in the first rain, anyway.

Yes, some people hate little children. Even worse, some people move into HOAs because they hate little children. They realize that a single complaint to the HOA board can shut down chalk drawings, lemonade stands, kids playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. Incredibly, a number of HOAs have even enacted rules that mandate that no children are allowed to play outside!

The hatred of little children is a serious disease. Sadly, when a diseased mind moves into an HOA, that hatred is toxic and communicable.

Here, the message is in big print: IF YOU HAVE CHILDREN, DO NOT MOVE TO ANY STAPLETON NEIGHBORHOOD IN AURORA, COLORADO!

Dear Lord God, I Love These Stories!

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How could I live if I didn’t occasionally run across these stories and have the ability to mock them?

But God is good, and He sends me lots of links.

The Massapequa Park Village Board has decided that unmowed lawns are more of a safety hazard than letting child rapists roam the streets.

That’s right, folks.  Let your grass grow an inch longer than your neighbors, and you could soon be slapped with a 10,000 dollar fine.  Let’s spell that out, so there’s no mistake about the zeroes:  A TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR FINE.

Sex offenders usually get off with a far lesser sentence than that.

But in the hoity toity village of Massaqua Park, New York, the ten thousand dollar law apparently passes muster.

Massaqua Park? A new reason not to live there. Stick with my Colorado double-wide. Be grateful.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/06/12/massapequa-park-passes-new-law-on-lawn-maintenance/

Katy Did! Katy Did!

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Yep, I know that’s an insect, an annoying little insect. Wikipedia says katydids disguise themselves brilliantly as dead rotting leaves complete with holes in them.

I do strain for metaphors once in a while, but an HOA manager in Katy, Texas, disguised himself as a worthless piece of dead, rotting debris when he decided to steal a million dollars from his neighbors. 34 year old Taggert Mayfield pleaded guilty to money laundering, scoffing at his fiduciary dutues, and bald-faced theft from homeowners who profoundly trusted him.

Many of those homeowners were elderly and had saved all their lives to buy their retirement homes. Mayfield, who owned Arrow Management Company did lots of business in Fort Bend andHarris Counties. An Assistant D.A. says Mayfield was really “living the dream,” as a parasite sucking the life blood out of his neighbors’ financial dreams. He devestated a number of helpless homeowners, who will never again see the American HOA movement the way they once did.

Don’t think for a second, though, that Mayfield is alone. And don’t think that Las Vegas homeowners are alone as they struggle to recuperate from a hundred million dollar swindle the feds are still investigating in Nevada. No, folks, this kind of raw theft is going on in cities across the country. When an HOA demands total trust but refuses to install any safety checks, the HOA board officers are absolutely as guilty as the embezzlers. When lawyers are hired to suppress any protests by suffering homeowners, there’s something evil going on beneath the surface.

Just check it out.

Massive HOA Fraud Discovered in Oregon

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You don’t hear many stories about HOA nightmares in Oregon and Washington. Well, folks, that’s changing.

Here’s a story that claims 31 Homeowners Associations in Oregon were ripped off by their management company. Homeowners are facing huge special assessments to make up for the loss. The management company employee embezzled up to two million dollars. HOAs from Portland to Forest Grove are struggling under the weight of the financial disaster.

Stunned homeowners were heard saying, “Gosh, you just don’t hear about this kind of thing happening.” to which our only comment should be “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

But heck, lets unload some more comments. The victim HOAs in Oregon are the rule, NOT the exception. HOA embezzlement by board officers and management companies may be the most underreported financial crime in America. One problem is that embezzlements embarrass Homeowners Associations. They do everything in their power to cover them up. It’s hard to sell homes in a neighborhood that has a track record for ripping off the homeowners.

Second, if you’re an HOA president or treasurer there are amazing ways of stealing from your neighbors so they never actually know they’ve been robbed. Hmmm, if there’s enough interest, I might even create a list of 101 ways to steal HOA funds and not get caught. I’d hate to further educate the bad guys, but it might provide some important information for future victims.

Last, it’s my belief, based on some pretty good evidence, that the vast majority of Homeowners Associations in America have already lost money to HOA corruption. That’s what the FBI is discovering in the massive federal investigation of HOAs in Las Vegas.

Although life in some HOAs is rather pleasant, each homeowner may as well have a huge bull’s eye tattooed on his or her backside. It’s just a subtle reference to a famous Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon, “Bummer of a birthmark, Hal.”

BTW, the link below contains the whole story on the Oregon theft, along with the 31 HOAs that got ripped off. Good reporting by Mara Stine and Jim Clark of the Gresham Outlook. Now, if they’d just expand their investigation to the rest of the Pacific Northwest!

http://portlandtribune.com/news/print_story.php?story_id=134013470305516200