Tag Archives: Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Five Crooks Down, Dozens More to Go

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There’s no way to explain how significant the Homeowners Association corruption scandal in Las Vegas really is. It’s huge, of course, for Nevadans. More than any other state, HOA members there have seen their home values plummet, sometimes up to 80 percent.

In the Las Vegas disgrace, a fifth person, Angela Esparza, 24, has now pleaded guilty to helping rig HOA board elections with phony ballots and proxies. She’ll get off easy, though. It’s sad to see that she’ll get a light sentence, but at least she’ll be snitching on some of the other major suspects in this stenchy scandal.

Good old Las Vegas corruption. Judges, cops, attorneys, HOA board members and management companies. In fact, Esparza has told investigators she prepared some of her phony ballots in the office of a certain lawyer. Vegas residents, of course, all know who that lawyer most likely is.

Investigators and prosecutors from Washington DC had to be flown in to complete the investigation because there was too much suspicion of potential corruption in the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s office.

How important is this federal investigation? The FBI and the U.S. Attorney have created an investigatory model that could be transported to just about any major city in America. The kind of corruption being discovered in Las Vegas is going on across the country. For reasons explained in my upcoming book, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, the problem is not that crooks intentionally try to get onto HOA boards. It’s that the whole HOA structure begs for crooks to come on board.

A massive number of homeowners have lost their homes to foreclosure, not just foreclosure to the banks, but foreclosures carried out by corrupt Homeowners Association boards. In fact, HOA foreclosures are often done for incredibly minor violation of covenants. Bank foreclosures are overseen by thousands of pages of state and federal rules. Nothing oversees an HOA foreclosure.

Often, the “lucky stiff” who ends up buying the HOA house for pennies on the dollar, is a board member, attorney, or another “insider” who’s tipped off that a “super quick seizure and auction” is going to be taking place. That buyer is usually the only one at the auction. He quickly re-sells the house to make it impossible for the original owner to get it back. Any kickbacks? Ha! We’ll have to wait and see! The FBI expects to take down dozens of highly placed officials over the next few months. (Insider’s tip: A major player in this ring of Las Vegas swindlers has already left town to set up a similar scheme in another sunbelt state. Hmmm, could it be a lawyer?)

Homeowners Associations are de-facto governments. Yet they have far more power than most other governments. They don’t have to abide by such concepts as free speech, freedom of assembly, respect for religion. The Second Amendment is so much trash to some HOAs. Racism and discrimination are endemic. Unannounced inspections of the interior of private homes is going on in California and elsewhere. Discrimination against the handicapped exists everywhere.

Yes, there are good Homeowners Associations and many people are happy with their own. But the system, itself, is flawed. Every HOA is just one rigged vote, one faked proxy and one election away from putting into office the kinds of people who are stinking up the Las Vegas housing market.

God Bless the F.B.I.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Opposition to HOAs: Conservative? Or Liberal?

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One puzzle about the HOA movement is, “Why doesn’t the left or right take a stance?” Think about it. Every homeowner signs away his Constitutional rights by agreeing to join an HOA. That abrogation of rights has been upheld in multiple court decisions.

But shouldn’t the left-wing ACLU be furious about the loss of free speech rights by homeowners? Shouldn’t the right-wing Tea Party be furious with the fact that citizens have lost their ability to claim First Amendment, Second Amendment, and Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections just by joining an HOA?

Of course, Americans have the right to contract away their claims to protections in the Bill of Rights. We do that all the time when we agree to abide by confidentiality agreements in out-of-court legal settlements. We agree not to ever discuss how a court case was settled, or how much was paid to which party to settle the case.

Yes, homeowners do have the right to sign away their rights, and that’s exactly what happens when you sign those HOA documents. But why don’t left-wing or right-wing activists raise cain about the excesses of rogue Homeowners Associations?

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Real HOA Nightmare Stories

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One question each homebuyer should deliberate before buying a property in a homeowners association is, “Am I buying a home in Paradise, or will the HOA make my stay a living hell?”

Homeowners Associations offer promises, of course: security, clean streets, well maintained homes, nice amenities. Some new home buyers find it a positive experience. Others discover they have bought into a nightmare. Still others find their homes foreclosed upon, sometimes for the pettiest of reasons.

Here are some recent homeowner stories collected by Bankrate.com:

When a couple in Lawrence, Georgia tried to sell their house, they discovered the HOA had quietly placed a $3,500 lien against their property because the couple had placed some pink flamingos on their lawn. HOAs have no sense of humor about such things as pink flamingos. The lien had to be paid before the house could be sold. Homeowners Associations often place such liens without informing the property owner. It’s not uncommon for homeowners to discover that these “secret liens” have been accumulating interest, attorney’s fees, and collection fees.
Maryland: a homeowner who was continually harassed by a neighbor asked his HOA to give him permission to put up a six-foot privacy fence. The HOA refused. The homeowner went to court, spent more than 23,000 dollars in legal fees and still lost. He then put up a smaller fence which he thought conformed to neighborhood rules. But HOA officials armed with tape measures, discovered it was several inches too high. He was slapped with a lien, and spent thousands more to settle the case.
A Homeowners Association in Donner Pass, California requires homeowners to make their properties ‘snowmobile friendly’. That means not driving cars over the snow or clearing it from around their homes. The intent is to leave areas open zones for snowmobiles. But a woman who had suffered a serious back injury ignored the rule. She drove her car up her half mile long driveway over the snow, saying her back injury made it impossible to walk the half mile to her home. But driving up her own driveway cost her $500 a day in HOA fines. The dispute eventually cost her more than $50,000 in fines and legal expenses.
Tampa Florida, a homeowner committed the ultimate sin of being late on her HOA fees. She thought her attorney had arranged the payment of more than $4,000. But she was short $497. The HOA foreclosed on her property, and sold it in a courthouse auction for $4651. An investor bought it and promptly sold it for $88,000. The homeowner lost her home over the $497 shortfall.

There are literally thousands of such stories across America and there is rarely a happy ending for the homeowner.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Beware the Homeowners Association!

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Millions of Americans have moved into covenant-protected neighborhoods, thinking the experience will be a positive one, maintenance will protect property values, neighbors will be friendly. A good percentage will find exactly what they were searching for.

Sadly, many others will discover that the move to the new neighborhood constituted a fundamental change of government. Yes, they’ve actually moved out of the United States of America and into a private non-profit corporation governed, not by the U.S. Constitution, but by a set of bylaws and restrictions. The restrictions were created by the original real estate developer and control handed over to neighborhood boards. The new corporate rules have nothing to do with the Bill of Rights with which most of us are familiar.

They’ve been called ‘private governments’ because they operate largely outside the control of traditional established government. Neighborhood covenants, controls and restrictions take precedence over such mythical concepts as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to bear arms, equal protection, the right to privacy in one’s home. In fact, in thousands of cases across the country homeowners are discovering that snooping, spying and reporting on others is de rigueur. In the HOA system there is no such thing as privacy. Violators of local rules have no right to trial by jury, in fact the governing boards play simultaneous roles of judge, jury and executioner. And the number of lawsuits inside the HOA movement is exploding.

These ‘sub-governments’ are the fastest growing part of the housing sector. Traditional governments are refusing to allow developers to build homes unless they create these little gestapo neighborhoods. In many suburban areas across the country up to 100 percent of all new homes are built within these controlled neighborhoods, making them in essence, de facto governments. Yet these ‘governments in fact’ are unimpressed and uncontrolled by the Constitutional restrictions our founders created to protect the citizenry.

The Community Associations Institute, which thrives on the billions of dollars paid to private management companies, debt collectors and armies of lawyers, claims that 70% of HOA members think of the experience as positive. Surveys by groups not connected with the CAI report a different experience. In fact there is a tidal wave of homeowners who say they’ll never live in an HOA again.

According to Janet Portman, editor of Nolo Press in Berkeley California and author of “Every Landlord’s Legal Guide.”, homeowners in the community are treated more like tenants than property owners. New homeowners often find themselves being fined or sued for incredibly minor violations like having an oil spot on a driveway or leaving a trash can outside a few minutes longer than the prescribed deadline. Claiming that board members are guilty of the same violations is not a defense, so it’s not uncommon for new HOA residents to begin believing there are two distinct sets of rules; one for the ruled, and one for the rulers.

The big club being wielded by board members and HOA management companies is the threat of sudden foreclosure, and in 37 states that means non-judicial foreclosure. Homeowners can and have found their homes confiscated and sold on the auction block without the case ever being heard by a judge.

This blog, by the way, is meant to be interactive. Please share your own stories while we take names and kick butt. And we’ll build a list of other resources for beleagured homeowners. Post your comments, or tweet me @ward_lucas — I would love to hear your stories!

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Homeowners Association Misuse of Power

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The move into ‘private governments’

Since the modern Homeowners Association movement was born in 1964, nearly a hundred million Americans have made the choice to buy into covenant controlled neighborhoods. Today sixty million people live in Homeowners Associations. The phenomenal growth of the HOA has been encouraged by municipalities which are more than happy to shed some of the expenses and duties of local government. Zoning laws are expensive to enforce, but by giving quasi-governmental powers to neighborhood groups, traditional governments can shed much of the cost of keeping neighborhoods manicured. The downside is that most HOAs are run by elected officers who have little or no training or background in good government practices. Many covenants are open to wide interpretation, which gives more aggressive board officers an amazing amount of lattitude to enforce, prosecute and persecute homeowners who are deemed ‘uncooperative’. Thus, fines can be levied for such violations as planting flowers without getting advance permission from the landscaping committee, placing unapproved wind chimes on the front porch, leaving shampoo bottles visible on bathroom windowsills, and even leaving a garage door open for longer than a prescribed time. A paint job in need of a minor touchup can bring heavy neighborhood fines, painting a house the wrong color can end up in an expensive legal court case, but even if new paint exactly matches the previous paint, failing to ask for advance permission to paint is a ‘crime’ which can lead to thousands of dollars in fines, and even expulsion from a neighborhood and confiscation of your home. Unconstitutional? Nope. Illegal? Not on a bet. Won’t law enforcement intervene to protect your rights? Don’t count on it. By agreeing to sign the restrictive covenants before buying your house, you gave up an amazing number of rights.

One Hero in the Homeowners’ Rights Movement

Arizona’s George Staropoli is probably one of the nation’s foremost critics of the Homeowners Association movement. He says buyers are rarely told the kinds of rights they are tossing away when they move into quasi-government neighborhoods. His organization, Citizens for Constitutional Local Government, lobbies before legislatures, citizens groups and from his websites in favor of re-establishing Constitutional rights. His writings are prolific and there’s no element of HOA life on which he is not an expert. The deeper he digs into the abuses of the movement, the more adamant he becomes about the need for Americans to reclaim their historic property rights.

Crazy Cases

Some of the attacks on homeowners by HOA and Condo boards border on the bizarre. In Long Beach, California, an elderly disabled condo owner named Pam McMahon was ordered not to walk her dog from her condominium unit through the lobby. If she wanted to keep the dog it would have to be carried while in the building. But the disabled McMahon used a cane to walk and could not carry the 25 pound dog. So her board began fining her $25 dollars a day. The fines and the legal expenses continued adding up, until the woman was forced to give up her condo and move elsewhere. Despite federal laws which mandate special consideration for the disabled, McMahon is just one of many homeowners who’ve been forced to give up their homes because neighborhood rules made their lives impossible.

Other examples of HOAs regulations are so outrageous they almost defy description. However, in this ongoing blog I will do my best to tell you some of the more egregious stories of Neighbors At War.

Ward Lucas
Author
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

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