Crazy story from the city of Commerce in Los Angeles County. A community newspaper reported on a growing scandal involving an alleged two million dollar kickback scheme involving the mayor of Commerce and several city officials. At least two of the officials live in a gated community there. Now an HOA board member, in the foulest imaginable verbal assault, has told the newspaper delivery guy that he’s no longer allowed to deliver the paper to homeowners in the HOA.
In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a terrifying sea monster that had many heads and used them to devour innocent seafarers. Our hero, Heracles, forced the Hydra into the open and began chopping off its heads. But each time a head was severed two new ones grew back. It seemed like a hopeless task but Heracles was undaunted. He finally figured out that if he used a torch to cauterize each severed limb they failed to regrow.
The news this week that the nation’s two largest HOA management monsters were getting cozier with each other was beyond astonishing. Top officials for Associa are being given all sorts of awards by the CAI and vice versa. Could a merger between the two organizations be in the future? Former Texas state senator John Carona and his ethically-challenged Associa would be perfect in a merger with the similarly ethics-challenged Community Associations Institute. Such a new organization would control tens of billions of dollars worth of income-producing properties. It’s a monster. Each person in this country who thinks he owns his own home should start facing the facts. You are John Carona’s income-producer. Carona, as one of the most influential power-brokers in Texas government, built his vast wealth by sponsoring and passing state laws that directly increased his personal bank balance. Now he’s buying infrastructure around his thousands of HOAs so that homeowners have no other option but to bank in his banks and buy insurance from his insurance companies.
Associa and the CAI? Together? And this massive (anti-trust?) organization which perpetuates the lie that it represents homeowners, when it actually only represents its own income stream from dues-paying lawyers and management companies, is becoming a regrowth of the legendary Hydra.
The symbol of The Torch is often used to represent light, the shedding of light on a dark subject. Maybe, just maybe, we can take a lesson from Heracles, the slayer of monsters. We just need to find a way to cauterize these various heads to keep them from growing back.
This one happened right under my nose here in the Denver area. The Denver vicinity, as some of you know, is home to one of the biggest HOA embezzling cases in the country. A management company stole homeowners blind in a largely minority community. But these homeowners were smart enough to catch this jerk. The bitterness, though, never really goes away.
Now there’s another incident, this one in the same part of town. David W. Martin, PMG Enterprises Inc., has had to surrender his state license to manage Homeowners Associations. He may be the first to do so under Colorado’s new licensing law. The law isn’t perfect. It has very few teeth and some appointed state officials who are really out of their league.
For the record, here’s a link to the story in the Denver Business Journal.
Christmas. What a wonderful holiday. I love it as much as I love Hanukkah and the Seder and all the other religious holidays. In fact, I love any religious person’s special days. It’s just what we do in America.
But why, oh why, are Homeowners Associations coming down so hard on holiday lights? I get it that some light displays are over the top. I get it that gorgeous light displays bring more traffic into a neighborhood. But the greater spirit I see during the holidays satisfies an inner part of my soul. Homeowners Associations, as far as I know, are the only entity in America where expressing your religious beliefs is verboten.
Just amazing! Just in time for Christmas, counties in Florida are offering rewards for turning in criminals. Just look around your HOA and you can find plenty of board members and property managers who are stealing, bribing, defrauding and embezzling from homeowners. There’s your Christmas money.
Just take this advice from a long-time investigative reporter. Whenever the cops ask you to anonymously call an 800 number, the dirty secret is that you’re not anonymous. The Crimestoppers 800 number is a complete and total scam. Call from a phone booth.
