I rarely object to re-posting calls to action from our network around the country, especially if I know the person or group asking for the post.
Our friends in North Carolina are doing excellent work in dealing with legislators and trying to get new laws passed. Thus, I refer to you their latest request.
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info@nchoalaws.org (info@nchoalaws.org)
Please pass this info along to everyone you know who lives in an HOA community. Ask them to contact the North Carolina Legislature through Thom Tillis, Speaker of the House, and ask for changes to HOA laws that seem to allow and even encourage abuse of Homeowners and our Property Rights, not to mention our abilities to live and contribute positively to our Communities.
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Actually, I would go one step further than the above call to action. The vast majority of our legislators are clueless about what’s going on in HOA Amerika. The campaign donations they get is almost exclusively from the ‘industry’, and by ‘industry’ I mean those law firms, management companies and organizations which make fifty billion dollars by maintaining, nurturing and sucking at the teat of homeowners who are chained to ‘planned communities’. These are the people who are being bled dry from lawsuits, special assessments, fines, liens and foreclosures. As long as they have retirement savings and equity in their homes they have targets on their backs.
Your Legislators don’t know any of this! Get a copy of my book, Neighbors At War!And demand that your lawmaker read it!
The news from North Carolina sounded horrible at first. Twenty-one people were standing on the deck of a rental home on the Outer Banks when the deck collapsed. Most were injured and taken to the hospital. It could have been far worse, of course, but the final chapters haven’t been written.
Trial lawyers will be all over these injured people like ticks on a picnic blanket. This beach home rents for 10,000 bucks a week. It’s obviously owned by someone who has deep pockets. It’s also in a private neighborhood of wealthy homes and the lawyers will be looking for every deep pocket in sight. And that means Homeowners Associations. HOAs take out insurance against calamities like this one, but every one of those policies has an upper limit. They also have exceptions for things like improper design and maintenance. The bottom line is that rich people in a rich HOA are legally bound to each other under the CC&Rs. Dang, that’s a lot of deep pockets! This series of lawsuits is going to put a lot of lawyers’ kids through college.
When you join a Homeowners Association you and your assets are community property. If you don’t believe that, then pay attention to property values in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman neighborhood. And watch property values in this nice HOA on the beach. Lordy, Lordy! Smell the money.
A neighborhood in Pendleton, Oregon is furious with a homeowner who’s begun flying his flag upside down as a protest against President Barack Obama. The upside down flag is recognized internationally as a symbol of distress.
Oregon has long been one of the most left-leaning states in the country and it’s full of Homeowners Associations. The surprising thing is that an Oregon neighborhood is protesting any display of the American flag at all, right side up or upside down. While this blogger takes no public position, left or right, on politics, he still believes that American citizens have a Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech. And historically that means freedom of expression, even if the way a belief is expressed nauseates others.
We’ll see what happens in this case. But this kind of display of the American flag usually ends up in lawsuits, liens, foreclosures, or even violence.
Our Supreme Court has recognized that citizens have a right to desecrate Old Glory. That couldn’t happen in some countries. I find it interesting that in certain totalitarian regimes like Cuba it’s impossible to fly the flag upside down. It looks the same either way. That has to have been an intentional design by a country that didn’t want its citizens putting out calls of distress.
If an official flag is ever designed to fly over HOA Amerika it will also have to have a design that can’t be flown upside down, sort of like the all-white flag of surrender.
Nobody crystallize and focuses an argument better than Arizona’s George Staropoli. Around the country property rights advocates a pondering whether to invite the CAI (Community Associations Institute) into the flock. Staropoli nails it:
Guest blog by George Staropoli
Why do people NOT mention that the attorney speaking out is a CAI member? It does help to put his comments in perspective. (Would saying he’s a conservative help clarify his statements, for instance?) Think in terms of “loyal party member” who knows enough to give the appearance, the illusion, of being fair and helping the other side with his column and website, but is a party stalwart.
His column and website are vehicles for the party line and will never deal with the fundamental defects of the HOA legal scheme, like addressing the Study Committee issues that I raised in my Proposed HOA Study Committee issues of substance. Let’s see if CAI will respond. Hell no! They can’t and won’t, and an opportunity to show what CAI really stands for fails again. (Why is CAI silent on these issues,” can be asked, demanding a response in public.)
I would think that the call for a task force would be ideal grounds for making these issues the platform for NC HOA reforms. Going to the Governor with your own agenda is the right thing to do! That might force the Governor to say, Let’s play kumbaya and set up a Task Force. Now, that’s a power play by advocates!
Asking the other side to join in admits to a lack of power, and reform legislation is a game of political power.
Las Vegas homeowners are lucky in one respect: They have Darcy Spears of KTNV-TV, who does frequent investigative reports under the “HOA Hall of Shame” moniker. Her latest report involves a dysfunctional HOA called the First Light Homeowners Association.
The board of First Light is apparently somewhat vicious to many individual homeowners. They hate the spying, the discrimination, the retaliation, the indiscriminate towing of cars. People are afraid to go home. They’re afraid to open their mailboxes because of the threats, the fines, the foreclosures.
I should also mention the massive decline of property values in Las Vegas Homeowners Associations.
Caveat emptor, buyer beware.
First Light is a neighborhood you might not enjoy living in.
