Tag Archives: Realtor

Can They Really Take My Guns?

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Can my Homeowners Association really take my guns away even if it’s without any mention on my lease or CC&Rs? Yes, they can and do. Across the country HOA boards have denied homeowners their Second Amendment right to bear arms many times. As I keep saying, HOAs are not subject to the U.S. Constitution so they can ban just about anything they want.

In a recent case in Texas a homeowner was hit with fines and threats of foreclosure because he ran a website where he sold guns. Mind you, not a single gun ever came through this property because the homeowner never received any shipments. 100% of his guns changed hands on the Internet.

There was a kerfuffle last week in Colorado, when Ross Management, a company that manages a number of neighborhoods suddenly passed an anti-gun ban on all its properties. (Trayvon Martin effect?) Many retired military live in Ross developments and they hit the ceiling. There was negative news coverage across the nation and Ross has kind of, sort of backed away from the gun ban. For now.

It’s not the first outrage by this property management group, either. Among the rules residents have to sign is that they are forbidden from ever speaking ill of Ross Management. So, the next step may be evicting those homeowners who dared to speak to the news media about the ban on guns.

We’ll see.

http://tinyurl.com/n8xddgv

 

Are You A Sinner?

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That was just hypothetical. According to some religions we are ALL sinners. But what gives a Homeowners Association the right to determine who is a sinner and who is not?

I know, you think I’m just exaggerating again. But my regular readers know I NEVER resort to hyperbole, right?

Well, Bunky, take a look at the latest outrage in a Venice, Florida Homeowners Association. The Casa Di Amici Condo Association refuses to allow a condo sale to anybody it deems (in its own infinite wisdom) to be ‘living in sin.’ Now, if, as the Bible teaches, we are all sinners and no one is capable of judging one another, what in Hell is going on here?

Major life decisions, i.e., investing all your money in a home, is now up to a board of directors who take a vote on whether a prospective buyer is a sinner? Is there a point system? Would my war-widowed mother be deemed a sinner because she married again?  Would I be excluded because I was the second child of my widowed mother? Would a rape victim who chose not to abort a child be rated higher or lower on the Casa Di Amici Condo Association’s ‘sin scale’?

Give me a frickin’ break!

Losers, all of them. If I had their neighborhood address list I would publish it!

http://tinyurl.com/lju9hbt

 

Nasty, Nasty, Nasty

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I never gratuitously toss around the word ‘fascism’. My parents grew up in the era of German and Italian fascism and it was a devastating word to them. But I still remember how they regarded the fascist totalitarian governments that were wreaking havoc on the world.

So, as I monitor Homeowners Association stories around the country and see stories like the one I’ve linked below, I’m just stunned at the parallels.

South Natomas, California is the scene of an ongoing donnybrook between an elderly former U.S, Marine and the Sonora Springs Homeowners Association. Allen Campbell and his wife, Cynthia, moved into the neighborhood of 200 homes in 2009. He was elected to the board of directors but he became troubled with the lack of accountability in HOA finances. In fact, he was so troubled that he resigned. Cynthia was elected to the board a few months later and she, too was dismayed by the lack of transparency and the apparent hiding of financial records. She also resigned.

The remaining board soured on the Campbell couple and the harassment began. They were banned from neighborhood facilities, shouted down at HOA meetings. At one point, the board began hiring security guards to stand over and around Campbell whenever he showed up for a public meeting. Campbell is 75, in a wheelchair and on oxygen, yet this HOA board apparently felt threatened? In one meeting Campbell says when he stood up the security guard hit him on the chest where he had a fresh incision from heart bypass surgery.

It got worse. The HOA’s law firm began sending Campbell legal bills, including a $1340 bill for a so-called “enforcement assessment.” It’s blatantly obvious that the Sonora Springs Homeowners Association and its law firm are planning on liening, seizing and auctioning off the Campbells’ home. They’ve had practice doing that, seizing at least one other home in the neighborhood. In fact, that was the exact financial issue that so troubled the Campbells. There was apparently rent money coming in from the house that had been seized, but the HOA board wouldn’t account for where the money was going.

There’s so much more in the link below. But even after reading both sides of the story, I somehow think these security guards should be wearing knee-high black boots and HOA armbands of some sort.

http://tinyurl.com/mfatyfc 

 

Kid’s Play Before The Day of HOAs

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guest blog by Nila Ridings
  
This story took me back to my childhood. 
 
I spent hours in my little play house with my friends.  We took our dolls, coloring books, Play-Doh, and molding clay in there and completely lost track of time.  Every now and then my Mom would peek in the kid-sized door opening and deliver some lemonade or cherry Kool-Aid.  It was located under a big tree so even on the hottest days of summer there was a cool breeze coming through the windows.
 
It makes me sad that with the introduction of Homeowners Associations little girls and boys cannot have play houses and tree houses.  Nope.  Kiss that idea good-bye.  In many HOAs you can’t even have a basketball hoop.  And not long ago we learned about the ban on anything with wheels for kids to enjoy.
 
And then we complain that kids are bored, spend all their time on video games, electronic devices, and their cell phones.  Not to mention the incessant discussions in the media and politics about childhood obesity.
 
HOAs have not only robbed the enjoyment out of adult life and homeownership, we’ve robbed the kids, too!
 
 
 

Is It Possible You Are Not Really An American?

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OK, quick! Give me a definition of “United States citizen.” I really mean it, give me the shortest possible definition of citizenship. Hard?  It shouldn’t be.

In my mind, a U.S. citizen is one who owes his allegiance to the United States of America, one who is accepted and identified as a citizen by both federal and state government,  and one who is protected from the overreach of government through the limits of the U.S. Constitution.

Whoa! There’s a problem, here. Seventy million people over the past thirty years have signed private real estate contracts in which they disavowed their access to state and federal protections and have signed all their Constitutional rights over to private non-profit corporations known as Homeowners Associations.

Certainly, all citizens have the Constitutional right “to contract.” And you really can sign away individual Constutitonal rights. For example, if you make an out-of-court settlement in a lawsuit, it may contain a confidentiality clause. That’s an enforceable contract in which you voluntarily gave up your right to Free Speech. In other words, you no longer have the freedom to speak about the terms of your confidential settlement.

It’s an awesome thought. Over the past thirty years, seventy million Americans gave up all their Constitutional rights by joining Homeowners Associations. The verbiage in most HOA contracts makes it clear that buyers must agree that they cannot defy any rules imposed by the board of directors. It doesn’t matter if those rules interfere with free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to bear arms, freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, due process, and a myriad of other freedoms.

But if half the definition of “U.S. citizen” includes someone who is protected by the Constitution, does that mean seventy million people erroneously think they’re American citizens, when they’ve actually stepped into an entirely new form of government?

Even citizens of other countries who are arrested in the United States for various crimes have rights under the U.S. Constitution. In many cases, illegal immigrants have far greater rights than homeowners in private gated neighborhoods.

So, again I ask: Are you really an American? Are you really a United States citizen? Or do you now belong to some kind of sub-class, for which we haven’t yet invented a word?