Tag Archives: Realtor

Nevada Judge Finally Shows Some Guts

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Well, good old Las Vegas mobster Leon Benzer has finally met justice in his plan to steal millions and millions of dollars from Homeowners Associations. Not much justice, but at least federal judge James Mahan has now sentenced Benzer to 15 1/2 years in federal prison. With ‘good time’ he may end up spending seven years behind bars. Most of his 38 co-conspirators in the massive scam to take over Las Vegas Homeowners Associations got probation to a year-and-a-half in prison.

Of the other conspirators, a number have died, some of them by suicide. Benzer was the last to be sentenced in the long-running case.

How much did Benzer steal from homeowners? Untold millions. But this gangster’s damage has ripples that will go on forever. Home values in Las Vegas crashed, people lost their homes and all their retirement savings. Foreclosures spiked because so much money was bled out of HOAs. Investigators have said Benzer & Company actually stole somewhere beween 60 and 100 million dollars from homeowners.

But get ready for the real story: It hasn’t happened yet. Leon Benzer is very familiar with Mexico. A ton of money he stole ended up in a Mexican resort. There are links in the HOA investigation to a Mexican drug cartel. Benzer once owned his own Mexican tequila company. He doesn’t have to report for prison until November 6th. As fundamentally corrupt as this piece of trash is, what would stop him from crossing the border? Oh, that’s right. He might not be able to get across the ‘border fence.’

We’ll see.

(BTW, Benzer reads this website! How’s it goin’ Leon?)

(link to Las Vegas Review-Journal story on Benzer’s sentence)

 

One Person One Vote

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Our frequent guest blogger, Deborah Goonan, alerted me to an excellent documentary which could ultimately go straight to the heart of the fight against the HOA disease. It’s produced by the Annenberg Foundation and reviews two of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the 20th Century, Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Simms, which were both decided in the early 60s.

The Court essentially ruled that the 14th Amendment, enacted 3 years after the civil war, should have made all citizens equal. But as the decades rolled on it became obvious that because of unequal state apportionment of legislative districts, people in rural counties had much more voting power than high density cities. The court essentially ruled that equal rights means equal voting power. It overturned 150 years of precedence and all legislatures had to reapportion their states so a roughly equal number of people resided in each voting district. There’s been frequent gerrymandering, of course, but that’s a story for another time.

There was another major milestone that happened about that same time. The country decided that blacks had just as much right to vote as whites. Congress enacted and the President signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and many southern laws which restricted black voting rights were overturned.

The amazing thing that should interest us…is that these two court decisions and the Civil Rights Act led immediately to the creation of the modern HOA movement which decided that by incorporating housing developments and then controlling them with HOA mini-governments, they were able to once again subvert the one person one vote principle. Actually, it was more perverse than that. Most HOAs allotted one vote per parcel owned. It was an arrogant refutation of three of the most important government decisions of the century.

“We’re private corporations. The Constitution allows us to handle our people in whichever way we want. You can’t tell us how to treat our ’employees’ and ‘investors.'”

But that could be the Achilles heel of the HOA movement. These are our homes we’re talking about. This is where we live, where we’re supposed to be able to find ultimate privacy, shelter against abusive government (HOA officers and property managers). But this is the one remaining bastion where the one person one vote principle falls apart. We get one vote per property owned. For example, the investor who owns 50 parcels out of a hundred home development (even if he doesn’t live in the community) may get 50% of the vote, so the neighborhood looks the way he wants it, regardless of the wishes of all the other neighbors. He may easily, and probably will get himself installed as lifetime president of the board.

One person one vote. Think about it folks. As you watch the 26 minute documentary linked below, ask how this might be applied in your own HOA.

(link to the Annenberg documentary)

 

Want to Keep You Entertained!

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Yes, I want to keep all of you entertained and coming back to Neighbors At War. So forgive me if I’m reposting old material but I get a good belly laugh each time I hear this old Pete Seeger song. It’s so true for so many of us!

For a great history on Seeger’s Little Boxes hit, see the following:

(link to Little Boxes history)

 

 

 

 

No Frickin’ Flags Here!

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What is it that Homeowners Associations hate so much about the American flag? Well, I take that back, fascism and American patriotism are pretty much at odds.

Angie Hildebrandt, a condo owner, is being assessed daily fines because she flies her flag outside her home at the Southdale Gardens Condominium Association in Edina, Minnesota. Her two sons are in the military and every generation in her family has fought in wars on behalf of America. Her first flag was stolen. Overnight someone paid a visit to her home and ripped her flag to shreds.

What a nice place to live, Southdale Gardens. Perhaps there’s a certain red, white and black flag you’d like as your community symbol.

I Have Met The Enemy and He is She!

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It’s been forty years since the last syndicated Pogo comic strip. My headline is a bad re-write of the famous Pogo line. But it happened to me at a gathering of authors and publishers last weekend. A very attractive young lady approached me and said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about your book, Neighbors At War.” That’s not an extraordinary experience. I’ve been approached by many other authors at such events. But it’s what she said next that stunned me.

“I am C.A.I.”

“Huh? What?”

“I am C.A.I. The Community Associations Institute. I’m their spokesperson. And we all know about your book.”

“Well, you’re the enemy,” I told her. She said she’d only been working with them for the past year and said the organization was working to change it’s image.

“Absolutely not possible,” I said. “The only thing you can do to improve your image is disband, dismantle the entire warped structure of Homeowners Associations and start over with a new organization of communities that respect and honor the U.S. Bill of Rights.

What’s really hilarious is that several other authors/writers gathered around us and began supporting me with their own stories of HOA horrors. One or two of them were former HOA board members and said they quit because of the bullies on the board. How weird is all that?

Anyway, we later exchanged cards. I told her if she and her buddies would actually read my book I’d agree to pay for lunch. I’m not sure if that’ll ever happen but it was an amusing way to spend a Saturday picnic.