Wow! From looking at blogs and comments from attorneys around the country, it looks like Joan Rivers may get her face slapped in her little HOA outrage in New York. She won’t look very good in front of a judge or jury. How could she risk taking the witness stand? So nasty!
(click here for latest on Joan Rivers lawsuit)
Crazy, how HOA Amerika has become so fascist.
This HOA in Silver Spring, Maryland has decided that one homeowner goes a little too far in her decorations. The kids in the neighborhood absolutely love it when this homeowner puts out her annual Halloween display. But this HOA does what HOAs do. They sue. They ‘farm’ certain homeowners to find cases to refer to their chosen law firms. They figure that ‘farmed’ homeowners will surrender, pay the fines, the jacked-up legal fees and excessive collection costs.
It’s all about money. Follow the money.
This kind of neighborhood retaliation should be illegal! It’s unconscionable.
But these lawn Nazis know no bounds.
(click here for Halloween story)
Well, just a couple of weeks ago, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a family’s right to post a ‘for sale’ sign had more support from the law than an HOA’s right to pull them down.
Some tyrannical HOAs forbid sales signs altogether. Some say ‘for sale’ signs are OK, just as long as they’re brown and tan and are not easily seen by potential buyers. Egads, the warped minds of these control freaks!
At least there’s hope for the future. A rogue HOA in Northern Virginia told a couple their Obama sign was four inches too big and the HOA thugs destroyed it for them. But the last laugh was with the couple. They sued the HOA, the judge ordered the HOA to pay the couples’ legal costs which forced the whole neighborhood to declare bankruptcy.
It’s so nice to stroll through a peaceful neighborhood where the lawns are all cared for and no pink, polka-dotted homes. I just came from visiting someone in such a nice and caring neighborhood, and not surprisingly, there was no HOA. They were just neighbors who respected each other and worked together to keep the place nice.
And of course, no annual meeting where people are screaming at each other.
It has dawned on me several times over the past few years that HOA outrages are most often reversed when a rogue HOA gets a ton of phone calls and email from angry people across the country. If you know that you, as a board officer or manager, are being watched by the whole country, you might be a little less rotten to your neighbor. In a well publicized case where an HOA official’s viciousness is widely publicized, would that official be more willing to step back and mull over the action he or she is planning to take? Certainly, when you lift up a big rock the vermin tend to scatter in the light of day.
We currently have more than 31,000 people regularly reading this blog. That means an army of folks in every state. Should we begin publicizing home phone numbers, HOA phone numbers, email addresses and management phone numbers whenever we hear of the actions of a rogue HOA board?
I’d like to hear your thoughts publicly or privately. And if we ever began such a policy it would require your help to look up and verify any numbers or addresses of those we publicize.
Your thoughts?
