Many years ago I read a hilarious article By Bill Vaughn in Outside Magazine. It’s not about Homeowners Associations, per se, but it’s a fantastic story about living with crappy neighbors. I re-read the story about once a year just to keep my spirits up. Now I want to share it with you!
Anybody who’s seen the ugly insides of the national HOA scam knows that Homeowners Associations are lawsuit machines. In most lawsuits and criminal actions Americans have access to the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution. In the typical Homeowners Association each member unknowingly contracts away that access. Bam! In Pennsylvania Dutch, “there goes the egg money!”
Throw away your access to Due Process and every lawyer within spitting distance knows there’s money to be had. Free money. Your money. Paint your door the wrong color and you get fined, liened, sued and you pay all the HOA’s legal expenses. Lawsuit machines. No other possible description.
In Arizona, a prominent HOA law firm is all upset by a court ruling that says lawyers can’t tack on extra legal fees they rack up trying to garnish the wages of a losing homeowner.
Rest assured, though, this law firm has a number of sneaky plans to hijack this decision. The lawyers win. The lawyers always win.
(link to column by the HOA Institute)
They got him! A couple of days ago a longtime HOA manager in San Mateo, California was arrested and accused of stealing 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. Now they’ve arrested her partner, a man who allegedly wrote fake invoices for construction work that was never done. It sure sounds like a copycat of the decade-long swindle of homeowners in Las Vegas.
And it sounds a lot like the multi-million dollar organized crime racketeering swindle of Homeowners Associations in Colorado.
And Homeowners Associations in Florida.
In Alabama.
Virginia.
Texas.
And every other state.
Still, you keep hearing from Realtors, and Congressmen, lawyers, city officials and state representatives that this kind of swindle is extremely rare. What are these guys smoking, anyway?
(link to arrest story in San Mateo Daily Journal)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it in the future. When you’re investing your life savings in your home, don’t trust anybody. Don’t trust the Realtor. Don’t trust the county’s master plan, and above all do not trust your HOA. Homeowners in Chula Vista, California are learning about what all west coast residents know as ‘Californication.’
They bought into a peaceful valley where traffic was minimal, wildlife was everywhere, no smog was in the air. Life in the Eastlake III Homeowners Association was Heaven on Earth. The master plan showed their pristine way of life would last forever. But that kind of promise evaporates the minute land developers start knocking on doors. All of a sudden builders began jamming high density neighborhoods all around, packing in low quality homes like sardines in a can.
Eastlake III is no longer the promised land. The Homeowners Association is embroiled in legal disputes, recall elections, charges of corruption, violence threatened. Police are being hired to maintain the peace in HOA meetings.
Promises are like…. no, discretion says “don’t go there.” Let’s just say that promises are hollow. And promises made by a Homeowners Association are especially worthless.
(link to story in the San Diego Reader)
The astounding thing about this four minute video is the level of ignorance among city council candidates in Hopkins, Minnesota. That’s the home of one of the nastiest HOA disputes in the country. But most of these candidates are clueless about what goes on in these gated communities.
