CBS-LA reports that one homeowner in the ritzy Bel Air area used 12 million gallons of water in a single year during the worst drought anyone can remember. TWELVE MILLION GALLONS! The water bill was 90,000 dollars.
I have no idea what it costs to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool, but I would bet you could fill a swimming pool at least once a week with that budget.
The real stench, though, is that public officials won’t release this person’s name or address “for privacy reasons.” This one homeowner needs to be targeted and his name and address publicized. With a drought so severe it really threatens our national stability (agriculture), there’s no need to respect privacy. Drought shaming. Someone should do it.
Just because you got permission years ago to modify your home, don’t count on your HOA to respect the past. A Georgia man is learning that the hard way. He squeezed three cars onto his driveway, and management company paid attention.
Ralph Isabella says he got board permission six years ago to widen his driveway. It was all fine and dandy until Isabella cleaned out his garage and temporarily parked the cars outside. Suddenly, the HOA says if Isabella doesn’t take out the new pavement they’ll narrow his driveway for him and sue him for the cost.
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.
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?
