I’m a painter, and painting a picture: Imagine living in a neighborhood where you can’t have a bench to sit on in your front yard. Imagine a Board member tries getting the board to fix a drainage issue multiple times, the Board and HOA property manager do nothing, and the condo eventually floods. Imagine having a leak for 11 months in your dining room, HOA still has not fixed it. Imagine an HOA trying to get the Board to agree to sign a Code of Conduct giving all control to the President and property manager, the rest of the Board does nothing in between meetings. Imagine a property manager that is so bad that 12% of the owners sell and move out in approximately six months, and note that the management company makes $4800 in transfer/disclosure fees as their reward for poor management?
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 Boxeshit, see the following:
I thought I’d heard of everything, but readers of this blog site send me the most wonderful material. Homeowner association disputes go to cops and courts all the time. But the latest one from Forsyth County, Georgia got me chuckling.
A board member upset a homeowner who went home and told her husband. The husband then slimed the board member on Facebook. The board member promptly filed a police complaint saying he was afraid of this neighbor for a variety of reasons such as guns, alleged PTSD, and of all things….
I’m quite sure HOA warriors like George Staropoli and Evan McKenzie have written about this subject. But it’s really kind of spooky to chart the parallels between Civil Forfeiture laws and seizure of private property by Homeowners Associations.
Civil forfeiture laws are a horrendous holdover from the American Civil War and prohibition. They allow police the power to seize vehicles or property of people suspected of carrying on some kind of illegal activity. in the 70s and 80s police began seizing private homes that were suspected of being crack houses. At no time were the police required to prove guilt. Many times a homeowner who unknowingly leased his house to bad people ended up with no rights, no house, and no way to get it back.
Do you realize that humans have hundreds and hundreds of different words for this little bit of matter that is so disgusting to us? It’s almost as if we worship it. Who invented such awful substance? God did. It’s the ultimate recylable material. And you would be stunned to know that every speck of this stuff, depending upon which species deposited it, has an entire ecosystem which depends on getting a steady supply.
