Category Archives: Government

Florida HOA Kicked in its St. Augustine Grass!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

The good doctor and his wife really wanted to follow their HOA’s rules and regulations. They also wanted to keep harmful fertilizers out of the Intracoastal Waterway near Jacksonville.

They filed the necessary paperwork for a “Florida Friendly” yard. After getting no response during the customary 30 day waiting period, they started their landscaping project.

Whoa! The official “HOA Double Standard” raised its ugly head in the form of a nasty lawsuit!

Dr. and Mrs. Sidle had followed all the HOA rules, but the HOA didn’t bother to follow its own. So, off to see the judge they went. The court ordered mediation and the HOA board gave complete representation to the mediator to settle the case. Everyone agreed and the couple planted all the approved flowers. They were even presented with the first-ever Gold Certified Florida Friendly Landscape Award in Duval County.

The problem? The HOA president didn’t like the mediator’s decision and demanded a full-blown trial!

Ultimately, the judge ruled in favor of Dr. and Mrs. Sidle. Sadly, the Sidles weren’t awarded their legal fees. And all their neighbors will undoubtedly get slammed with a special assessment to pay for the board’s arrogance and ignorance of Florida law.

No mention of the current board’s status, but I hope this board president gets booted into the Intracoastal Waterway with all that soggy St. Augustine Grass draped around his neck. The Florida Friendly Landscape Award sounds like a winner but this board president has proven himself to be a real loser!

(click here for PalmTalk story)

Your Voting Rights Really Are At Risk!

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There’s no better homeowners rights advocate in the country than CalHomeLaw.org., in California. I wish they’d let me link directly to some of their blog posts, but they are a paid-only subscription website and I understand and respect that. In the meantime, I have to re-purpose some of their material, while giving them full credit.

CalHomeLaw.org has been vigorously lobbying against Internet voting for Homeowners Associations. The reason is obvious. The Homeowners Association industry is a wasps nest of fraud and once they get Internet voting passed, you and I as private property owners are toast.

Their latest blog cites www.verifiedvoting.org as an expert on what goes on in elections, public AND non-profit.

Now, imagine this scenario: In California, AB-1360 would allow the HOA industry to set up its own internet election equipment, count its own votes, and name the winners. There’s no paper trail, there’s no audit. Challenging election results will be absolutely impossible.

The HOA industry has poured massive amounts of money into trying to lobby for this bill and others like it.

Remember Las Vegas? Hundreds of millions of dollars were skimmed away from Homeowners Associations into the pockets of private law firms, police officials, political bigwigs, all based on the fact that phony ‘straw men’ were elected to HOA boards in completely fixed elections!

Dang it, Folks, this is ORGANIZED CRIME! This is the NEW MAFIA!

We’ve already seen gunfire break out in a number of Homeowners Associations across America. We’ve seen suicides, and we’ve watched thousands of people evicted from longtime homes. We’ve seen cases where a buddy of the HOA lawyer bought up the victim’s home at auction for pennies on the dollars a day after the foreclosure.

Heck, we’ve even seen cases where the HOA board auctioned off and then bought a homeowner’s house and put the money back in the HOA treasury! Talk about a conflict of interest!

This is ugly stuff gang, and it’s going on in neighborhoods all around the country, even in the town you thought was so benign and peaceful.

Organize Folks! Beat these criminals down at every possible chance. I’m not much of a bell-ringing alarmist, but I know this stuff is coming. I swear to you that we are in the very real situation where Constitutional rights we all thought we once had are being pulverized. When they’re gone, we have no way of getting them back.

Sidewalk Chalk! It’s a Mortal Sin!!!

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Sidewalk Chalk. It washes off in the first rainstorm. It can be hosed off in about twenty seconds. Why would a Homeowners Association care? Because when fascist leaning board members with an ‘agenda’ get elected they look for the tiniest of reasons to file suit and snatch the entire amount of your home equity. It’s not paranoia, it’s what happens it neighborhood after neighborhood across America. The Homeowners Association Movement is wildly out of control.

In Hays County, Texas, board members of the Elm Grove Homeowners Association found a victim to help bolster neighborhood finances; it was Melissa McCrary who bought her home just four years ago. She thought it was a kid-friendly environment.

Neighbors in her part of the ‘hood’ started getting letters from the HOA saying that sidewalk chalk drawings were a violation of the covenants. It was called ‘a friendly reminder.’

Sidewalk Chalk art of any kind could lead to a lien, a lawsuit, a quick auction of the house to a friend of the HOA attorney, and violators would find themselves penniless out on the street.

OK, Folks? How about buying a home in the Elm Grove Homeowners Association. How much do you think property values are worth now?

(click here for story on Sidewalk Chalk)

You’re Crazy, Ward!

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LOL! It’s pretty easy for somebody who follows my blog to think I’m stone-cold crazy about some of the horrible things that go on in the typical HOA environment. That’s why it’s fun to have YouTube in the mix.

The link below is to an outraged couple who discovered that their HOA micro-manages each and every person who spends a night under their roof. HOAs typically insist that no unrelated people live in the same house. That means a micro inspection of the relationship between every unmarried or yet-to-be-married couple spending a few nights in the same home. You have to get advance permission if someone is staying over, complete with their name, date-of-birth, Social Security Number and source of income.

HOAs have the right to determine who is an illegal resident and they can literally shut down the gate code for any homeowner who violates the policy. But figuring out who’s related to whom involves a massive amount of spying on your personal habits and the personal habits of every one of your guests.

What country are we living in, again? Just curious.

http://tinyurl.com/la2eatz

Those Honest, Honest Lawyers

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An expose’ by the Denver Post shows that many Colorado homeowners have been forced to pay legal bills to law firms which had never filed foreclosure lawsuits against their properties.

“Phantom court cases” the Post calls them. Homeowners afraid of losing their homes have been sent legal bills by county public trustees saying that foreclosures could not be stopped unless homeowners forked over the legal fees for these nonexistent lawsuits.

The homeowners always did.

Grift? Graft? Regardless of what it’s called lawyers and law firms are rarely, if ever, sanctioned. They participate in confiscation of private homes yet if they’re caught they face no penalties. Our society has been turned upside down. Shoplift more than $200 in Colorado and you face prison time for a felony. Steal thousands of dollars from distressed homeowners and you can buy your kid a Ferrari.
A strange legal system in this country.

(click here for Denver Post story)

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