The Maple Hill Homeowners Association is becoming the laughingstock of Bear, Delaware. There are only 23 homes in this HOA, but these idiots have picked the most unbelievable fights with each other and have made their own neighborhood toxic to anyone thinking of buying a home there.
Dues are cheap. About $280 a year. But the petty bickering and the downright nastiness has churned up more than $45,000 in legal fees as various neighborhood crybabies run to the courts to try to get their problems solved.
Ken and Joanne Holbert have tried for years to pay their homeowners association dues by sending checks to the HOA’s mailbox. The president, Jutta Douglas, refused to accept the certified mail in a patently obvious effort to slander the couple with terms like “deadbeat” and “freeloader.” Those actually are actionable terms and the Holberts could probably win a good-sized slander lawsuit.
The numb-skulls at Maple Hill then filed liens against the Holberts’ home. Under Delaware law, you don’t even have to notify a homeowner that a lien has been filed. Just file and foreclose. It’s mean. It’s vulgar. It’s the kind of thing that’s led to violence in a number of other states.
A couple of Delaware politicians are talking about creating an Ombudsman’s Office to deal with petty strife like the viciousness in Maple Hill.
You can fix a law. You can change the way that some HOAs operate.
We did a blog here a month or two ago about the president/treasurer of a Fort Lauderdale HOA. Seems the neighbors are irked that this guy has written tens of thousands of of dollars worth of ‘salary’ checks to himself. Then he got pretty cocky and used money from the neighborhood budget to buy himself a new car.
Well, police have finally seen fit to arrest the guy on a second class misdemeanor. A couple of observations, here. The most this guy can get is a 30 day jail term and six months probation. That’s not bad work at all, if you can find it.
Second observation. The story was broken by a TV reporter. That means (to me, anyway) that the news media are starting to discover a lucrative source of stories and on-camera confrontations among corrupt Homeowners Associations. We’ve got to remember the pioneer in this kind of TV journalism, Nevada’s Darcy Spears of the HOA Hall of Shame report.
Embezzling from HOA budgets is the gift that keeps on giving. More than two months ago a New Mexico realty business which managed a number of Rio Rancho HOAs was raided. All the computers were seized. Homeowners don’t even know how much was stolen because the management company’s records are still under lock and key.
Investigators say hundreds of thousands of dollars were embezzled. All Rio Rancho homeowners know is that their monthly dues are going up. They have no way of knowing how high. Strange, that while the consequences are so severe most HOA thefts by board officers and management companies are only discovered by accident.
There’s no question that someone who intentionally neglects their yard or home should face some kind of justice. The big question repeatedly raised on this blog is where is the appropriate court of discipline? Should it be elected city or county officials whose job it is to maintain zoning codes? Or should it be a gang of angry neighbors who are given the right to fine, lien and foreclose on homes, often personally profiting in the transaction?
Lenoir City, Tennessee undoubtedly has its own share of covenant controlled neighborhoods. But it also has some pretty strong zoning codes, codes which Karen Holloway apparently felt didn’t apply to her. Her yard, of course, was a mess. Admittedly, it took the city too long to act, but when it did Ms. Karen was given a five day jail sentence. She cut loose with all the usual whining, “Not fair!” “Never read my rights or allowed a lawyer!”
Home ownership involves some personal responsibilities, and responsibilities to your neighbors. But Constitutional rights of home ownership involve Due Process and removing self-appointed neighborhood dictators from the equation.
Holloway’s story is linked below, and please come back to this blog to leave your comments.
Even after a forty year TV News career of reporting on the victims of crime I’ve never succeeded at getting into the heads of white collar criminals, why they do what they do, and why they’re seemingly unconcerned about the emotional and financial damage they do to their victims. They seem to think and act in a language I’ve never understood.
The Arbor Ridge Homeowners Association in Torrington, Connecticut has been socking away money to pay to rebuild roads that were poorly constructed by the original developer. But over a six or seven year term as president and treasurer of the HOA, it appears that 52 year old Roger Okenquist has been socking away money in his own personal account.
Torrington Police say the president/treasurer wrote more than 500 checks to himself, his wife and children, even though the Arbor Ridge HOA doesn’t allow that. How could someone not notice?
Some of these thefts are so old that the statute of limitations has expired. It’s possible that these victimized homeowners are getting exactly what they deserved.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” -Jefferson
