Sometimes our seemingly hopeless cause can be frustrating. When you think you’re doing the right thing but get hammered by critics at every turn, just try to keep up your confidence. First of all, our group is growing. More people are boarding this ship every day.
Second, take a look at the famous ‘losers’ listed below. The higher your level of enthusiasm the more successful you’ll be.
Well, the Community Associations Institute is raising its ugly head in the California drought debate. The state is desperately short of water. The rain’s not falling, the water canals have either dried up or been diverted to rescue the obscure delta smelt. Southern California is a rat’s nest of Homeowners Associations.
But let’s not let those lush grassy HOA lawns go unwatered. As California assemblymen debate ways of forcing HOAs out of the lawn watering business, the CAI is lobbying heavily against more drought-tolerant landscaping.
The CAI says any changes in green grass would “ruin the ambience” of neighborhoods. It would lead to a “patchwork quilt of individual landscape designs.”
If the state runs dry a lot of those neighborhoods will be vacant anyway. And nothing ruins neighborhood ambience more than empty and shuttered houses.
(link to Union-Tribune San Diego drought story)
guest blog by Nila Ridings
I’m a total Rube Goldberg, so put me into a room with dials and meters and ramps and hammers and I’m quite likely to hammer together something very stupid-looking that might actually have some societal value.
On the opening splash page of Neighbors At War, there’s a category called “Resources.” Click that and you’ll find another “resources’ button. Tap that and you’ll see a list of crimes, like embezzlement, robbery, burglary, assault, and a dozen similar words. Clicking on each of these words brings up an automatic Google search. In other words, if you click ’embezzlement’…. in the background I secretly run the terms “Homeowner Association, property Association, Property Owner Association, HOA, POA, CID, CIC embezzlement.” That, hopefully, gives you some interesting numbers to show to a non-believer, someone you’re trying to rescue from ‘the dark side.’ The numbers are quite staggering…and convincing. And it’s certainly an interesting (but not necessarily perfect) research tool.
I may run this promo a few times over the next two months in an effort to try to get our many readers thinking in terms of raw research.
Oh, and another thing for which Homeowners rights advocates have long lusted… is a national (or even international) list of attorneys who are willing to represent battered and bruised homeowners who try to fight the kind of anti-Constitutional outrages we see each day in our neighborhoods. Please help me build that list. Attorneys on our side won’t get rich. The billions of management dollars are on the other side. Still, sometimes the Revolutionaries win. And they win because someone, somewhere, believes in the concept of Justice under the law.
BTW, any research I accumulate on this project will be shared with every other would-be Paul Revere in the country. No cost. No fee. Just a personal promise to me of your personal integrity.
Ward Lucas
