Category Archives: Handicap

Neighborhood Snit In Austin

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It’s happening all over the country, but another old neighborhood in Austin, Texas has decided to create a community improvement association to encourage homeowners to clean up their properties. The old time homeowners who’ve been in the Hyde Park neighborhood generally don’t want to turn the association into a mandatory HOA. Newbies in the neighborhood definitely want that kind of dictatorial power.

One homeowner says he’s spent a fortune upgrading his house. So have other residents. But there’s one neighbor who won’t go along.

“It’s just not fair!” the clean guys say. “Just no fair!” Gosh, when you hear a whiner throwing that kind of phrase around, watch out! Life isn’t fair. What’s fair about a crippled kid, or racism, or crime, or any of the other unfair things that happen in life.

This neighborhood’s first step is a good one. A voluntary group that encourages a cleaner neighborhood is a boon to property values. When a homeowner resists improving his or her home, that’s a time for diplomacy, not threats or humiliation. Not ostracism or confrontation. This is a chance to prove the benefits of inclusion and good will, volunteerism and neighborliness. It actually works, folks!

Well, these ‘clean’ neighbors now want the fascist rules of the HOA movement imposed so they can snatch the offender’s house, clean it up themselves, and sell it to a new owner who’ll agree to abide by the ‘clean rules.’ And suddenly you’ve got a fascist government arising from the ashes of what used to be a relatively free neighborhood.

The place to fight for mandatory rules is with the local zoning commission. If an HOA is created then it creates a neighbor vs. neighbor mentality where the most vicious of personal attacks are made. If city zoning rules are imposed, the disputes are less expensive, less confiscatory and peace in the neighborhood can be maintained.

If Hyde Park homeowners think an HOA will raise property values, think again. Those who don’t want to live, or don’t like living in an HOA amount to about 90% of the population. Think about it. 90% of all potential home buyers won’t even look at your for sale sign. What’s your nice clean home really worth now? HOAs have just been developing a stinky reputation over the past few years. And you’ll see my predictions come true. HOAs do not improve or preserve property values, and there are thousands of examples around the country.

(click here for Hyde Park story)

http://www.austinhydepark.org/2014/04/is-there-a-homeowners-association-in-hyde-parks-future/

Some Non-HOA Hilarity

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Taking a radical departure from the regular topic in this blog, here’s a little humorous offering from comedian Tim Hawkins. He has a music degree and has played in Carnegie Hall. He uses his guitar to poke fun at institutions and conditions of life. In this bit he pokes wonderful fun at those of us who are getting older:

(link to Tim Hawkins concert)

Now, if we could just get Tim Hawkins to write a series of HOA songs!

 

What Does A Candidate Need And Remember Most?

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

I love phone calls like this one from an HOA/COA reform activist. She read Neighbors At War by Ward Lucas several months ago. And she has been doing more research and telling everybody about the CAI propaganda every chance she gets. She’s bought several boxes of Ward’s book and hands them to every legislator, city employee, and candidate she can shake hands with while sharing the plight of the suffering homeowners.

This activist reminds me of the movies; Norma Rae and the one about the environmental activist, Erin Brockovich. She’s professional, determined, and on a mission. We need 10,000 people just like her waking up the legislators!

Thinking there is a strong probability the CAI is contributing cash to political campaigns and knowing nobody can out money the CAI, she did something more effective. She marched into the campaign office of someone that will be very influential in helping her if he/she wins the seat. Lo and behold…who’s there? The candidate! Ms. Activist says, I’m here to help you with your campaign. I’m volunteering to work doing whatever you need, but I need to talk to you first. I have a serious problem in my HOA/COA and I am here to tell you the CAI is filling all of the candidates and legislators full of false information and it’s time for the homeowners’ side of the story to be heard. The office was small and intimate so they sat down for a nice long chat. It ended with Ms. Activist presenting this candidate with a copy of Neighbors At War! The candidate just happened to mention that tonight he/she was having dinner with a legislator with a title that starts with a “G” and Ms. Activist left feeling sure their conversation was going to be shared with others over dinner.

Anybody who has ever been involved with volunteering knows it’s much easier to write a check than it is to physically do the work. Ms. Activist can’t write a $50,000 check or take the candidate out to an upscale resort for a little “sweet talking” over a bottle of wine with a price tag equivalent to her house payment. But she’s willing to be a soldier with boots on the ground walking the campaign trail.

After our legislators passed the bill for the Kansas Uniform Common Interest Owners Bill Of Rights Act, I offered to help with the re-election campaigns for a senator and representative who truly were incredibly wonderful to work with throughout the entire legislative process. We went door to door in horrible heat and placed signs in the approved areas around the city. All signs had to be picked up within a day or two of the election.

After the results gathering at the hotel, I drove around picking up signs until daylight. They were both so exhausted, and boy did they ever appreciate my efforts to ease the additional demands of a campaign by pulling up the signs and delivering them to their homes. To be fair I should share, one of them was a Democrat and the other a Republican. I did it to show my gratitude. But all of us can do it to help the candidates who are gearing up now, just like Ms. Activist is planning to do.

Ask yourself, what would impress you the most? The check from the CAI? Or the HOA Reform Activist who walks with you for hours in the heat, talks with you over lunch, lightens your load when you’re weary, believed enough in you to sacrifice their personal time for no pay to help you achieve your goal, and gave you the opportunity to see with your own eyes the true character and grit of that once stranger who you have been told is either an apathetic homeowner that “should have read the CC&Rs” or possibly just another HOA “pariah?” Who would you remember and be willing to listen to?

This is a perfect time to recall the words of Maya Angelou:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said.

People will forget what you did.

But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

-Maya Angelou

The Straight Poop

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The Gates of Allen Station, shame, shame on you.

Yes, folks, another Texas Homeowners Association is taking the idiotic and pathetic step of DNA testing all dogs in the neighborhood. Swab your doggie’s cheeks, submit the DNA sample to your HOA. That swab goes to the lab and your pooch is branded for life. Now, if your dog brands the lawn of the HOA president or a board member, the feces fits the crime, the owner gets the fine. The thought of HOA officials dropping to their hands and knees and probing poops with thermometers and scoops just defies the imagination. The HOA claims it’s a way of stopping canine terrorists from messing up the neighborhood.

Well, frankly folks, it’s just another way of wrecking a nice neighborhood by turning neighbor against neighbor. First of all, who’s motivated to institute such a practice? It costs a couple hundred bucks per pooch per swab. And the owner of each defiling dog is fined hundreds of dollars. That money is going into someone’s pocket. It’s a real revenue generator.

But second, it won’t work. Once homeowners start getting angry at being fined, they’re going to start collecting poop from all over and tossing onto the board president’s lawn. He’s going to get innundated. Of course, he’ll submit hundreds of different DNA samples from the hundreds of brown spots in the front yard. And of course, he’ll charge thousands and thousands of dollars in lab costs to the HOA’s ‘secret’ reimbursement budget. The homeowners will be assessed, of course. Everybody will hate everybody, the president’s house will really get bombed now.

When people get stupid, stupid things happen.

(click here for Dallas dog story)

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/allen/headlines/20140501-dna-testing-used-to-uncover-dog-owners-who-dont-scoop.ece

$100,000-Love Scores Zero With Quivira Falls Homeowners

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

Tennis anyone?  Well, not for the past several years because the courts have been bolted shut.  The surface is broken and the weeds are growing wild up through the cracks.  When the courts were open they were enjoyed once in a blue moon by non-residents with Missouri plates on their cars.

On October 22, 2007 six of the board members signed and mailed a letter to every homeowner to defend their position against the petitions that had been signed by over 240 homeowners to recall the board.  In that letter they state, “They say we are also frivolous to buy wind screens for the tennis courts.”  And, then they go on to say that due to the foreclosures that would impact their revenue they voted “for,” but decided “against,” buying the wind screens and new nets.

Warning

You bet there were homeowners opposing that ridiculous and unnecessary purchase because our townhouses were rotten to the point of having frame damage.  As a matter of fact, just four months after that letter was written the electric meters fell off my house because the siding and the structural frame was so rotten it just completely gave way.  This happened during a torrential rain storm and ripped two holes about the size of five gallon buckets in the back of my house.  Water was literally spraying out the electrical breakers on the wall downstairs and the water was gushing in under my new wood flooring, all over my new basement ceiling, down the walls, and running like a river across my brand new white berber carpeting and on across the basement to the drain in the utility room!  And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.  My work order had been in for over two years for wood rot repair and it was met with nothing but totally goofy childish excuses.  When I told a board member I was going to hire my own contractor to repair the exterior of my house and apply the stucco, she told me…get ready now readers… brace yourselves………………..“If you hire your own contractors we are going to sue you and make you take the stucco off and put the wood rot back on!”  To this day, that is one of the most stupid things anybody has ever said to me in my entire life!

Back to the tennis courts.  One of the homeowners got ticked at the HOA and decided to report the tennis courts as abandoned property to the City of Overland Park.  Of course, I was notified of this because any time people are upset…I hear about it.  

Nobody wants to raise hell with this HOA board because if you dare do it, there is hell to pay. Sheer hell.  Ugly hell. Hate-filled hell.  That treatment silences 99.999% of the homeowners.  They haven’t been blind to the treatment I’ve gotten by the board and their cronies so they are not marching down the “Nila Ridings Road.”  No sir, they value their quality of life and bank accounts far more than speaking out…thus, this HOA is a horrible nightmare!

Quite by accident I found the property manager on my driveway right after hearing of this report.  I decided since she was right here within two feet of me, I’d ask about the status of the tennis courts.  She told me it was CITY CODE that Quivira Falls had to have these tennis courts resurfaced or totally removed, including the asphalt.  The cost to remove the fencing and asphalt for both courts was going to be $100,000.00 and 1/3 that amount if they were resurfaced.  I was skeptical….my gut instinct and intuition was saying this “smells” rotten.  My call to the City revealed it is not City code for Quivira Falls to have tennis courts.  A plan can be submitted for something new in their place, OR they can be removed. BUT THE ASPHALT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REMOVED!

I’m 99% sure I could find somebody that would take those fences down for free and haul them off and reuse them.  I know a few loads of dirt and some grass seed can be purchased for far less then $100,000.00.  And, in the end the HOA would save money by not having to maintain the courts, buy nets, or those wind screens that were voted on in 2007, the lights could be removed as well and probably sold, but certainly there would be no electricity burning and there would be no expense of changing the bulbs when they burn out.  

I sent emails to the property manager and the board demanding this project be stopped so further discussion could take place before another $35,000 is wasted.  For those of you who don’t know this, my HOA borrowed $1M and most definitely it makes more sense to pay down debt then it does to resurface unused tennis courts! Nope, this CAI property manager is going forward with this project no matter what!  

Did I fail to mention just a couple of years ago they built a fancy handrail down the steps to the tennis courts?  That’s right, it’s been the “staircase to nowhere” because once you walked down there you were “welcomed” with the padlock!

Homeowners are putting protest plans together.  It looks like ANOTHER war is about to begin in Quivira Falls!

Here’s the kicker…”Arizona Dave” just had the tennis courts at his condo complex resurfaced.  They are larger than the ones in Quivira Falls.  Dave’s association is managed by him, not a CAI property management company.  He emailed me the paid invoice….$12,000.  

Like I said, something “smells” rotten!