Category Archives: Handicap

Don’t Be Too Quick To Praise Colorado HOA Law

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Colorado legislators are very much like those in other states: “Pass a law to make the voters shut up and go away.”

And the new Homeowners Association laws in Colorado just aggravate the problem. All HOA officers and managers must now be state licensed. Hmmm, who provides the testing and licensing? Well, the largest organized crime syndicate in the country, of course!  I don’t need to provide you with their three initials.

No more HOA mandates for Kentucky bluegrass. That’s not a bad change, although most Colorado homeowners don’t use it anyway.

The new law requires all HOAs to pay a small registration fee to the State HOA office. This one is more than laughable. Over the past three years only about half of Colorado HOAs have even bothered to register. They just mock this idiot who was appointed to the office. Oh, and there’s no penalty for not registering. Legislators are idiots, too.

The head of the new HOA office is supposed to recommend to Legislators how much power over HOAs his office should have.  This is more than pathetic. I met this guy once. A man without a clue. A body in search of a brain. Mark my words, he’s married to the HOA industry and will never propose anything, aside from going outside for a smoke.

Anyone who knows anything about the Colorado HOA Ombudsman’s office just mocks it. An e-coli bacterium has more influence and power.

At least the e-coli bacterium can interrupt functions of the colon.

Colorado’s HOA Ombudsman doesn’t have a colon.

Just a salary.

http://tinyurl.com/nebdnaz

 

 

 

 

Miserable Lawyers!

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LOL! A recent Forbes Magazine article cites a survey that shows the happiest and the unhappiest occupations in the country. Apparently the unhappiest people are lawyers, and the most miserable of the unhappy are associate lawyers.

It just makes me wonder? Are lawyers, who spend their lives foreclosing on homeowners for such misdeeds as forgetting to cut their grass, parking their car in the driveway instead of the garage, and for planting too many flowers: are they happy…or unhappy? Sure, they make vast sums of money throwing people out of their homes and having their buddies buy those homes up at auction. But what goes through their minds?

Consider enacting a federal law that mandates the following:  Any lawyer who forecloses on a homeowner must personally evict that owner, and personally carry all that homeowner’s belongings to the sidewalk. If the evicted homeowner is desperately ill or disabled, that lawyer must be the only one allowed to drag said homeowner out into the street. And every TV station and newspaper in the community must be notified in advance so they can dispatch photographers to catch the action.

I wonder if Forbes would have to create a new category on the unhappiest list? “The absolutely, positively, indisputably, unhappiest occupational category.”

Then again, those HOA foreclosure attorneys make a fortune. Not much will deter them.

http://tinyurl.com/cx4ddzr


original source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/03/22/the-happiest-and-unhappiest-jobs-in-america/2/ 

 

Nasty Foreclosure In California

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Larry Delassus lived in a condominium at Hermosa Beach. He was a veteran of the U.S. Navy and is badly disabled. Wells Fargo apparently didn’t take any of that into consideration when it seized his home and quickly auctioned it off. 

Delassus filed a lawsuit, and his attorney tried to present evidence that Wells Fargo had combed its records for homeowners who had more equity available for the taking. Those records included requests for loan modifications, a horrible violation of trust by those homeowners who filled the re-fi paperwork out.

In any event, Delassus finally did get his case into court. Wells Fargo admitted that it had made a mistake in Delassus’ foreclosure because it used the wrong parcel number from the assessor’s office when it targeted his home.

But Delassus didn’t get to see how the case turned out.

He died in the courtroom.

http://tinyurl.com/qa5rjbu

original source:

http://www.easyreadernews.com/70032/wrongful-death-lawsuit-filed-wells-fargo-hermosa-beach-foreclosure-victim/

 

Words of Great Wisdom

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These words were once penned by one of the mightiest men in our movement. Understand, of course, there are still miles to go before we sleep. But read, Dear Friend, and take heart.

And the  Land Shall Be Made Good Again

George K. Staropoli

copyright 2006 George K.  Staropoli

 In the  beginning

There was  the land,

And the  land was good

And the  people were happy.

 

Soon upon  the land

Came the  moneychangers

In the  guise of builders

Of the  community.

 

And the  moneychangers said

Behold,  the covenants, conditions and restrictions

Were  sacred and holy works,

And the  people shall flourish and prosper.

 

And the  legislature looked upon these CC&Rs

And said  they were sacred and holy,

And that land values shall multiply ten-fold,

And the  people shall flourish and prosper.

 

But the  moneychangers were not content,

Seeking  laws that forced the people

Against  their judgment and wishes

Into mandated planned communities.

 

Soon, the  multitude became angry at their plight,

Yet the  moneychangers and legislature

Cast the  people into involuntary servitudes

With  continued tithes while disputes went unresolved.

 

The  child-like people, seeking paradise

on earth and the gates of heaven,

Were not permitted audiences

With the  magistrates.

 

And so  the multitude suffered

A long  and terrible time,

Praying  for a savior one day

To  deliver them from their existence.

 

One sect  sought the accommodation

With the  ruling powers and moneychangers.

Another  sought a cleansing

Of an  unworkable oppression upon the people.

 

Those  seeking accommodation held fast to their desires

To see  their fortunes on earth multiply ten-fold,

And that  all such plans were good and just,

For the  land values increased for all the community.

 

But many  saw the desecration of the beliefs, values and ideals

Of the  founders of the Great Nation that covered the land,

Saying  behold the society that thou hast created,

Where Me First has replaced Love Thy Neighbor.

 

A babble  of communities arose

By the  followers of the moneychangers,

With  beliefs, values and ideals of the Old Ways,

Once  rejected by the Founders of the Great Nation.

 

Woe unto the followers of the  moneychangers

For the  sins of the fathers shall be cast upon the sons.

Repent  now and restore the beliefs, values and ideals

Of the  Great Nation and make the land good once again.

 

Holy Smoke! Where’s The Fire?

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In my forty years doing investigative reporting for all three major networks, I don’t think I remember even hearing of a Homeowners Association problem more than once a decade. All of a sudden that’s just about all anyone’s talking about.

There are newly proposed bills in Colorado, Texas, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, California and a half dozen other states I can’t immediately bring to mind. Most of these proposed laws are aimed at curbing the rampant abuse by Homeowners Associations against individual homeowners.

Did you get that? HOA boards abusing homeowners? Individual citizens who theoretically should have certain God-given rights under the Declaration of Independence and the entirety of the U.S. Constitution?

At what point in our history did we lose those rights? Why are we having to go state-by-state, facing down a self-admitted 44 billion dollar HOA management industry in an effort to claw back what was already ours? And how did this 44 billion dollar HOA management industry arise? Why didn’t we see it coming?

Oh there were a few folks hoisting the storm warning flags, Evan McKenzie, George Staropoli, Jan Bergemann, Johnnie and Beanie Adolph and a few others who were just as important. But where the hell were we, just lollygagging in the surf as the hurricanes approached?

I have to admit I was dumber than dirt just a few short years ago. But suddenly I’m finding myself blown away by this evil wind we call supervised living. It was supposed to be so Utopian, so good for our souls to be living in complete peace and harmony with our neighbors, as we occasionally bowed, and scraped and paid homage to the few people who volunteered their time to become leaders of our oh-so-nicely laid out communities.

All of a sudden we saw the nastygrams jammed in our doorways, “Your grass is too long, your dog is too big, you have one too many friends parking his car on the street.” And we suddenly started getting fines if a dog (presumed to be mine) was photographed squatting in the Open Space, or an unsupervised child was playing on the front lawn. The fines led to debt collectors and excessive attorney’s fees and sometimes even the confiscation of a home before the ink had even dried on the original mortgage.

What in Sam Hill happened? Harkening back to another Samuel whose wit and wisdom was far greater than mine, “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe when the Legislature’s in session.” (Sam Clemens)

Instead of all these individual state efforts, how about a single U.S. Supreme Court decision that rules that private non-profit corporations cannot dominate over private homes, or dictate personal behavior?

Our home is our castle. Isn’t it?