Category Archives: embezzle

Condo Fires In The Past 90 Days

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guest blog by Nila Ridings
 
The new year is not off to a good start for Ewing Township, Dallas, Branson, and Boulder.  Condo fires have left them with injured firefighters, displaced residents, and causes unknown. 
 
It is time to discuss fire safety in your home, condo, townhouse, or any other abode.
 
1 ) Do you own fire extinguishers?
  
2 ) Do you know how to use them? 
 
3 ) Are they stored with fast/easy access? 
 
4 ) Have they been checked by you or professionals? (see the video in the link below)
 
5 ) Do you have working smoke alarms with good batteries?  Are they tested monthly? 
 
6 ) When house guests visit do you show them where the fire extinguisher nearest their room is located?
 
7 ) Do you move the BBQ grill away from flammable surfaces and keep an extinguisher nearby?  (see link below for helpful hints)
 
8 ) When you stay in hotels do you make a note of where the fire alarm is and how many doors you are from the stairwell exit?
 
9 ) Do you know to NEVER throw water on a grease fire?  Use flour, baking soda, or smother the fire with a towel. 
 
People who do not have a fire extinguisher or know how to use one panic at the sight of smoke or flames.  It’s best to know how to fight the fire than to run around screaming.  Or grab your cell phone and start filming as some of these condo residents have done.
 
Many local fire departments will come out and change smoke detector batteries for you.  Check with yours if you need some help.
 
Last but not least, the link below offers information on buying an insurance policy for your condo.  There is a difference between condo and homeowners insurance policies.
 
In attached housing we can quickly become victims if our neighbors lack concern for safety.  Who knows what chemicals they may be storing?  Or how often they fall asleep with a lit cigarette.  Which ones leave their laptop computer on their bed all day which can cause the battery to ignite?  Lest we forget the ones that have saved newspapers and magazines since 1962 and then stack them to the ceiling.
 
With all this risk for fire it would make sense that sprinkler systems should have been mandatory to obtain building permits!  Oh wait…THAT would have taken money out of the developers’ pockets and raised the sales cost on the units.  
 
Money versus Safety.   Money always wins.
 
 
 

HOA Crap vs Hanging Crappers?

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

If the CAI sees this video they will hang their hat on this being a justifiable reason for the existence of HOAs!  Yes, HOAs would prohibit this from happening for sure.  But is putting up with the crap from the HOA better or worse than this?  
 
Is this revenge for a newly-erected fence?  Or is it an eye for “art” that includes a tree “monument” to honor Sir Thomas Crapper?  He’s famous for… well, he’s just famous.
 
After living in an HOA, I could find the humor in this if it meant I was living HOA-free.  I’d even buy the first 100lb. bag of bird feed.
 
But something tells me the city codes enforcement agent will be out soon to write a violation for some kind of hazard.
 
Under any condition will these neighbors ever be able to live in peace and harmony?
 
 
http://www.krdo.com/news/toilets-and-sink-hanging-around-tree-in-front-yard/24997508

Every City Needs A Joe!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings 

I can name on one hand the cities that have television reporters that will actually expose an HOA and their bad actors. Or HOAs that refuse to allow homeowners access to the financial records.  Nope, pretty much television stations have gotten the “memo” on not covering HOA stories.  Or so that’s the way it appears.  Phoenix has Joe Ducey and he doesn’t hesitate to expose the HOAs.  He actually invites homeowners to contact him with their HOA nightmares.  So, Arizonans…Let Joe Know!  And pass along a heartfelt “thank you” from all of us!
 
This video…intentionally blurred…hummm, I wonder why?  I’m laughing.  I know WHY and so do you.  Regardless it’s typical of an HOA meeting.  Is there any wonder why homeowners don’t attend HOA meetings?  Are they afraid of being physically hit, yelled at, and bullied?  Or do they chose to spare their nervous system the extra stress for two hours once a month?  At my HOA some of them “premedicate” from a glass bottle or an aluminum can before walking through the clubhouse door.  
 
Some might find it entertaining while others find it obnoxious.  Either way, “welcome” to meeting night at your lovely HOA!
 
 
 

A New Website Feature

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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

 

Jack English Is Loving Life Until The End

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guest blog by Nila Ridings 

93 years old, living in the wilderness, splitting wood, and making violin bows.  Will that be you?  Or me?  Jack English has loved the wild areas of California since he was a young boy.  And his wife’s dying words and his sentimental heart led him back there with plans to stay until the end.
 
Jack mades me think of Dorothy.  She lived in my HOA.  When it was discovered the audits had not been done, and  $10,000,000.00 was unaccounted for, and the bills weren’t paid, and the houses were rotting before our eyes, Dorothy invited me in for a talk.  She was 93, frail, but with fight in her eyes.  In my mind’s eye, I can still see her sitting there in the power blue velveteen chair with her walker at arm’s length.  Her eyes were locked with mine.  As the tears ran down her cheeks she said, “Nila, if I was younger I would be fighting as hard as you are to get to the bottom of this, but I’m too old and too weak.  Something sinister is going on here; you know it and I know it.  If you don’t get this mess straightened out, I am going to figure out a way out of here!  I don’t want to spend another day of my life in this horrible nightmare of a homeowners association.”  Sadly, Dorothy ended up in a nursing home and not long ago I read her obituary.  It still makes me sad to think that Dorothy, at nearly a century old knew she was being ripped off, but she was helpless.  She could be nothing more than a victim and hand over her money every month.
 
It’s really refreshing to see Jack English’s story.  Knowing he was one elderly person who didn’t get caught in some HOA maintenance-provided propaganda sales pitch like so many other 80 and 90 year olds.  And, it’s a reminder that when we fight these HOA battles it is not just for ourselves.  It’s for all the Dorothy’s across this country who have no clue that when they bought into an HOA they signed away their twilight years into a hellish nightmare like they have never known in the decades they’ve lived before.  We must never forget that their silence doesn’t mean they are not fully aware of the corruption.  Father Time has just weakened them enough to make them easy prey for the HOA monster.
 
Now, take a look at what life at 93 and HOA-free can be!
 
 
http://solarburrito.com/blog/93-year-old-man-lives-in-wilderness-cabin/