What is it about service dogs that HOAs don’t understand? It’s federal law. You cannot keep a disabled person from owning a service dog even if you hate that homeowner’s guts.
Nick Spagnolo was disabled while fighting in Kuwait and Somalia. Now, as a disabled Navy veteran he has a service dog to help him cope with his daily life. The Veterans Administration says it’s a service dog. His doctors say the dog is a medical necessity.
But the Jamestown Property Owners Association in Hobe Sound, Florida says Spagnolo’s dog weighs 40 pounds and the HOA regulations clearly prohibit dogs over 20 pounds.
Homeowners Associations across the country have been hit with massive federal fines for ignoring the rights of handicapped persons to have service dogs.
The Jamestown Property Owners Association is going to lose this one, and they’ll lose big. And the homeowners will all be hit with special assessments to pay for the legal fees and fines that’ll begin mounting up.
Homeowners in the Litchfield Plantation HOA in South Carolina are going to rue the day they bought into the neighborhood.
The former developer of the HOA was arrested for grand larceny after he transferred nearly a million bucks worth of HOA assets to his private company. The allegation was made by three residents of the community who got the developer ousted as president of the board and got themselves elected.
But a judge has ruled the developer was still in legal control of the HOA corporation when the money transfer was made, and that the three board members may have been improperly elected. The criminal complaint against the developer was dismissed. And guess what? The developer has now filed a massive defamation lawsuit against the Homeowners Association.
Millions and millions of dollars are going to be spent in this case. And who will win? Not a tough question. The lawyers will win.
And who will lose? Also, not tough. Individual homeowners who didn’t even know they were involved in a lawsuit will have to come up with the millions of dollars that are going to be flung into the pockets of lawyers at the respective law firms.
Litchfield Plantation homeowners? This lawsuit will only be financed through special assessments against your homes. You folks thought you were buying into a nice peaceful neighborhood. It’s going to be an angry cauldron with a lot of you paying a nasty price.
I get many emails from folks who’ve discovered my book, Neighbors at War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association. All of them have been heartwarming and appreciated. Many have been written since the Kindle version came out a couple of months ago. And what really helps is the amazing number of positive reviews you’ve given my book on Amazon. Every time a new positive review comes out, I see book sales rise.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read, review and refer my book to others. And thank you for your newly aroused activism in your own neighborhoods. In Kansas City, Las Vegas, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida and Texas, I see homeowners actually winning. We desperately need to keep reclaiming the Constitutional rights we’ve lost to the HOA movement. Every time I hear your horror stories it raises my ire, and doubles my determination to keep fighting. But it’s your victory stories which are the most encouragement to me.
This is the kind of thing that blackens the eye of the typical Homeowners Association in HOA Amerika. Homeowners Associations seem to have a special fondness for seizing the homes of the elderly. Old people usually don’t have the money or the will to fight back. And a simple misunderstanding of a homeowner’s obligations leads, not to compassion, but to the kind of fascist actions that scare the crap out of American home buyers.
A 74 year old man in the Davis Lake Community Association in Charlotte, North Carolina, tried to get some family members registered at the local clubhouse and pool, and he was refused. He quit paying dues, and ‘sure as shootin’ his house was grabbed.
Yes, he’s going through kidney failure and frequent hospitalizations. But that’s all the more reason for Davis Lake to grab his home. Bam! They can auction it off, re-route huge legal fees to a favored law firm, and toss a few bucks into the neighborhood kitty just in time for the summer picnic.
It’s good to see when mainstream reporters start recognizing the massive and growing crisis involving American Homeowners Associations. Still, it’s frustrating when they only tell part of the story.
In the story linked below, a single mom in Charlotte, North Carolina bought an HOA home and suddenly started getting hit with daily fines because her fence was ‘warped.’ No question, she says, it had to be fixed. But by the time she got settled in her new home, the daily fines, fees and legal costs totaled nearly 11,000 bucks. Welcome to your new neighborhood, Lady!
In any event, the reporter for WSOC-TV gets most of the story right. But he talks about the fact that HOAs are like ‘little governments.’ He doesn’t add the critical information that governments of any kind have a court system, a system of last resort. Homeowners Associations don’t.
They’re really not like ‘little governments.’ Unless you add the word, ‘fascist.’ Some day reporters will start getting it right.
