Imagine living in the Vista Lago HOA in Orlando, Florida. What a nightmare. Two property managers claiming to be the legitimate ones, have hired and fired each other and filed liens against dozens of homeowners for unpaid dues. Many of those homeowners have been paying double and triple the dues and fines just for fear of losing their homes to whichever manager ends up winning the power struggle.
It’s hard to imagine the kind of unnecessary stress these homeowners are suffering.
Suppose you’re an older couple planning on the peaceful retirement life in a maintenance-free neighborhood. You take your entire nest egg and pay off the mortgage. Your new townhome, condo or single family residence is now yours….forever.
Oopsie! You learn that a developer wants to tear the whole thing down and build something new. You don’t want to move from your retirement home, but the developer gets a ‘majority’ of the residents to take his low ball offer to clear out. Not you. You want him to pay you fair market value. But because a ‘majority’ of your neighbors have moved out, what’s your fair market value now? It’s a heck-of-a-low lower than the others were paid. In fact, your quarter million dollar retirement home is worth ten cents on the dollar. Now the developer can get you tossed out by the courts and pay you nothing.
If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time you know that I despise political correctness. The PC movement is very similar to a viral infection. It has no predictable course, it can break out anywhere and cause untold damage to society and it can totally undermine the rule of law.
Obviously some kinds of speech and some words are offensive. But choosing not to use such language is a matter of class, decency and education. Declaring a word du jour as an illegal word is dangerous. As Saul Alinsky said, “Whoever controls the verbiage controls the debate.” And that can put power into the hands of some very bad people. Adolph Hitler controlled the verbiage. We all know how that one turned out. Fifty million people dead. Stalin controlled the verbiage. Twenty million more dead.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is currently under the kinds of attacks that nobody could have ever envisioned. It’s the amendment that makes us all uniquely American. And it’s being disassembled block by block just like a pile of Lincoln Logs.
The Washington Post editorial linked below is an important one to study. Who would have ever predicted that use of the word, “American” could be considered offensive and outlawed from the lawbooks?
A huge jury verdict in Nevada was just awarded to a homeowner against two HOA collection companies. Across the country many HOA boards assess minor fines and liens against homeowners and then turn the accounts over to their law firms for collection. It’s so tempting for an ambulance-chasing law firm to turn to the easy profits of debt collecting. It’s not unheard of for minor fines to turn into huge foreclosures. Law firms add so-called ‘collection costs’, legal fees, interest and other such nonsense onto nickel-and-dime fines. It’s enormously profitable for such lawyers to have a buddy down at the county offices when the properties are auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. A whole roomful of Las Vegas lawyers are in jail right now for similar racketeering convictions.
The law firm hired by the Arrowcreek Homeowners Association in Washoe County, Nevada was accused of violating federal and state regulations against racketeering and violations of the Fair Debt Collections Act. The jury agreed and awarded the homeowner more than $600 thousand.
The link below is to a press release by the homeowners legal team. Obviously, the press release is to attract business. But since this law firm has affiliates in many other states it could possibly strike some fear in the hearts of the HOA Lawn Nazis!
It’s all about the news media, folks. It’s all about publicity. P.T. Barnum was once rumored to have said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, it’s all publicity.”
Five years ago I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but now anti-HOA stories have almost gone mainstream. Our misery as HOA homeowners really is getting out there and prospective home buyers are paying attention. Does a Homeowners Association really protect your property values? Well, your property is only worth what someone is willing to pay. So if a growing number of people are saying they’ll never buy an HOA property, doesn’t that mean your HOA is actually hurting your property values?
