These stories just get wilder and harder to believe. The video linked below is beyond shocking. The only good news is that newspapers and TV stations are using HOA horror stories as regular features. Yep, it’s going to be a bad, bad time for these HOA board officers.
Really! Ask any promoter of the HOA system about the national epidemic of board members and property managers embezzling from the neighborhood budget, and they’ll swear that it’s rare…so rare, the average homeowner needn’t worry about such a thing.
It’s true that prosecution of HOA embezzlers is rare. Prosecutors know it’s expensive to charge HOA embezzlers. They know that embezzlers get incredibly light sentences from judges. Steal a million bucks and get 18 months in prison? Hey, such a deal! So, prosecutors’ attitudes toward victims is, “Well, if you don’t like it, why don’t you just move?” Where’ve we heard that before?
But with every embezzlement story, property values in HOAs across the country go down. Maybe just a little bit, but how can property values go up when there are so many HOA embezzling and racketeering stories?
Here’s another:
(link to money-laundering in Jersey City)
Folks, if you think this country isn’t in bad, bad trouble, you’ve got your head someplace it really doesn’t belong.
While HOAs are usually the most disastrous organizations ever created, can they ever really be useful? Well the residents in the Cardinal Glenn Homeowners Association, in North Charlotte, NC are hoping their HOA will soon come to the rescue.
Seems this HOA has a major issue with one of their kookie residents and can’t get any help from city leaders or the police. It seems that one of Cardinal Glenn’s residents likes to wear his birthday-suit while standing outside of his home talking on his cellphone. This, according to the neighbors.
But City Councilman Gregg Phipps, who has to be an HOA board member somewhere, came up with a great solution. The esteemed councilman says the HOA should go after the cell phone streaker because they can enforce some nuisance provision in their CC&R’s. Have I mentioned that the naked guy has been doing this for ten years? This HOA is fully aware of the situation.
Now, depending on how receptive the HOA is to the councilman’s ‘solution,’ it’s going to cost the homeowners plenty of money to take their nudist to court. With NC saying it’s perfectly legal to display your ‘goods’ on your own property, it’s going to be a stiff fight.
I’m now thinking that Councilman Phipps is just as big a nut-job as this naked weirdo. Does Phipps even know how much those legal fees can add up to? When the dust clears, homeowners could be hit with a huge special assessment.
You’d think a problem solving councilman could have come up with a new ordinance prohibiting naked cellphone calls.
There’s a case awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that could increase the risk for individual HOA board members and property managers. It involves passive and overt discrimination against certain protected classes. Overt discrimination needs no explanation. But passive or indirect discrimination, which often happens when no one intentionally means to discriminate, can lead to huge lawsuits and massive judgments against individual board members and homeowners. More and more protected classes have been filing lawsuits based on easier-to-prove passive discrimination.
If the Supreme Court declines to narrow the scope of federal discrimination laws then Katy bar the doors. Passive discrimination happens all the time in Homeowners Associations and it can only encourage more plaintiffs to make such claims. Insurance companies usually won’t pay for legal costs or judgments under federal or state discrimination laws.
When they begin to realize their personal liability HOA board members all over the country might start fleeing like rats from the Titanic. And many neighborhoods may decide to dissolve their HOAs forever.
The article linked below explains it far more intelligently than I did.
(pending Supreme Court decision)
(link to a prime example of the kinds of lawsuits that could start flying)
A regular reader of our Neighbors At War blog sent along this link about how a certain Arizona HOA does business. They use HOA funds to hire a well-known character assassin to ruin the reputations of homeowners who oppose board members or policies of the board.
As you read this, just recall that Arizona is the same state where a frustrated homeowner once gunned down members of his HOA board.
http://www.ahwatukee.com/opinion/article_52193ac4-c751-11e4-b1a4-2364a670117b.html
