What If Helen Keller Lived In An HOA?
guest blog by Nila Ridings
Where do these pompous, perfect, self-centered, and heartless people come from? Can we take up a donation and buy all of them a one-way ticket to Uranus?
guest blog by Nila Ridings
Where do these pompous, perfect, self-centered, and heartless people come from? Can we take up a donation and buy all of them a one-way ticket to Uranus?
Whew, the webs we weave when first we practice to deceive (Sir Walter Scott, 1808).
Now that marijuana for medicinal AND personal use has been legalized in several states, grow operations are bound to be taking place very near you. A next door grow-op will certainly affect your property values, right? And a Homeowners Association will make sure that never happens to you, right?
Wrong, Bunky. One of the biggest lies in American life is that your Homeowners Association protects your property values. There’s not a scientific study in the nation that shows HOAs protect property values. And there are lots of studies that show HOAs crash property values (think Trayvon Martin’s neighborhood!).
But the growers of grass, weed, Hawaiian black, Indian hemp, jolly green, wacky weed, are looking for a safe place to grow theirs. The safest place in the world is a private home right smack dab in the middle of a Homeowners Association. They’re usually pretty safe. And if they’re not growing ‘skunk’, you’d probably never even notice.
Surely your HOA will protect you against such things as illegal next- door grow-ops. But…if they don’t? How are your property values will do once the police raid gets publicized?
The president of the Seascape Homeowners Association in Galveston, Texas, is suing a homeowner for ten million bucks after the homeowner circulated an email to fellow homeowners called the president “arrogant, incompetent, dishonest, and harassing.”
President Ron Benotti is suing homeowner Richard Alan Collier. Collier alleged that Benotti mishandled a project to restore beaches in the area.
The really surprising thing here is that the court didn’t throw this case out long ago based on the ‘public figure’ rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. Once a person goes public by running for office or otherwise inserting himself into public discussions it’s nearly impossible to successfully sue for libel and/or slander. It’s the one thing that protects news agencies from lawsuits when they inspect the private behavior of public officials.
Benotti’s lawyers had to have told him that his lawsuit will never survive against the public figure argument. His defamation suit is nothing more than a SLAPP lawsuit designed to cost the defendant his life savings and shut him up.
For shame, Benotti and your phalanx of HOA paid-for lawyers! For shame!
(click here for article in the Southeast Texas Record)
Two of Colorado’s largest housing foreclosure law firms are now in the cross hairs of the State Attorney General for allegedly fraudulent billing practices.
Attorney Susan Hendrick used to work for the law firm, Aronowitz & Mecklenberg. She has testified under oath that her former employer made millions of dollars by padding its legal bills on housing foreclosures. Those bloated bills that weren’t paid by homeowners ended up being charged off to the taxpayers. Hendrick also alleged that the law firm destroyed evidence subpoenaed by prosecutors during their investigation of the law firm’s practices.
Attorney Robert Aronowitz and his attorney daughter and son-in-law own a private firm which posts foreclosure notices. State investigators say they believe the law firm and the private posting firm were used to inflate foreclosure fees many times above the customary amounts.
Hendrick also testified about the second firm, The Castle Law Group. The two firms have handled 90% of the state’s foreclosures over the past few years. Among other allegations being made are that the two law firms manipulated State Legislators into passing legislation that ended up more than doubling the law firms’ already artificially inflated legal fees.
The Denver Post has been aggressively investigating and reporting details of this story.
Their latest revelations are posted here…. and here.