Violence rarely solves a problem. But as Arizona psychologist Dr. Gary Solomon has long predicted, we’ll see ongoing increases in the number of angry HOA members using violence against board members and board members using violence against homeowners.
Thus, you have a homeowner beaten with a crowbar by an HOA board member in Kansas, angry homeowners in Arizona and Kentucky shooting and wounding or killing multiple board members during public meetings, a Colorado homeowner setting fire to a board member’s home, also a Colorado board member’s adult son setting fire to a homeowner’s home (in this case, mine). You have multiple instances of violence in the turbulent HOAs in Florida. In fact, that’s where the latest case happened.
Police in Port Orange arrested 67 year old Ronald Lovejoy for firing gunshots into two homes in his Countryside Homeowners Association. He was in some kind of dispute with his HOA and he apparently discharged his anger along with a few bullets. The homes were occupied at the time, but no one was injured.
Life in a rogue Homeowners Association can be incredibly stressful, and every so often some lunatic uses a weapon to settle the score.
What we really need is a national database of HOA related violence. Not emotional violence, there’s no way of ever accurately keeping track of that.
But physical HOA violence? That might be a little easier to track.
Bobbie Dylan, you ought to be singing about our movement! Little by little, here and there, laws are slowly being enacted to reign in some of the fascism in rogue Homeowners Associations. Nevada, which was hit by the worst HOA scandal in the country, has just passed a law signed today by the Governor.
Beginning October 1st homeowners who are hit with Nazi tactics by overreaching board members at least have a chance to file for dispute mediation. For 250 bucks apiece two warring parties can have three hours to present arguments in the dispute and an official decision is handed down in just sixty days. Each side has to pay their own legal bills, which should cut down on frivolous fines and crushing liens and foreclosures.
Nevada citizens who’ve lost their homes and retirement savings in the past ten or fifteen years will say it’s too little, too late. Still, it’s a start. This bill doesn’t do everything that’s needed to reign in the HOA scam, but hats off to those community leaders and legislators who got this thing passed.
D-Day in my family is a day that has always commanded reverence. I have five family members buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and June 6th was the date that marked the major turning point for the Allies in World War II. Ed and Big Matt were best buddies at West Point during the late 1930s, although they ended up in different divisions in the U.S. Army in the invasion of France. Big Matt, my mother’s first husband, came ashore with the 1st Division in the weeks after D-Day. He was among those caught up in the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. And when the Nazis surrounded Bastogne, Big Matt was killed on Christmas Eve during the American evacuation.
Ed landed in France with the 3rd Division shortly after his buddy, and he commanded a tank battalion under General George Patton. Ed’s tank was blown apart and he was critically wounded by a German bazooka in the town of Kaiserslautern, Germany.
After the war, while he was recovering from his monstrous head wounds, Ed ended up marrying Big Matt’s widow and I was born two years later. But throughout my life, the toughest two days of the year for my parents were D-Day and Christmas Eve. Christmas was always tough on us kids because Mom inevitably retreated to her room and endlessly cried as she re-read all the old love letters that had come through the Army’s V-mail system.
My father always told me, hate the evildoer and have a fire in your belly for rooting out injustice. He hated racial injustice. He hated injustice against the poor, the widows, the handicapped, the religious minorities.
I’ve never gone through the kind of pain and suffering that so badly damaged my family during those years. But it’s probably why I occasionally take up a crusade against the rank rotteness of those who try to abuse their power over others.
LOL! A recent Forbes Magazine article cites a survey that shows the happiest and the unhappiest occupations in the country. Apparently the unhappiest people are lawyers, and the most miserable of the unhappy are associate lawyers.
It just makes me wonder? Are lawyers, who spend their lives foreclosing on homeowners for such misdeeds as forgetting to cut their grass, parking their car in the driveway instead of the garage, and for planting too many flowers: are they happy…or unhappy? Sure, they make vast sums of money throwing people out of their homes and having their buddies buy those homes up at auction. But what goes through their minds?
Consider enacting a federal law that mandates the following: Any lawyer who forecloses on a homeowner must personally evict that owner, and personally carry all that homeowner’s belongings to the sidewalk. If the evicted homeowner is desperately ill or disabled, that lawyer must be the only one allowed to drag said homeowner out into the street. And every TV station and newspaper in the community must be notified in advance so they can dispatch photographers to catch the action.
I wonder if Forbes would have to create a new category on the unhappiest list? “The absolutely, positively, indisputably, unhappiest occupational category.”
Then again, those HOA foreclosure attorneys make a fortune. Not much will deter them.
Sales of my book, Neighbors At War, continue climbing. And this website is growing by leaps and bounds. But I was somewhat shocked to see the price offered by one Amazon bookseller for a ‘used’ copy of my book. He says it’s in very good shape, but the price? Drum roll, please!
Seller: TSCBooks $789.12 + $3.99shipping Used – Very Good Very Good Condition – Satisfaction Guaranteed – Excellent Customer Service – Used books may not include codes or supplemental parts
Tada!!!
Folks, I really do think my book is good. But it ain’t THAT good!
