Category Archives: HOA Issues

HOA Crime In The California Legislature!

Some really creepy legislation is making its way through the California Legislature. Both bills are sponsored by the Community Associations Institute, and as you’ll see in a moment they almost criminalize the right for HOA homeowners to vote, and the right for them to vote secretly.

The first bill, AB-1360, is sponsored by the almost clueless Senator Norma Torres. It would allow Homeowners in HOAs to vote by electronic voting. HOA voting has an amazing  history of scandal, and organized crime corruption. However, Torres is having trouble getting her fellow senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee to go along. The conclusion is obvious. Her fellow senators are much smarter that Ms. Torres, because they recognize the danger.

The clowns at CAI are also sponsoring AB-1360 and they’ve gotten their favorite brain-dead Senator to sponsor this one, as well. You see, CAI has a client who sells voting machines, equipment and software, and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars would be pouring into the messy hands of CAI & Co.

The next bill of note isn’t just stupid, it’s almost criminal in nature. AG-968 would mean no more secret ballots. The Office of the Inspector of Elections would no longer exist, meaning that if voters have a problem they have to run to our favorite private organization, the CAI.

California is one of the few states that allows homeowners to sue their HOAs in Small Claims Court. But to win in Small Claims, you have to have evidence. In this bill, all evidence from an HOA election will be lost. Gone. The CAI has essentially become the de facto Inspector of Elections.

If this isn’t Las Vegas style HOA corruption, then someone tell me what is!

BTW, Assembly Member Richard Gordon’s phone number is 1-916-319-2024. 

The Times, They Are A-Changin’

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.  

http://tinyurl.com/mud5q9n

original source:

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Session/77th2013/Reports/history.cfm?ID=836

A Las Vegas Reporter Who Just Doesn’t ‘Get It’

A reporter for Channel 8 News in Las Vegas tried to help a homeowner in the Terra West Homeowners Association. It seems the woman, Esther Sardina, had inadvertently underpaid her HOA dues by twenty cents. The woman wrote a check to the HOA for a dollar but they started hitting her with late fees anyway. So this reporter swung into action, confronting a board member.

Terra West dropped the fine. But that’s beside the point. This HOA board simply doesn’t want this woman living in the neighborhood. They want her gone. No HOA puts a 42 cent stamp on a fine for 20 cents…unless they’re intentionally trying to provoke an expensive fight where both sides have to run out and hire lawyers.

Now that Terra West has been publicly shamed the HOA will go out of its way to torment this woman in perpetuity.

Has this kind of nuttiness ever happened before? Oh yes, as I document in my new book, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association. A woman in West Boca, Florida had her house seized because she underpaid her dues by 78 cents.

Good Friends, there is no such thing as a benign Homeowners Association! Every one of the nation’s 335,000 Homeowners Associations is just one board election and one tyrant away from disaster.

When will the nation’s news reporters learn that? Someone tip off this reporter that he’s a fruitcake.

http://tinyurl.com/nqpnbkw

original source:

http://www.8newsnow.com/story/22383065/8-on-your-side-helps-woman-fight-hoa-charge

THEY GOT HIM!!!

Nevada has some slimy creatures. But this one has finally been nailed by the U.S. Attorney. Las Vegas huckster Leon Benzer has at long last been indicted for leading the organized crime ring that bled untold tens of millions of dollars out of that state’s Homeowners Associations.

Benzer has claimed innocence all along. In fact, he’s now saying that he got personal approval for running his racket by the Nevada Attorney General. While that’s totally believable, the HOA scam was totally unbelievable. More than two dozen participants have already pleaded guilty to rigging HOA board elections so they could put phony straw men on the boards and divert millions of dollars to Benzer, a bunch of lawyers, a few police officials and a politician here and there.

Oh, and this is the case where forty percent of the first ten suspects accused ‘committed suicide,’ at least one of them in impossible circumstances. But that’s the Vegas way.

The real tragedy here is that the FBI may be winding down its investigation. But with all they’ve learned during this four year investigation, they could transplant this team of federal agents to any city in the country and they’d find just as much corruption. HOA scams are going on all over.

And on that, you can depend.

http://tinyurl.com/nzg473p 

original source:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/crime-courts/key-figure-indicted-las-vegas-hoa-scheme-claimed-attorney-general-masto-approved

Wise, Wise Words

One of the early founders of our movement who’s perhaps one of the top three homeowners rights advocates in the country is Arizona’s George Staropoli. He has testified before legislatures, he’s a devout Constitutionalist, he’s perhaps one of the most articulate people standing up for downtrodden victims of the national HOA scam. To say he was a huge inspiration to me is putting it mildly.

His website, pvtgov.org, has tens of thousands of fans. In fact, his was the first site I discovered when I was trying to learn what was wrong with the basic nature and structure of American Homeowners Associations.

But his post linked below is exceptionally powerful, and should be spread to every legislator in the country. It should be a guest editorial in every newspaper. It’s not negative, but is actually a positive critique of HOAs because it points us to an escape route from the current HOA system.

Read it! Learn it! Do it!

http://starman.com/mgmt/