Category Archives: HOA Issues

There are lots of wise people who specifically bought homes outside of HOA control. The Moss Ridge neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida does just fine without one. The neighborhood has only 59 houses and most people are friendly with their neighbors. Moss Hill is clean, homes are nice, there are no cars on blocks, no pink and purple houses.

But a number of homeowners there started getting fake “code violations” in their mailboxes. One person is ordered to paint her house…”or else!” Another is told “Remove the flowerpots from your deck… “or else!”  Still another, “Edge your sidewalk! Or else!” The notices demand correction within 90 days… “Or else!”

The neighbors say there is absolutely no HOA at Moss Ridge. City Zoning says the citations are fake and were not issued by them.

Homeowners are rattled by the phony notices. One woman says, “We obey every rule in the City of Jacksonville. I don’t want to be harassed by some anonymous man.”  Others say they are frightened by the demands.

The neighbors may have good reason to be concerned. In some parts of the country, HOAs have actually been created without notification or permission of all the neighbors.

Kudos to Ken Amaro of FirstCoastNews.com for first reporting this story.

Ward Lucas, author of Neighbors At War! The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association.

So many in the Homeowner Association Movement are fond of saying the HOA is “the purest form of Democracy.” That concept, though should really be a thing to shudder about, not to celebrate.

For Democracy is the autocratic, even dictitorial rule by a small group over the pathetically clueless masses. Those masses are generally uninformed, disinformed, sometimes by intent, and often by design, while the Democracy throws its weight into ruling the masses.

When the great French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville  was sent to study this confounding new creation of our “self-working republic,” he was amazed by many things.

He warned that “modern democracy may be adept at creating tyrants and that that new tyrannies that would lead to conditions in which we would “lose interest” in the future of our descendents and meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic course all the more because it does not resemble one.

If Tocqueville could be suddenly lifted forward to examine the modern Homeowner Association Movement, one can imagine hearing him say, “I told you so.”

Our HOA democracies are so far outside the mainstream of truly democratic life. People who join these growing communities where traditional government has been removed and all the freedoms we expect to find have just evaporated.

Isn’t that exactly what happened in Las Vegas? Hundreds of thousands of homeowners suddenly lost a great deal of equity in their homes, because they just quit looking for the kind of greed that Tocqueville predicted would be there.

Federal investigators in Las Vegas continue to work out plea deals with Homeowner Association crooks who scammed hundred of homeowners in Las Vegas neighborhoods. In many cases homeowners just lost their homes. They were thrown out on the curb like so much garbage.

There’ve now been a total of three suspected suicides among the dozens of suspects who ran these scams. And one figure has been assaulted in what looks like a case of Las Vegas street justice. There are several big players yet to take the guilty plea, lawyers, judges, you know, people you come to suspect should believe in truth, justice and the American Way.

Federal Justice department investigators are getting in so much practice they could set up the same investigation in virtually any big city in the country. And once again, they’ll end up with crooked lawyers, judges, police officers and management companies. It’s so easy to steal from homeowners who 1. aren’t allowed to audit the books, 2. wouldn’t have an idea how to perform a forensic audit, and 3. have no access to an independent jury system.

Homeowner Associations are fundamentally corrupt. They were constructed in ways that would always make them corrupt. And despite the impotent excuses their defenders use to protect them, those defenders would probably make some excellent first targets as new investigations start popping up.

As one pans the landscape of Homeowner Associations, it’s difficult finding a real reason to respect them. The latest story comes from reporter Ricado Gandara of the American Statesman. He recounts the tragedy of Tellmon and Jaquelyn in their 80’s, who’s condo was destroyed by a fire a year ago in Texas.

Still, they must keep up their payment their HOA fees, currently 561 dollars a month.

Condo owners in a large townhouse complex in Las Vegas could certainly find a reason to be sympatic. Their complex burned two years ago. Insurance companies promptly paid nearly one million dollars to the manager but work has never been to restore their neighborhod.