Sherman McCray fought for his country in the Korean War. He worked ever since as a long-haul trucker. He uses a wheelchair to get around.
Somehow, Sherman got about $338 dollars behind on his dues at the Vistas subdivision. By the time he collected the money and went to pay, the Vistas in Lake County, Florida had a little surprise for him. No longer was it $338 bucks. No, once the lawyers, the debt collectors and the HOA late fines and fees kicked in, the amount was raised to $4272.42 and going higher ever day.
McCray can’t believe his neighbors could do that to them. With his heart attack, his gall bladder removal, and various other charges, McCray thought he could argue the case himself in court. The Vistas HOA doesn’t mess around when it sees a homeowner drowning. No, they school up like sharks and slam that house into foreclosure quicker than you blink your eye.
Mary Goldin, president of the Vistas Homeowner Association, didn’t respond to a request to explain. They never do. They never ever do.
The wise guys in Florida are picking up some sneaky new tricks. Most homeowners who are overdue on their debts to HOAs owe less than $15,000. HOAs aren’t required to notify primary mortgage holders that the homeowner is in arrears on HOA payments.
HOA lawyers tell their clients to file for repayment in county court rather than circuit court. Circuit courts, of course, are working on huge backloads. So the HOAs can get a foreclosure in about half the time by going through county court. The major lenders suddenly discover the rug’s been whipped out from under them, and the HOA which was owed the smallest debt now gets the entire foreclosed house.
It’s slick. It’s almost foolproof. And it allowed one person to grab a one million dollar house for just $10,000. Is something wrong with this picture? Is this kind of sickness really endemic in America? What have we wrought? What have we wrought?
The big lobbiest for the building industry is Winston-Salem, who works for the North Carolina Home Builders Association. One of her best “buddies” is Charles Thomas, a marred man who just happens to be the Chief of Staff to House Speaker Thom Tillis. A detective agency in Raleigh apparently has lots of photos and video showing it’s more than a casual business relationship. And lots of money is floating back and forth from the Home Building industry to those who supervise the Home Building Industry.
It all means nothing, of course. Absolutely nothing.
But suddenly Chief of Staff Charles Thomas has resigned his job.
I like pondering this question. Sadly, I can’t find the link for proper attribution. But the blogger talked about a statement made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a 1938 session of Congress. Here it is:
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”
Whew! Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? By casually stepping into a new form of government called the Homeowners Association movement, are we not giving away all of our Constitutional freedoms without giving it a second thought?
Sure, we’d all like to live in neighborhoods where property values aren’t brought down by some goofball with the muscle car on blocks and a trash can that never leaves the curbside. But at what cost? In the 1930s millions of people joined the Nazi party because they truly thought their membership was bettering themselves. They were truly enthusiastic about where their new party was leading them.
But are we going to sit back some day and ask ourselves, “did we once have something very special in this country, and we gave it all away?”
Bill Fry, an officer with the Army National guard, was returning from fighting in Iraq. All of a sudden he learned his HOA, The Spring Lake HOA of Mineoloa, Texas, had filed a lawsuit against him and his family because they put up the swingset to keep his kids company while he was gone.
It’s not an outrageous swingset. It’s not candy apple red and doesn’t flash with florescent colored lights. It’s just a nice wood and canvas politically correct swingset. But the officials at Spring Lake have gone apoplectic. They want it taken down, NOW!
Fry says the HOA approved the swingset before he left for Afghanistan. But the new board claims Fry’s wife didn’t get final approval and obtain final plans. It’s not that the swingset is wrong. It’s that someone on the board had a bruised ego because she wasn’t personally asked for her permission. There’s a chapter in my upcoming book, “Neighbors At War” which scientifically shows the changing chemistry in the brain when someone feels they’re not being awarded enough power over others.
In any event, whatever compromise Fry attempts to make, the HOA turns him down flat.
Spring Lake HOA, in Mineola, Texas. It might be nice to visit. But I sure as Hell wouldn’t want to live there.
