I’ve heard it so many times. “I don’t gamble.” “I’m too tight with my money to gamble.” “I wouldn’t know how to gamble.” “The thought of gambling scares me because I’ve worked hard for my money.” All spoken by people who own property in a homeowners association.
Personally, I’ve gambled one time in my life at a Reno casino. I dropped $20 in a nickel slot machine and won. I collected my winnings and walked straight out the front door. I don’t gamble. Or so I thought I didn’t.
As the son of a West Point graduate who was a highly decorated combat veteran and a POW of the Nazis, I’m often mystified at the rank hatred expressed by some people towards those in uniform. Who knows? Maybe those haters staged anti-war demonstrations in the 60’s and 70’s, or maybe they built bombs or lit fires.
But for someone who has five family members buried at Arlington, it just rankles when I see the viciousness of those who’ll deny any acknowledgement to the men and women who spend their lives protecting the rest of us.
This story, from NBC News and The Consumerist, really ought to get you steamed. Homeowners Associations on prime beachfront properties have figured out a way to make the taxpayers pay for their huge cost of flood insurance. It sounds like fiction, but it’s not.
Zillionaires who own oceanfront properties that get destroyed by hurricanes every couple of years theoretically should be paying a fortune for federal flood insurance. That’s the law.
But guess who figured out a way to make YOU pay for their flood insurance?
I still think I’m right on target in predicting a coming housing and HOA bubble that will make the 2008-2009 implosion look like child’s play. And this one is aimed EXACTLY at the country’s Homeowners Associations. This is a crisis to be very afraid of.
The New York Post story linked below discusses it, not as a housing crisis, but as a lack of spending crisis.
Demographics show our population is aging. Older people have already paid for their cars, their homes, their toys. If we follow Japan’s financial implosion in the 1980s people will suddenly have no money to spend. That means a disaster for aging Homeowners Associations.
Yet another Homeowners Association is taking aim at a homeowner who’s flying a patriotic flag. Floridians who fly the American flag have been taken to the cleaners over the years by their HOA for flying Old Glory. Then, Governor Jeb Bush stepped in and signed a bill forcing HOAs to allow flag flying. Reluctantly, the HOAs gave in.
But keep in mind that an HOA management company isn’t making money unless it’s fining homeowners, towing away their cars, liening and suing them for one minor violation or another. Trust me, when HOA management companies have their morning meetings, employees are told, “Now GET out there and write some tickets!!! FIND me some violations!!!
