Category Archives: Patriotism

Why Do HOAs Hate Renters?

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guest blog by Dave Russell
Most HOAs have long shunned those who rent properties within Homeowners Associations. I’ve heard every disparaging comment ever made, “renters are trashy, uncaring, and simply make for bad neighbors.”  Well I’m here to dispel those myths and misconceptions about renters.
 
Most renters are actually decent, hard working folks, who pay their bills, and follow the HOA rules more often than homeowners do. Let’s take a look at one of the renters in my own homeowners association. Stacey Barker, single mother of three, saw a Facebook post from co-worker, Romona, who she didn’t really know all that well.  Ramona posted a plea on Facebook for prayers, or for someone who would be willing to donate a kidney to save her dying husbands life.
 
Less than ten minutes after Ramona’s desperate Facebook post was published online, Stacey Barker – a woman Ramona hardly knew – replied. “I sent her two messages,” said Barker. “The first time I don’t think she took me seriously, and the second time I said, ‘No really, I will get tested and if I’m a match I will donate.” Stacy did get tested and was a perfect match! Such an uncaring renter, isn’t she?’
 
Stacy, the renter, took two months of unpaid leave from work and donated her kidney to a man she didn’t even really know. Aren’t these renters something else! Ramona’s husbands life was saved thanks to Stacy Barker. Pay close attention all of you HOA board members! Not every renter is a ‘bad neighbor.’

 

The Viciousness Knows No Bounds!

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What is it about the ‘control’ issues many HOA board members have? And why is it that brand new Ford F-150 pickups are so hated?

The board of the Kimry Moor Homeowners Association in Fayetteville, New York has decided that homeowners David and Arna Orlando are scofflaws because they park their pickup in the driveway instead of in the garage.

Never mind that people all over this HOA park their trucks in their driveways.
No, I strongly suspect the issue isn’t the truck. It’s that somebody on the board thinks the Orlando family are of the wrong race, the wrong income level or because their kid might have smart-mouthed a board member’s kid at school.

I hope the Orlando’s attorney looks at an almost identical case in Texas where the owner of the Ford F-150 got sued for his truck…and he actually won the case against his power-mongering HOA. It’s too bad that HOA homeowners have to pay special assessments to support this kind of insanity.

(link to latest HOA lawsuit against an F-150 owner)

(for the Orlando’s attorney, this might save you a couple minutes of research time)

And yet another!

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/28/florida-man-spends-k-right-park-driveway/

 

Las Vegas Mobster Leon Benzer Pleads Guilty

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Well, the guilty plea was made. Federal Judge Mahan accepted it. No sentence yet. Leon Benzer might be surprised to hear himself described as a mobster, but that’s exactly what he is. He conspired with lawyers, police officials, judicial officials, and state politicians to steal millions of dollars from Nevada Homeowners Associations. That’s called racketeering. You don’t need to be Italian to be a mobster. You just have to have a massive deficit of character.

Traditionally, white collar criminals get about 18 months in prison no matter how many millions they’ve stolen. Benzer has bankrupted an unknown number of Las Vegas homeowners. The damage he inflicted will impact generations of American families. In the end, he made himself a multi-millionaire at the expense of ordinary citizens. He conspired with mobsters and drug cartels in Mexico to hide his fortune. When he walks out of prison he’ll retire to waterfront property in some exotic locale and laugh at the stupidity of all the people he swindled.

Benzer will laugh at the impotent American legal system which couldn’t come close to touching the real scope of his swindle. He’ll snigger at FBI agents who spent years trying to uncover his scam. He’ll laugh at prosecutors and a judge who couldn’t give him life in prison. And he’ll look back fondly at his time in prison bragging to cellmates about how much fun he had doing this swindle. I know all of this because I’ve spent four decades investigating and exposing white collar criminals. Despite federal prison sentences they love what they do.

White collar criminals are addicted to their lifestyles. To the victims it’s devastating. To the mobsters it’s all a game.

(link to ReviewJournal article on Benzer’s guilty plea)

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/benzer-pleads-guilty-massive-las-vegas-valley-hoa-scheme

HOA Race Pioneer Dies

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It’s hard to believe that it was once legal for Homeowners Associations to outlaw the sale of homes to anyone of the ‘wrong’ race. But that’s the shameful racist background of the HOA movement. Homeowners Associations across America once banned the sale of homes to most minorities. It took some brave pioneers to break the HOA racial barriers.

Now, one of those pioneers has died at the age of 85.

Dorothy Mae Adams and her husband are black. Their HOA in San Francisco, Westwood Park, had a deed restriction against the sale or lease of any home to people of African descent. But in 1959 the Adams couple fought for their home and won. The only sad part of the story is that HOAs didn’t die along with the racial restrictions that got them started in the first place.

(link to story on Dorothy Adams)

 

A New Sign of Discontent

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I’m not smart enough to know if anti-HOA activist Jonathan Friedrich will win his HOA lawsuit in Nevada. He claims he bought the house before the developer included it in an adjacent HOA. Friedrich says his home and several others were missed, and the paperwork was only recently filed. But more than anyone else I know in the country, Jonathan has chutzpah.

GetAttachmentIf your picture is a little grainy, it’s a 50 foot long banner that says, “Rancho Bel Air is Stealing from us and Breaking The Law!

Reminds me of the old advertising saying that goes:

“He who has a thing to sell and goes and whispers in a well is not so apt to get the dollars as he who climbs a tree and hollers.” Keep hollering, Jonathan. We hear you!