Parents in the Pebble Creek Homeowners Association in Clark County, Nevada, are livid because of a change in school bus routes. Apparently, the HOA board doesn’t like school buses traveling through their neighborhood. So they’ve ordered the school district to pick kids up outside of the HOA on a busy boulevard. If kids don’t report to the ‘politically correct’ bus stop then they get a citation.
Bullying.
Imagine living in the Vista Lago HOA in Orlando, Florida. What a nightmare. Two property managers claiming to be the legitimate ones, have hired and fired each other and filed liens against dozens of homeowners for unpaid dues. Many of those homeowners have been paying double and triple the dues and fines just for fear of losing their homes to whichever manager ends up winning the power struggle.
It’s hard to imagine the kind of unnecessary stress these homeowners are suffering.
(link to WFTV news story on the madness in Vista Lago Homeowners Association)
The blog I wrote about the Raintree Lake HOA in Lee’s Summit, Missouri on August 10th mentioned discussions of a GoFundMe account for the Stout family legal defense. They are standing up and fighting against the HOA to keep their daughters’ purple playset.
Sure enough, somebody took the bull by the horns and set it up. The donations are rolling in. And the comments from some of the donors are VERY interesting. Even a Realtor is making mention of people being afraid to buy in HOAs. How many times have we heard that before?
It’s so sickening to think all that money will go to fund the college funds of children of two HOA lawyers. Or maybe a second home in Breckenridge, Bozeman, or Bonaire. Or, possibly a yacht for the Lake of the Ozarks. No matter what the outcome of the lawsuit in the courtroom, the lawyers come out the winners. This is how the HOA legal game is played. Everybody loses except the lawyers. The pay off is determined by how long the lawyers can keep the battle raging.
When I sold yellow page advertising years ago, I had hundreds of attorneys as clients. When I asked what was the best case I could bring them they would tell me a nasty divorce. Naive me, I asked how do you know it’s a nasty divorce? With a chuckle from the attorneys I kept hearing, “you get them to call and we KNOW how to make it nasty!” Something tells me the days of the nasty divorces have been replaced with nasty HOA legal battles. Unfortunately, in that arena, I am not at all naive!
