Category Archives: racketeering

Horrible House Color, & A Personal Memory

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Paint your house the wrong shade and you’ll get death threats! It’s happening to a couple in Texas who got permission to paint their house blue, but when the shade of ‘blue’ wasn’t specified they painted it teal blue. Amazing.

(story in London Daily Mail of teal house fight)

It brings back memories of one of my biggest gaffes. My first house in Denver was a dirty canary yellow and after living there a few years I really wanted to change it. I hired a painter and picked out a shade of soft gray that I thought would be very elegant. Since I was working 15 hour days at the TV station I wasn’t there when the painter did the house.

My wife called me at work and said, “You’d better come home immediately, there’s trouble with the neighbors.”

I raced home to find about fifteen or twenty neighbors gathered in the street in front of my newly painted house. But Good Lord, there was my painted house. The painter had used the correct shade of paint, but that house looked for all the world like the blue color you might see on a beached dead, rotting whale. It was horrible.

I assured the crowd that I would re-paint the house immediately and the second paint job was started the very next day, this time in true soft gray. There was no Homeowners Association. No threats of liens or lawsuits. There didn’t need to be. I just did what any one of us would and should do.

Once in a while I drive through that neighborhood of thirty-five years ago. The house is still painted soft gray.

 

It Just Never Goes Away

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I was watching a grandson’s football game this afternoon here in the Denver area. A familiar looking lady walked up to me and grabbed my arm. She said, “Remember me?”

Ugh! At age 66 I hate that question. So she reacted to my blank stare: “I was at your house several months ago and brought you a big box of records on your former Homeowners Association.”

Ah, yes, I got the connection. This lady and her husband were foster parents and they loved the neighborhood. Not knowing a thing about the national HOA scam, they blithely bought a house and moved in with three foster kids. Knowing how anti-minority, anti-Semitic and anti-queer this neighborhood is I wasn’t surprised she’d have trouble. She was in tears and I just didn’t have any good advice for her except to move out.

She says she was told by more than one HOA official “your kind isn’t appreciated in this neighborhood.” All her attempts to improve the exterior of her home were rejected. She and her husband were doing some interior improvements and she was told by a notorious lawyer who takes every opportunity to get on the board and stay there, that if even one nail is out of place he’ll force her to tear everything down.

Well, this HOA succeeded in driving her out of the neighborhood. She moved. And she said her new non-HOA home is a wonderful place where all the neighbors talk and get along. She did say she still loved this area and said she was going to inquire about whether some adjoining HOAs were any better.

“No!” I told her. I gave her the same old advice I give everyone. “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD HOA. EVERY ‘GOOD’ HOA IS JUST ONE VOTE AWAY FROM DISASTER!”

It’s true. It’s very sad, but it’s true.

Another Active Duty Homeowner Gets Shafted

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Shame on the Creekside Homeowners Association in Jacksonville, Florida.

In 2006, Navy gunner’s mate Mark Bryant bought a home. But that home is now owned by someone else, because the HOA foreclosed on it because Bryant hadn’t paid $750 in HOA dues. Bryant didn’t even know about the dues because he was on active duty in Bahrain.

Human vultures hang around these HOA foreclosure auctions. And some vulture picked up this home for about 10,000 bucks. Never mind that federal law prohibits foreclosure actions against overseas active duty service members. Some lawyer ought to be leaping forward to take this case.

(link to story on Jacksonville foreclosure action)

(link to Service Members Civil Relieve Act (SCRA))

 

LOL! Marijuana in Rental Home

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OK. Here’s a confession. I’ve spent a lifetime going on vice raids with local, state, and federal cops. I’ve ridden in a DEA helicopter as it used an infrared camera to spot pot plants growing in the middle of corn fields. I was the first reporter on the scene of a plane crash where drug smugglers dumped their DC-3 on top of a mesa in Southeast Colorado. I’ve probably seen more marijuana in my lifetime than all the readers of this blog combined. But… here comes the big confession… I’ve never even had so much as a single puff. I guess that would disqualify me for running for the White House, right?

As the owner of a few rental homes in Colorado I’m pretty much aware that I probably don’t have the right to stop renters from either smoking or growing the stuff. After all, if I banned it from my properties I’d be banning a legal activity.

All that being said, there’s an amusing story out of Nederland, Colorado about city officials who want to prevent a renter from growing maryjane for commercial purposes.  What’s really funny about this is that the proposal is coming from Nederland. I love Nederland. It’s one of the greatest towns in the whole state. What’s fun about Nederland is that everyone who lives there is stoned! This is the town where a local yokel glued himself to a Home Depot toilet seat and then sued for damages. It’s the town that featured a famous recording studio where every rock star in the world recorded albums. It’s the town that holds the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival each summer. Yes, indeedy. A member of the town honored his grandfather’s wishes to keep his granddaddy’s body in a Tuff Shed covered with dry ice until such time as he could be brought back to life. Now there’s a festival in his honor.

Nederland.

Stoned.

(link to story on Nederland’s proposal to ban pot growing)