Category Archives: racketeering

The Failed Legacy of HOAs

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan
Let’s not sugar-coat the truth about so-called planned communities.
Part of the reason that HOAs move toward obsolescence is because they are not, and never have been, true communities, in the sense of being created of, by, and for the people. HOAs have always been created by Developers, to protect their narrow set of interests at a certain point in time. 
 
The Tuscan Villa community from the early part of this century is about as desirable as the Brady Bunch house with avocado paneling and hideous wallpaper. The difference is that Brady Bunch era houses have usually been updated several times over the past 4 – 5 decades. 
 
The larger difference is that older, traditional neighborhoods have evolved naturally over time.  Small children become teens, that grow up and move out. Parents grow older. Eventually they sell and move elsewhere. But new young couples and families with children move in to take their place. The neighborhood includes several generations among its residents, each younger generation breathing new life into the neighborhood and adding its personal touch to homes, both inside and out. 
 
While it is true that some cities have done an abysmal job of maintaining a healthy economy, leading to blight in some cases, the vast, vast majority of American cities, towns, boroughs, townships, and counties continue to survive and thrive for many decades, even more than a century. 
 
The same cannot be said for HOAs and Condominiums. There has never been an attempt to create planned communities with lasting legacies. The purpose has always been to create exclusive (Balkanized?) enclaves with a particular theme or lifestyle, subject to the ever-changing whims of the market. The goal has always been to squeeze the maximum number of homes and profit onto available land. The architectural and landscape standards were created to keep the HOA or Condo in a perpetual mode of being “ready to show” to buyers. Like the pages of a slick real estate brochure. Just like cars, HOAs have a limited life span: planned obsolescence.  
 
Ah, but that creates new opportunities for redevelopment, does it not? 
 

Arizona HOA Sues Embezzler

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Wow! You don’t see stories like this every day. But an HOA management company is being sued by an HOA over a minor little infraction of the law… the embezzlement of 3.4 million dollars.

The Edge at Grayhawk Condo Association in Scottsdale thinks embezzling is a crime. These homeowners pay dues of $300 a month. But they just felt that their money was going down a rat hole. And the rat, they think, is Eagle Property Management.

The cops are looking into the matter, and the company president is refusing to talk to anyone.

With embezzlement from HOAs the largest unreported crime in America, how dare these rich homeowners complain because they got ripped off?

If you live in an HOA, you’re gonna get ripped off.

Live with it.

(link to Arizona embezzlement story)

 

The HOA War Against Ham Radio

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Despite FCC rulings that support amateur radio hobbyists and the installation of ham radio antennas, Homeowners Associations have mightily resisted. Hobbyists have been harrassed, fined, and sued by HOAs which insist that neighborhood covenants don’t have to pay attention to federal law.

But there’s a new bill introduced in Congress which could prove interesting if it gets wide support. Republicans and Democrats are signing on to the bill. Hobbyists are mounting a nationwide campaign to get it passed into law. Of course, the HOA industry is fighting it tooth and nail, claiming such nonsense as “this is a bill that would invalidate all CC&Rs.”

But as our frequent guest blogger and commenter, Deborah Goonan, says, it’s an example of how going federal can bring results.”

Amen to that!

(link to story on amateur radio parity act)

 

Another Email Scam Warning

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Sorry that website operators have to keep warning folks, but the scammers who troll websites like Neighbors At War often send out emails to millions of people. Some are pretty convincing. But watch out for anything from the so-called U.S. Solar Department. It looks official. It’s not. All they want is your credit card number. I suspect our regular readers are a little smarter than the average folks who fall for scams. But you can certainly warn your kids and friends.

 
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Are Cities Exploiting HOA Owners?

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guest blog by Robert Frank, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)

Will Over-Taxing & Under-Maintaining Infrastructures Lead To Disasters?

Many cities claim to promote long-run ‘sustainability objectives’ following U.N. Agenda 21 policies. But, Homeowners Associations, CICs, CIDs, Condo Associations, acting as ‘private, quasi-governments’ wind up being over-taxed and under-maintained by cities.

The predicted results are windfall profits for industry and government, and failed CIDs. Is this yet another reason the HOA industry and local government is so hostile to those who question their policies and frequent overreaches?

We know that cities or counties charge the same property tax rates for all home owners. But, the costs to support HOA/Condo private property is much less than non-CIDs. This is particularly true in gated HOAs.

So, it can be reasonably argued that the local government organizations who dictate the requirements for CIDs and profit from receiving excessive taxes should either refund the surpluses to unit owners, or reserve the surpluses for future bailouts of failed CIDs.

Spending the surpluses for such unjustified things as vastly increased government worker salaries and pensions while the older CIDs are heading towards failure is unwise, selfish and immoral. This failing CID infrastructure situation for developments over 20 years old is well known.

Professor Evan McKenzie and others offer advice on CIDs to local governments and the industry. IMO those who create and highly profit from the terms, conditions and taxes created through the CID’s master plans cannot shed all responsibilities for helping to bail out failing CIDs.

We all want to avoid the kind of urban blight that happened (for somewhat different reasons) in Detroit, Michigan. But, CID common property structures seem to be designed to fail or require major (unaffordable) renovations within 20 to 50 years. This seems particularly true for gated CIDs and Condos. it seems that inventors and profiteers of such CID plans should be held at least partially responsible for enabling CIDs to sustain themselves over the long-run.

Is it not unreasonable, or at least unrealistic, to dump the total costs of common property replacement infrastructure on the backs of future unit owners using the almost unlimited power of CC&Rs during the last decades of structural life? What will that do to unit values in cities during those final decades?

As industry leaders have written, the future of CIDs is a predictable train wreck. If the HOA/Condo market is to be sustained, major changes are needed NOW in the master plans.

And, community planning is required NOW to build a balance of non-CIDs units where owners are individually responsible for their long-range planning?

Where are the better options? Industry and government demands for maintaining the “CID status quo” appears to be a formula for home owner disasters in our lifetimes!