Category Archives: Religion

A Reward For Turning In A Rotten Neighbor

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Just amazing! Just in time for Christmas, counties in Florida are offering rewards for turning in criminals. Just look around your HOA and you can find plenty of board members and property managers who are stealing, bribing, defrauding and embezzling from homeowners. There’s your Christmas money.

Just take this advice from a long-time investigative reporter. Whenever the cops ask you to anonymously call an 800 number, the dirty secret is that you’re not anonymous. The Crimestoppers 800 number is a complete and total scam. Call from a phone booth.

(turn in Florida criminals for a reward)

How To Kill The Web: Copyright Law

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A threat to all users of the World Wide Web is growing and it could catch all of us by surprise. The European Parliament is considering a change in copyright law that could impact hundreds of millions of websites. The same copyright changes have been suggested in the U.S. as well.

It’s called ‘ancillary copyright.’ Boiled down to basics, it means that websites violate international copyright law if they provide hyperlinks to other websites. In other words, if I give you a link to a publication that exposes a horrible HOA story somewhere I violate that publication’s copyright. The reasoning is horrible.

Many people who read NeighborsAtWar.com each night provide links to my website to their respective email lists. My readership always goes up on those days, so I don’t object to anyone linking to an interesting post on this blog. In face, I encourage everyone to do so. I will NEVER claim that you violated my copyright even if I say something embarrassingly stupid, which I sometimes do. But a growing number of national and international organizations are demanding that the act of providing hyperlinks be criminalized.

The reasoning is nuts. The ultimate result will be that hundreds of millions of websites will simply have to shut down. It’s a huge muzzle on free speech and free access to information. News aggregators like Drudge, Breitbart, and Huffington Post will simply have to quit doing business. Our lives and our free access to information have been remarkably improved since the invention of the World Wide Web and hyperlinks. But free access to information threatens many in the establishment.

Our anti-HOA movement is growing exponentially because we’re all able to share stories about the huge scam known as the Homeowners Association Movement. Fight this suppression of Free Speech whenever and wherever it occurs.

(link to Forbes story on copyright violations)

 

From Robert Racansky

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from Ward Lucas:

This poor guy has been battling what appears to be a brain-dead HOA bent on no other goal than destroying a homeowner who stood up to them and won. Here’s his latest letter to me:

 

from Robert Racansky:

What is revealing is the account ledger and how much
they spent on Hindman Sanchez (law firm). Buckingham (atty) told me in person that he was being paid by the insurance company.

Per the account ledger I received yesterday, the total amount of
attorney fees paid to Hindman Sanchez P.C. was $19,184.35.

Obviously I’m biased here, but crap like this a perfect example of the
underlying fundamental problems with H.O.A. corporations — the lies,
the unaccountability, the imbalance of power, the perverse incentives
and moral hazards, etc. The problem is that it’s not as “sexy” as a
story about American flags being banned or an H.O.A. board being dicks
to a dying 6 year old girl, so it’s hard to make our policy makers and
pundits understand what needs to be done. Instead, we get a law
saying “H.O.A.s must have a written collection policy”. However, for
those of us who go through this — as I have been for six years — it
is an INCREDIBLY frustrating experience for so many reasons. 6 years
is more than 10% of my life, and more than 20% of my adult life.

Something else occurred to me last night:

People can — and do — lose their homes over trivial amounts,
sometimes a few pennies, sometimes a few dollars, etc. Sometimes
those amounts are nothing more than arbitrary and artificial
accounting artifacts. But our legislators and courts treat those
amounts as “damage” done to the H.O.A. corporation, which must be
permitted to exercise incredibly draconian powers because….well, I’m
not sure why.

But if an H.O.A. corporation f***s up in the amount of, say, nearly
$7,000, nobody will ever be held accountable. The home owner is
expected to just grin and bear it, because our legislators and courts
don’t treat that as a “damage” that the home owner is entitled to
collect.

“Equality before the law” is a sick lie we’re told as children to make
us accept any injustice in our lives.

 

A change of heart for one HOA President?

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

Every once in a while, the unexpected happens.

Remember David Schneider, the former president of McKamy HOA, Dallas, Texas? He was the one who sued a small Jewish congregation and the owners of a home in the HOA, arguing that using the home for Jewish religious services was against HOA restrictions. The local judge dismissed that case about a month ago.

Then the City of Dallas sued the Congregation, citing city requirements to make $200,000 worth of improvements to the property in order to obtain a certificate of occupancy. Without the Certificate of Occupancy, the Congregation faces steep fines, and may be forced to find another location for worship after all.

The following day, someone painted swastikas on the Rabbi’s vehicle and a fence, and that was deeply upsetting to the Rabbi and his followers.

Well, now the HOA, apparently led by Schneider, is offering a $1500 reward to help apprehend those who painted the hateful symbols.

Could it be that Schneider has truly had a change of heart?

(link to story on TheBlaze)

1st Amendment Win for Orthodox Jewish Congregation

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guest blog by Deborah Goonan

Just this week, a Colin County, Texas judge threw out an HOA’s case against owners of a home used as an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. The legal battle began in 2013, when an owner by the name of David R. Schneider independently sued the Congregation Toras Chaim and the owners of the dwelling, Mark and Judith Gothelf, for allegedly violating restrictive covenants specifying “single family” use. The HOA intervened in the case in 2014, shortly after Mr. Schneider was elected to the Board of Highlands of McKamy IV & V HOA.

The Liberty Institute assisted the Gothelfs and the Congregation free of charge. Haynes and Boone LLP also represented the Congregation.

Of course, the media and Liberty Institute are reporting the victory for the small Jewish congregation. They are now permitted to continue using the Gothelf’s home as a synagogue for their small congregation. The Judge dismissed the case primarily based upon two applicable Texas laws: The Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). Both statutes invalidate restrictive covenants against use of real property as a religious institution, upholding First Amendment rights.

Reading the lengthy Motion for Summary Judgment filed by attorneys for the defense, available from the Liberty Institute news release, it was obvious that Mr. Schneider, representing himself, and the HOA, represented by their attorney, had no chance of prevailing. In addition to the obvious violations of religious freedom rights, there were hundreds of pages of case law to back up at least a half dozen affirmative defenses, and transcripts of depositions of Rabbi Rich, Mark Gothelf, Mr. Schneider and two other HOA Board members.

So what exactly happened in Highlands of McKamy IV & V HOA?

Well, it was another typical story of HOA conflict. From 2011 – August 2013, before the Orthodox Jewish Congregation moved the location of their gatherings from one home in Highlands of McKamy to another one across the street from David Schneider, there had been no complaints from neighbors or the HOA.

It often takes just one person, in this case Mr. Schneider, to instigate conflict in an HOA. And that conflict is almost always about some alleged or trumped up violation of a restrictive covenant or Board enacted rule. And quite often – as was the case this time – the restriction itself is unconstitutional at the state or federal level, or both.

Based upon testimony supplied by the Rabbi, Mr. Gothelf, Schneider and two other Board members, the reader recognizes the typical hallmarks of HOA conflict:

·      A ringleader (Schneider) that organizes an allegedly questionable “election” based upon proxies that are not adequately handled in an unmonitored election process

·      A Board President that pushes his own personal agenda as soon as he’s elected

·      A Board member with a history of being difficult to get along with, that has a history of suing people

·      Fellow Board members that follow the Board President’s lead

·      Questionable record-keeping and official document storage and handling practices

·      Board members that are unfamiliar with HOA law and/or their own governing documents

·      A Board that fails to heed their HOA attorney’s advice, yet that attorney is complicit in filing a case he knows has a high probability of failing

·      The tendency of a Board to keep the cost of this legal challenge a secret

·      A divided membership, resulting in angry homeowners and a Board recall attempt that is successful in removing Mr. Schneider in July 2014, but not the remaining Board members

·      Negative attention for the HOA in the local media, and by word of mouth

·      Over a year of stress and unnecessary legal expense for the Gothelfs and the Congregation

Hopefully, this will end the campaign against the Congregation, many of them neighbors in the HOA.  I certainly hope there will not be an appeal. The good Rabbi Rich is wise when he states, “We don’t view this as a victory. The victory would be when the whole neighborhood comes together.”

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/02/04/hoas-case-against-dallas-congregation-tossed/

https://www.libertyinstitute.org/news