Homeowners across the country have wonderful ways to track the criminals who get themselves elected to positions of power on HOA boards. It’s heady power, indeed. And according to one of my regular searches on the web, they frequently arm themselves to take down enemies.
The greatest Google search is simply…. HOA president arrested.
That’s all! And it turns up a treasury.
The most recent incident happened last month in a Homeowners Association in the San Diego area. A 59 year old HOA president apparently didn’t like the work done by a man hired to do some work in the neighborhood. The HOA president pulled out a blade and stabbed the younger man. This gem of a neighborhood leader was arrested.
You can’t get any closer to organized crime than this one! A former city manager in a small suburb of Los Angeles has pleaded no contest to dozens of counts of fraud, embezzlement, rigging city elections and a bucket load of other felonies connected with a scandal that has rocked people across Southern California. Five former city council members, a former assistant city manager, and the former mayor of the City of Bell are still awaiting trial. More charges and indictments could still be coming, including possible federal indictments by the U.S. Attorney.
The California Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court decision which would essentially prevent the CAI (Community Associations Institute) from controlling the outcome of all board elections in Homeowners Associations.
Truly, the CAI has emerged as one of the nation’s most disgustingly evil-minded institutions. CAI claims it represents homeowners, although sometimes it refers to ‘stakeholders’. What CAI really represents is a massive and growing cash diversion from private homeowners to tort lawyers and service providers. When a homeowner gets into a beef with his or her HOA, CAI refers the case to its own secret closet of favored tort lawyers. But the ‘California dance’ by CAI was just beyond belief.
CalHomeLaw is a subscription-paid site only, and that’s a shame. But I’ll send as many people their direction as I can.
Their latest offering is about SLAPP lawsuits, or Strategic Lawsuits to Stop Public Participation. Thousands, even tens of thousands of these lawsuits are filed each year to intimidate people from exercising their First Amendment rights. People in Homeowners Associations are primary targets.
If you ask to see the HOA’s financial budgets, you’re liable to get SLAPPED. If you question the legality of a board or management company’s actions, believe me, you’ll get SLAPPED.
I never gratuitously toss around the word ‘fascism’. My parents grew up in the era of German and Italian fascism and it was a devastating word to them. But I still remember how they regarded the fascist totalitarian governments that were wreaking havoc on the world.
So, as I monitor Homeowners Association stories around the country and see stories like the one I’ve linked below, I’m just stunned at the parallels.
