Another American homeowner is about to lose his home to his HOA.
David Moore has lived in the Huntington Place Homeowners Association in San Antonio, Texas, for eighteen years. But two years ago the neighborhood’s management company began assessing fines against Moore that added up to more than two hundred thousand dollars for alleged covenant violations. Among the violations, not keeping his grass short enough, and for a cat door built in his garage nearly two decades ago.
Moore will eventually learn that very few homeowners win this kind of fight. HOAs in Texas and elsewhere are being taught to taunt homeowners into expensive legal confrontations. Moore’s assets will end up in the hands of law firms and HOA management companies.
It’s just another example of a tort system that’s wildly out of control.
What’s difficult to understand about the word ‘accountability’? Texas is one of a number of states where legislation is pending which would reign in the massive power of private HOA management companies. Homeowners in Texas, and elsewhere, are tired of being ripped off by arbitrary fines, punitive social controls, predatory towing of vehicles, confiscatory debt collection practices, abusive lawsuits, and massive embezzlement from the budgets of Homeowners Associations. This is not a hard problem to understand. Your home is your castle. Isn’t it?
