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Ward Lucas is a longtime investigative journalist and television news anchor. He has won more than 70 national and regional awards for Excellence in Journalism, Creative Writing and community involvement. His new book, "Neighbors At War: the Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association," is now available for purchase. In it, he discusses the American homeowners association movement, from its racist origins, to its transformation into a lucrative money machine for the nation's legal industry. From scams to outright violence to foreclosures and neighborhood collapses across the country, the reader will find this book enormously compelling and a necessary read for every homeowner. Knowledge is self-defense. No homeowner contemplating life in an HOA should neglect reading this book. No HOA board officer should overlook this examination of the pitfalls in HOA management. And no lawyer representing either side in an HOA dispute should gloss over what homeowners are saying or believing about the lawsuit industry.

News from the Peoples’ Republik of North Karolina

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The Oakhurst Homeowners Association says it’s going to start fining a local veteran $100 a day, because he doesn’t understand his responsibilities as a member of the Association.

Before buying his home in Cornelius, John Dillon was a proud member of the U.S. Marine Corps. So from his porch each day he flies two flags, the Red, White and Blue, and the Marine Corps flag.

“I served under these flags. They’re all about fighting for our freedoms as Americans.”

The Board of Directors sees it differently. They sent a letter to order their removal. The penalty, $3000 a month is a huge one. But unless Dillon has a change of heart, this Association has some even worse news for him. It plans on hiring lawyers. It plans on charging Dillon for those lawyers. It plans on hiring debt collectors. If that fails, it plans on filing a lien on Dillon’s home and selling it at auction to the lowest bidder. Very few homeowners win these fights. Very, very few.

Cornelius man fighting HOA to keep flying American, Marine flag – News14.com

Can You Say “SUSPICIOUS?”

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At long last a Texas HOA is getting some much-deserved attention. Sadly, it took a homeowners lawsuit to get the ball rolling.
Folks in the Sunchase HOA in Northeast Austin are wondering where a million bucks went. It just kind of wandered off someplace. It’s illegal for a Texas HOA not to have regular audits of their books. Of course, it’s also illegal to filch a million bucks, IF that’s what happened. And Sunchase hasn’t had an audit for at least five years.

The property manager, Nancy Thompson keeps the HOA’s money in several different banks. But for some reason, she won’t let board members or homeowners see any of her bank statements. Board members are also question why Thompson was given thousands of dollars in bonuses. Austin Police are sniffing around. Between them and the lawyers, we may see some future news stories.

Good reporting by Chris Willis of KXAN.

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/lawsuit-filed-in-hoa-money-dispute

Calling All Lawyers! “Ready, Set, Sue!”

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Now that I’m out of mainstream journalism, I can afford to occasionally get my hackles up at the kinds of things written by other journalists. Indeed, most reporters don’t write their own headlines, but this one got my goat. It was an article in Main Street, a real estate magazine, which discussed the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. The headline said, “Homeowners Association Could be “Eden” of Liabilities.

The headline writer was correct, of course. And the reporter, Jeff Brown, was also correct in saying that questions about legal liabilities could “wreck your worry-free Eden.”

This blogger has long been saying that the scariest HOA in America is YOURS! Why? Because the slightest slip and fall at the neighborhood pool, or the workman who cuts his finger mowing grass at the front entrance, now has unrestricted access to the pocketbooks, bank accounts and home equity of every single person who owns a home in the community. By joining “the club,” or the HOA, you have essentially pooled all of your net worth with your neighbors, thereby creating an irresistible deep pocket to which the tort industry just hasn’t paid much attention in previous years.

But with lawyers being graduated at the rate of 104,000 a year, and the with law firms clogged with too many lawyers and not enough lawsuits, there’s going to be a huge upsurge in lawsuits against this previously untapped “resource.”

You can buy liability insurance, of course, but you can never buy enough insurance to dig your way out of the kinds of jury verdicts that tort lawyers like, John Edwards, for example, are able to wreak out of a dysfunctional court system.

The HOA system is broken. The tort system is corrupted. On this entire Earth could you find any uglier twin sisters than that?

http://www.mainstreet.com/print/26716Posted

I’m in Love with Darcy Spears!

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Darcy, you have done it again! You have located and exposed one of the worst HOA presidents in the country. I sincerely hope you’re winning a whole series of Emmy Awards for your HOA Hall of Shame feature on KTNV-TV in Las Vegas. Since I retired from the TV business four years ago I don’t have a chance to go back and emulate your reporting. But dang! Keep it up, girl!

For those not familiar with Darcy’s work, you owe it to yourselves to click on the link below. With perfect manners and charm, she picks out these slugs and losers and shows the world what life in an HOA can become. With the rampant organized corruption in Las Vegas homeowner associations, with the suicides that really don’t look like suicides, with the numbers of people who’ve seen their home values plummet up to 90%, you’ve gotta believe there’s a lot more subject matter for the HOA Hall of Shame series.

The FBI investigation in Las Vegas is going far too slowly. The FBI usually moves with lightning speed, but for some reason this investigation is just dragging. Maybe some of you Vegas homeowners who’ve lost your shirts to the Quon/Amesbury organized crime ring ought to be turning up the heat. Where are the judges and state legislators who were supposed to be indicted? How high up the political ladder does this corruption go?

Finally, when is the FBI going to take its new knowledge of HOA corruption and start hitting other cities? There’s not a city in the country that’s immune from the kind of crookedness the feds have uncovered in Las Vegas. Embezzlement, rampant racism, bribery, fixed court cases, theft, animal poisoning, vandalism, laundered money, death threats, murder: every one of those crimes is going on across America as gated neighborhoods continue to fester.

Now that the Internet has become the “Fifth Estate,” news about this scandal is finally leaking past the traditional media and making its way out to the public. Skeptical? That’s OK, I like skeptics. But just start Googling and the number of HOA crimes might begin to look a little scary to you.

By the way, here’s Darcy’s link:

http://www.ktnv.com/news/local/152681415.html

What Happened to the AZ Lawsuit Against HOA Attorney for Aiding & Abetting Missing $650,000?

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That’s a headline swiped directly from the blogsite of George Staropoli, who is perhaps the nation’s best HOA blogger and pursuer of cheats, frauds and miscreants. He notes that well-known HOA attorneys were appointed by the Court as Receivers to discover what happened to about $650,000 in money missing from an Arizona Homeowners Association. Seems the court-appointed lawyers sued other lawyers for various corruption and ethical violations. But…..

Voila!

…the case disappeared! Yes, it just vanished! Court cases, George notes, don’t do that unless they’re sealed. So he did some detective work and discovered that, yes indeed, somebody somewhere in Pinal County had sealed the case. There’s no record of where the $650,000 went. And some homeowners in the CD Lot Owners Association and Casa Grande HOA ought to be damned mad about it! George says he’ll get to the bottom of it, and he’s a man of his word. In the meantime, for much more thorough information read George’s blog (linked below). And if you have any leads on this nasty-smelling case immediately forward it to George Staropoli’s attention!

What happened to the AZ lawsuit against HOA attorney for aiding & abetting missing $650,000?

http://pvtgov.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-happened-to-the-az-lawsuit-against-hoa-attorney-for-aiding-abetting-missing-650000/