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.
Estrella Bryant was trying hard to keep up with her mortgage payments on her home in San Francisco, California. Like many other struggling homeowners, she thought she could delay a dues payment to her Homeowners Association. Wrong choice. She was unprepared for the nightmare that followed.
The Parkview Heights Homeowners Association told her she owed $560 in dues. The case was turned over to a collection agency, which then tacked on its own fees and attorney’s fees.
The nightmare grew. Bryant said her big mistake was thinking that an HOA was there to help its member homeowners, the exact opposite of what the typical HOA does.
Handicapped youngsters are often the target of ire from Homeowners Associations. Despite laws to protect the handicapped, there’s a special kind of rancor directed at families who have special needs children.
The latest example is in Lexington, Kentucky. The Andover Forest Homeowners Association has told the parents of a child with cerebal palsy that no exception from HOA rules would be granted their son.
Three year old Cooper Veloudis is the center of the storm. His therapist told his parents, Tiffiney and George, that their special needs son might be encouraged to be more active if he had, say, a playhouse in the backyard.
Members of Homeowners Associations must pay their HOA dues, on time!
That’s as it should be, of course. After all, homeowners agree in their original real estate purchase agreements to abide by all HOA rules and restrictions. But in thousands of cases across the country, people’s homes are being snatched and sold at auction, sometimes without notice, after a late payment or other violation of vague neighborhood rules.
Tony Goodman, of San Antonio, Texas, is just another in a long line of homeowners to find themselves threatened with homelessness.
I love to hear stories of really rotten, really contemptible things that Homeowner Association boards do to certain “targeted” members of the neighborhood. Every ghastly story just reinforces my belief that there’s something desperately wrong with these phony Utopian neighborhoods govered by deed restrictions and neighborhood covenants.
Seven years ago, homeowner Gregg Harcus hung about a half dozen birdhouses around the area. Suddenly, Harcus was ordered by his HOA board that the birdhouses were illegal and had to be removed.
Nobody had complained about them, but the board just decided to remove them.
It’s incredible, really, how common embezzlements are from Homeowners Associations. With 320,000 HOAs across the country, you’d think there would be a major push to clean out the corruption that seems endemic in such HOAs as the latest one in the link below.
There are many fundamental problems with the structure of the modern HOA. As private non-profit corporations, the HOA is typically beyond the law. Restrictions against government, the protections we’ve grown accustomed to in the U.S. Constitution, don’t apply to the average HOA. As such, dictatorial edicts against such things as freedom of speech, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and due process happen all the time.
