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.
Well, Bunky, that’s the biggest lie you’ll ever hear.
Several years ago, I warned all of you about the pending crash of the Las Vegas housing market. It happened exactly as I predicted. At the heart of the problem is the government’s reliance on Homeowners Associations to perform traditional government functions and services. All HOA contracts are corrupt at their core. They were a flawed model from the start, and what’s going on in Las Vegas foreshadows what’s coming for the rest of the nation.
This neighborhood collapse will continue. With what’s going on politically right now the future is set in stone. You don’t have to be a Nostradamus to prognosticate. Flag this date and this blog post. And come back to me five years from now and tell me I was wrong!
Whoa! This doesn’t happen very often. But apparently there’s so much fraud and embezzlement from Miami condo owners that police are making a tentative attempt at cracking down. The link below shows an arrest by a special police squad formed to combat condo embezzlement.
Still, if Miami dedicated every one of its police officers to fighting fraud by the HOA Lawn Nazis, they’d barely put a dent in the problem. Homeowners Associations and Condo Associations are all fundamentally corrupt, every single one of them. Even if a rare HOA has escaped an embezzlement situation, they’re all just one vote away from disaster. From the very beginning, the rules governing Homeowner Associations were written by the lawyer to the lawyer from the lawyer. Developers were given government permission to build higher density housing as long as they enacted approved covenants and controls. Those controls were never meant to protect homeowners. They were built to protect developers, funnel money to lawyers, and obtain that money from the pockets of gullible home buyers. No homeowner can possible be in 100% compliance with all HOA rules. It’s not humanly possible. That means fines, liens and foreclosures…and lots and lots of lawyers’ kids are collecting their sports cars and their college tuition money.
Follow the money. Always follow the money. if you see a photo of some HOA treasurer getting busted for stealing, just look where the big money’s going. There’s always a cloud of vultures circling over the carrion.
This letter to the editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper by a CAI member is terrifying. He doesn’t use the words ‘fascist’ or ‘communist’ but it’s a pretty wild look at what homeowners have done to themselves by buying into the concept of Homeowners Associations. This country has essentially sold its soul to the devil. We have created a parallel system of government which has no controls, no ethics, no honesty. It’s a system of trial lawyers, by trial lawyers, and for trial lawyers. Homeowners have no access to traditional Constitutional rights. And the concept of true home ownership is a thing of the past.
The link below is horrifying, but really should be read by everyone concerned about elder abuse. It involves state agencies that declare an elderly person ‘incapacitated’ and appoint a guardian who takes over that person’s care and gives the guardian unlimited access to the older person’s bank accounts.
While I was an investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Denver I reported on several such cases. Then, attending my 50th class reunion last month, I spoke to a longtime neighbor (and a good-lookin’ gal, too!) about a different kind of theft. Seems that a sibling was executor of her parents’ rather substantial estate and that sibling stripped out all the assets. My friend didn’t get a dime of what her parents left her.
State governments and the courts look the other way when these financial crimes are committed. They just don’t seem to care. When an old person is involved it’s just easier not to have to think about the abuse.
With all that in mind, please, please don’t neglect reading this linked web post. And apply it to your own situation and where you might find yourself some day.
The video associated with this news story is actually pretty funny. But the subject matter isn’t funny. Killer mosquitoes actually do exist!
In Smyrna, Tennessee, a homeowner is furious because the town won’t do anything about an outbreak of giant mosquitoes in the retention pond behind his house. With Zika, West Nile, Chikungunya, dengue fever and who knows what other diseases carried by these bugs, the lawsuits are going to be flying.
More amazing is the size of these bugs. The homeowner in the video captured one and said this is the size of the mosquitoes that are biting him and his family. The retention pond is owned by the developer, which means there’s probably a Homeowners Association involved. With a few multi-million dollar verdicts it’s not hard to imagine that massive special assessments will soon start hitting all the homeowners. A situation like this can end up bankrupting an entire neighborhood and the typical HOA homeowner has no access to basic Constitutional rights.
