Here’s an HOA embezzler who made a pretty good score for himself. 53 year old Dale Palmer was in a position of trust with dozens of Homeowners Associations in Missouri.  He operated a firm called “Homeowner Association Services (HOAS), and his take was $750,000. Nice work if you can get it.

Palmer has been preparing false business statements for his 3 member homeowner associations for the past couple of years.  His excuse to police was that he was very poor at managing money for HOAs, and he just could keep all that cash straight.

I imagine if you’re swimming in a backyard swimming poll filled with $750,000 cash, it would be kind of hard to keep track of things, too.

Swim on, Slime Bag.  You hurt a whole lot of elderly homeowners who trusted you!

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as Dale Palmer, HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Embezzler, HOA Nightmare Stories, Homeowner Association Services (HOAS), Homeowners Associations, Homeowners Associations in Missouri, Kansas City, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Ward Lucas

Sherman McCray fought for his country in the Korean War.  He worked ever since as a long-haul trucker. He uses a wheelchair to get around.

Somehow, Sherman got about $338 dollars behind on his dues at the Vistas subdivision.  By the time he collected the money and went to pay, the Vistas in Lake County, Florida had a little surprise for him.  No longer was it $338 bucks.  No, once the lawyers, the debt collectors and the HOA late fines and fees kicked in, the amount was raised to $4272.42 and going higher ever day.

McCray can’t believe his neighbors could do that to them.  With his heart attack, his gall bladder removal, and various other charges, McCray thought he could argue the case himself in court.  The Vistas HOA doesn’t mess around when it sees a homeowner drowning.  No, they school up like sharks and slam that house into foreclosure quicker than you blink your eye.

Mary Goldin, president of the Vistas Homeowner Association, didn’t respond to a request to explain.  They never do. They never ever do.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association, Las Vegas HOA

Tagged as HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Hell, HOA Nightmare Stories, Homeowners Association, Mary Goldin, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Sherman McCray, Vistas HOA, Vistas Homeowner Association, Vistas in Lake County in Florida, Ward Lucas

The wise guys in Florida are picking up some sneaky new tricks. Most homeowners who are overdue on their debts to HOAs owe less than $15,000. HOAs aren’t required to notify primary mortgage holders that the homeowner is in arrears on HOA payments.

HOA lawyers tell their clients to file for repayment in county court rather than circuit court. Circuit courts, of course, are working on huge backloads. So the HOAs can get a foreclosure in about half the time by going through county court.  The major lenders suddenly discover the rug’s been whipped out from under them, and the HOA which was owed the smallest debt now gets the entire foreclosed house.

It’s slick. It’s almost foolproof.  And it allowed one person to grab a one million dollar house for just $10,000. Is something wrong with this picture?  Is this kind of sickness really endemic in America?  What have we wrought? What have we wrought?

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Foreclosure, HOA lawyers, HOA Nightmare Stories, HOAs, homeowners, Homeowners Association, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Ward Lucas

The big lobbiest for the building industry is Winston-Salem, who works for the North Carolina Home Builders Association. One of her best “buddies” is Charles Thomas, a marred man who just happens to be the Chief of Staff to House Speaker Thom Tillis. A detective agency in Raleigh apparently has lots of photos and video showing it’s more than a casual business relationship. And lots of money is floating back and forth from the Home Building industry to those who supervise the Home Building Industry.

It all means nothing, of course.  Absolutely nothing.

But suddenly Chief of Staff Charles Thomas has resigned his job.

Hmmmm.

BTW, nobody returns messages. They never do.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as Chief of Staff Charles Thomas, Chief of Staff to House Speaker Thom Tillis, HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Hell, HOA Nightmare Stories, Home Building industry, Homeowners Association, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, North Carolina Home Builders Association, Ward Lucas, Winston-Salem

I like pondering this question. Sadly, I can’t find the link for proper attribution. But the blogger talked about a statement made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a 1938 session of Congress. Here it is:

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”

Whew! Sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? By casually stepping into a new form of government called the Homeowners Association movement, are we not giving away all of our Constitutional freedoms without giving it a second thought?

Sure, we’d all like to live in neighborhoods where property values aren’t brought down by some goofball with the muscle car on blocks and a trash can that never leaves the curbside. But at what cost? In the 1930s millions of people joined the Nazi party because they truly thought their membership was bettering themselves. They were truly enthusiastic about where their new party was leading them.

But are we going to sit back some day and ask ourselves, “did we once have something very special in this country, and we gave it all away?”

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as community fascism, extortion, HOA, HOA attorneys, hoa facism, HOA Hell, HOA Neighborhood, HOA Nightmare Stories, HOA residents, HOA Stories, Homeowners Association, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Bill Fry, an officer with the Army National guard, was returning from fighting in Iraq. All of a sudden he learned his HOA, The Spring Lake HOA of Mineoloa, Texas, had filed a lawsuit against him and his family because they put up the swingset to keep his kids company while he was gone.

It’s not an outrageous swingset. It’s not candy apple red and doesn’t flash with florescent colored lights. It’s just a nice wood and canvas politically correct swingset. But the officials at Spring Lake have gone apoplectic. They want it taken down, NOW!

Fry says the HOA approved the swingset before he left for Afghanistan. But the new board claims Fry’s wife didn’t get final approval and obtain final plans. It’s not that the swingset is wrong. It’s that someone on the board had a bruised ego because she wasn’t personally asked for her permission. There’s a chapter in my upcoming book, “Neighbors At War” which scientifically shows the changing chemistry in the brain when someone feels they’re not being awarded enough power over others.

In any event, whatever compromise Fry attempts to make, the HOA turns him down flat.
Spring Lake HOA, in Mineola, Texas. It might be nice to visit. But I sure as Hell wouldn’t want to live there.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as HOA, HOA attorneys, HOA Hell, HOA Neighborhood, HOA Nightmare Stories, HOA residents, HOA Stories, Homeowners Association, military hoa problems, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Texas HOA, texas military hoa

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association

Tagged as Alex Sardo family, HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Neighborhood, HOA Nightmare Stories, Homeowners Associations, Judge Mike Engelhart, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Texas HOA, The Thicket at Cypresswood Community Improvement Association, Ward Lucas, Wilbur

Nine residents of a Sacramento condo were rousted from their beds by armed security guards in April. They were forced into the street in their underwear, and the condos were sacked. Their belongings were through after them. They never new such a thing could happen in the “land of the free.”

Welcome, suckers, to HOA America, the land of the modern day Gestapo.

The evicted families were tenants, who’d never been informed that their landlords had allowed the building to go into foreclosure. The guards accused them of being squatters, told them they were going to be arrested and charged with burglary. The condo raid was carried out by Paladin Protection Security and the Jasmine Homeowners Association.

After two hours, the security guards apologized and left. One of them said, “Between you and me and the lampost, your Homeowner Association isrealized the mistake and left. One of them said, “Between you and me and the lampost, your homeowners’ association is a little over the top.

No kidding.

The tenants have now found a lawyer and they plan to sue both the security service and the Jasmine Homeowner Association.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association, Las Vegas HOA

Tagged as HOA, HOA Hell, HOA Nightmare Stories, HOA officials, Homeowners Association, Jasmine Homeowners Association, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Paladin Protection Security, Sacramento condo, Ward Lucas

There’s no question that Florida Homeowner Associations have suffered in the housing downturn. There’s no question it has impacted just about everyone. But some HOAs have found ways to take the most outrageous actions against a few homeowners to siphon off money and ownership rights of the few to help pay the expenses of the majority. Welcome to the kind of “democracy” practiced by the Bridgewater Community Association in Wesley Chapel, Florida.

Joanne McCarn says she missed an annual dues payment of $225 when her mother died. She was willing to make that up, but then she discovered the amount the HOA wanted was more than ten times the amount owed. She balked. She moved out, and put in a tenant to help make the mortgage payments.

The Bridgewater HOA told her she had to pay a $500 fee to the HOA before they would give her permission to rent. But the dispute escalated. The HOA didn’t foreclose on the home, but it evicted McCarn’s tenant and then moved in a tenant of their choice.

McCarn says it’s impossibly wrong. The HOA doesn’t own the house, McCarn does. But without going to court the HOA has essentially seized the home. They’ve appropriated the income stream from their replacement tenant. And they’ve done the same kind of thing to six other homeowners at Bridgewater.

Even lawyers who customarily support HOA actions against homeowners who get behind on their dues, says this kind of action is without precedent and is not something the law allows.

Perhaps so. But as growing numbers of these stories emerge, it builds the feeling among many people that the basic structure of the American HOA is fundamentally corrupt and totally outside the U.S. Constitution. They’re beyong the law.

http://www2.tbo.com/news/real-estate-news/2012/apr/29/namaino1-homeowners-association-rents-home-it-does-ar-397871/

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association, Las Vegas HOA

Tagged as Bridgewater Community Association, Florida, Florida HOA, Florida Homeowner Associations, HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Hell, HOA Nightmare Stories, Homeowners Association, Joanne McCarn, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, Ward Lucas, Wesley Chapel in Florida

A woman in Houston, Texas has learned what thousands of other homeowners have learned: the HOA has incredible powers to seize and auction off your home for a tiny infraction.

Ann Izzat is 67 years old. Her home of 32 years was owned free and clear. At least that’s what she thought. She acknowledges she might not have paid her dues of $1200, but she says she never got notice of the overdue bill, and was never personally served any papers. But the sheriff’s office showed up on her doorstep, ordered her to completely empty her home of all her belongings within 30 minutes, and then took all of her possessions to the curb.

Her Kingwood Homeowner’s Association then auctioned her home off. A California company bought the home at auction for $7000.

Izzat has lots of company. Harris County HOAs seize and auction about 6000 homes a year.

Randy Wallace, a reporter for FOX TV in Houston, brought us this story.
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/120420-67-year-old-kingwood-woman-loses-home-for-not-paying-hoa-dues#ixzz1srXOrJ00

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Filed under HOA, HOA Horror Stories, Homeowners Association, Las Vegas HOA

Tagged as Ann Izzat, FOX TV in Houston, Harris County HOAs, HOA, HOA corruption, HOA Nightmare Stories, HOA powers to seize and auction, Homeowners Association, Kingwood Homeowner's Association, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association, overdue bill, Randy Wallace, Ward Lucas