Author Archives: Beanie
CALIFORNIA – It’s wrong to fine owner for not watering lawn during drought
Answer: No, it’s not right, and the board cannot order you to water the lawn. Under these circumstances, additional fees and interest charges for noncompliance of maintaining your property should be removed immediately.
The excuse for watering in keeping with a “theme of luxury homes” is pure nonsense. Under Civil Code section 4735(a), a provision of the governing documents or architectural or landscaping guidelines or policies shall be void and unenforceable if it prohibits the use of low-water-using plants or as a replacement of existing turf. Read more:
FLORIDA – Is signing foreclosure documents for others forgery?
Michigan’s attorney general launched a criminal investigation that includes whether “falsified signatures” were used in foreclosure cases.
Pam Bondi’s office was cleared of wrongdoing for firing two lawyers.
But Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson were forced to resign their jobs as foreclosure fraud investigators for the Florida Attorney General’s Office, in part, for referring to so-called “surrogate signing” as forgery.
According to a Florida Inspector General report that cleared Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office of wrongdoing in the firings, the duo repeatedly used the word “forgery” in a 2010 presentation that included documents from the Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services. The company complained and drew the attention of economic crimes boss Richard Lawson.
Lawson says in the inspector general’s Jan. 6 report that surrogate signing as it relates to Lender Processing Services, also called LPS, is not forgery, which requires an intent to defraud. The practice was authorized by the company, more evidence, Lawson said, that no forgery occurred.
Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who led Florida’s foreclosure fraud investigations, were routinely praised in performance reviews before losing their jobs.
Homeowner advocates who support Edwards and Clarkson are now questioning portions of the 83-page report. They point to the LPS signature issue as an example of what they say is Florida’s resistance to go after foreclosure fraud. Read more:
IOWA – Do new yards have enough top soil?
Brandy Case Haub loves her new West Des Moines home, with one exception: the yard.
She and her husband, Mike Haub, have struggled to grow anything in it since they moved in four years ago, and blame the builder for putting too little topsoil under the sod when the home was built.
“We prefer to be more organic, but there’s no way the grass will live when the soil has no fertility, when it’s just clay. So, we finally had to put down some fertilizer the last couple of years,” Case Haub said, adding that the couple planted a native prairie mix bed in their backyard to eventually help trap the fertilizer and other runoff.
Just how much topsoil should come with a new home has ignited a statewide debate. Hundreds of homeowners, environmentalists and others are pushing to keep a new rule that requires 4 inches of topsoil under the sod of a new construction.
Some city officials have chimed in, too, concerned that too little topsoil can lead to homeowners using too much water, fertilizer and pesticide to keep struggling lawns alive. The nutrients and chemicals can eventually make their way into Iowa waterways. Read more:
FLORIDA – Sabal Trace closes its golf course
NORTH PORT – Ambitious plans to turn a prominent South County golf course into a tourist destination featuring replicas of famous golf holes have come to a halt.
Notices posted on the door of Sabal Trace Golf & Country Club and on its website announced the closing effective May 12.
The 200 paid club members received notification via email, and more than 800 homeowners in neighborhoods adjacent to the property are wondering what will happen now to a place that in the 1970s was the North Port Country Club, the crown jewel of the city.
“Nobody around here or in government knows what’s going on at this point,” said former North Port Mayor Jim Blucher, a former golf club member who lives in the Villas of Sabal Trace.
Back in 2001, when there was a previous issue with course ownership, Blucher said the neighborhoods formed the Sabal Trace Homeowners Alliance. They are reconvening next week to talk about a course of action. Read more:
FLORIDA – Family battles homeowners association over fence for son with Asperger’s syndrome
“He has a very real disability that you cannot see and he can’t have the one thing he really needs,” Kristin Seekings said to Local 6 News with tears in her eyes. We selected a home that would be safe for him, that would have interior components that were safe for him. that we could provide exterior safety for him and we’re being denied that and it’s not OK,” she said.
|
NEVADA – Las Vegas Review Journal Editorial: Release HOA fraud documents
You’d think the federal government was prosecuting terrorists. Or hiding the existence of aliens. Or prosecuting hidden alien terrorists. But the alarming secrecy surrounding one of the biggest and most complicated criminal cases in Southern Nevada history had nothing to do with national security or saving the world.
It was a fraud case involving homeowner associations. The scope of fraud committed by more than 40 defendants was staggering, to be sure, but an estimated $60 million conspiracy isn’t enough to justify slamming the courthouse doors on the press and the public for years and years.
The case, which covers crimes that took place more than a decade ago, finally is over. Four people were convicted at trial and 38 others pleaded guilty. A few sentencings remain. The evidence used to leverage so many convictions has been locked up longer than most of the defendants ever will be.
It’s time to find out exactly what they did. The Las Vegas Review-Journal filed papers in federal court Tuesday to make public the millions of documents the Justice Department, the court and defense attorneys kept secret for so long.
“Now that the charges in this case have all been resolved, the First Amendment and common law rights of the press and the public to access the courts and trials carried out in those courts demands that these documents and hearings be unsealed, and the protective orders entered in this case be dissolved,” Review-Journal attorney Maggie McLetchie wrote in the court papers. Read more:
TEXAS – Carrollton homeowners steamed over disappearing trees
CARROLLTON — Angry residents at the Villages of Greenway Park development want to know why their homeowners’ association cut down two dozen trees without any warning.
The HOA said the trees were mature and needed to go, but homeowner Barbara Hale does not agree. “I am mad,” she said. “I’m very disappointed. I feel like their position is extremely arrogant… extremely arrogant.”
Hale said she didn’t learn that 30 trees were coming down until Saturday morning; neither did more than 100 people who signed her petition to stop the cutting.
“They have done this in secret,” she said. “They have done it without input from the property owners.” Read more:
NEVADA – Review-Journal sues to open HOA fraud investigation’s secret files
Secret evidence in the federal investigation into the massive scheme to take over and defraud Las Vegas Valley homeowners associations should be open to the public, the Las Vegas Review-Journal argued in federal court papers filed Tuesday.
The HOA investigation, spearheaded by the Justice Department’s fraud section in Washington, is considered the largest public corruption case federal authorities have brought in Southern Nevada. A total of 38 defendants, including the scheme’s mastermind, former construction company boss Leon Benzer, pleaded guilty and four more defendants were convicted at trial.
“The scale of corruption in these HOA cases is almost unimaginable,” Review-Journal Editor Michael Hengel said. “Even with dozens of convictions, there is much the public does not know about the scope of this conspiracy, how it could have gone undetected so long and how it could have involved so many people. Many of the answers are in these documents.”
But for a dozen sentencings and one minor player waiting to be tried, the high-profile case is essentially over. Federal prosecutors estimate the intent of the scheme was to bilk more than $60 million from its victims. Read more:
FLORIDA – Private property rights often collide with public use of coastline
Lisa Frifand, a 20-year South Walton County resident, was recently chewed out by a belligerent tourist as she was fishing at the same beach location she’d been casting from for years.
Not long after, following a morning of picking up trash left behind by others, a beach service employee refused to let her use a garbage can at a condominium’s private beach to throw the litter away.
“It’s starting to get really territorial,” Frifand said.
A frequent beach visitor, Frifand says she sees people being accosted by “self appointed beach police” … “grown up hall monitors” … and “visitors for the week” exercising “a sense of entitlement” passed on by “companies/owners that rent their properties for the season.” Read more:
TEXAS – Homeowner told flood debris violates HOA rules
HUTTO, Texas (KXAN) — Lisa Taylor’s Hutto home flooded knee deep on Memorial Day. The water rushed through their home, in the back door and out the front, and was forceful enough to tear apart the fence in their yard.
“Awful. It was awful,” said Taylor. “Nothing that we could have ever expected.”
A week later, Taylor heard from her homeowners association. Her family was slapped with a warning notice telling them some debris left behind was in violation.
The city provided neighbors with a dumpster to put debris in, but it is overflowing. So Taylor started stacking debris and other ruined items in her front yard.
“There’s no place else to put it,” Taylor said of the drywall, carpet and flooring ripped from their home.
On Thursday, Taylor got a notice from “PS Property Management” saying the piles need to go. Read more:
HOA Reform Coalition 