The Seattle Times:  High court rules a house is a house, even if it floats

Lawyers for the Seattle Floating Homes Association and a similar association in Sausalito, Calif., praised the Supreme Court ruling.

By David G. Savage

Tribune Washington bureau

January 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — A house that floats on the water and has no power to move on its own is a home, not a vessel, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The 7-2 decision upholds laws in California, Washington and other states that say floating homes that are attached to the shore and do not travel are governed by local laws applying to homes, not by federal admiralty law regulating ships and boats. Read more:

consumerist.com:  HOA President Threatens To Sue Newspaper For Using Neighborhood’s Name In Article

 Some residents of an Indiana neighborhood say the leadership of their homeowners association have gotten a bit power-hungry and lawsuit-happy, and the HOA’s response to a local newspaper doesn’t do much to help out the association’s public image.

The Evansville Courier & Press recently wrote a lengthy piece about HOAs and how they can range wildly in quality, from being so laissez-faire that you wonder where your money is going to providing the services your area needs to micro-dictatorships that leave residents unhappy.  Read more:

clickorlando.com:  Orlando condo using DNA from dogs to track owners who don’t clean up

Residents of The Vue fed up over feces left behind

GALVESTON – A Kemah homeowners association has filed suit over what it believes to be financial wrongdoing committed by one of its directors.  In a lawsuit filed Jan. 7 in Galveston County District Court, the Kemah Village Property Owners Inc. asserts Jerry Barras enjoyed “unchecked control of every aspect of Kemah Village.” Barras is a member of the plaintiff’s board of directors along with his father and son, who are co-defendants in the litigation along with a few of Barras’s business interests.

Court papers show Barras “used his total control over Kemah Village to pay unnecessary or exorbitant amounts of money to the Barras Companies,” stating that he made the complainant buy goods and services for said businesses without receiving anything in return. The homeowners association additionally points out that Barras used a lien to “essentially give away” an entire townhome to one of his friends. Read more:

It’s your castle — your house, your yard, your garden. But if you choose to live in a subdivision governed by a homeowners association, you’re not always the king. In fact, you might be too much a king’s subject for your liking .Typically created by developers, HOAs act as private residential governments with leaders elected by other homeowners. They set and enforce rules aimed at protecting property values and collect dues to maintain common areas and costs typically absorbed by local governments. But HOA rules can turn ordinarily wholesome staples of suburban life — basketball hoops in the driveway, sheds, aboveground pools — into violations. Whether they know it or not, homeowners agree to the regulations when purchasing the property. But in this form of ground-level residential government, the rulers often matter more than the rules. Read more:

Federal prosecutors are preparing to seek a long-awaited indictment as early as next week in their final push to charge conspirators in a massive scheme to take over Las Vegas Valley homeowners associations. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has previously reported that as many as a dozen defendants could be named in the corruption indictment being sought by attorneys with the Justice Department’s Fraud Section in Washington, D.C.  Read more:

wrdw.com:  Thousands missing from local HOA

http://www.gazette.com/news/vogrin-149327-morgan-carroll.html

Baxley lives in a deed restricted community. Like all the other homeowners he has to pay Homeowners Association fees. For two years, he didn’t. “I didn’t think they were that threatening,” said Baxley. “I basically blew them off. That was my mistake. I blew off the homeowners association.”  Read more: