By Noah Haglund

October 24, 2014

LYNNWOOD — The first whiff of a sewage problem at Ruth Crompton’s house arrived by mail. It came in the form of an Aug. 6 demand from the Snohomish Health District to fix a bad sewer connection or move out. Now, Crompton and her neighbors are stuck with a $15,500 repair bill for a nine-year-old problem that wasn’t their fault. Snohomish County officials concede as much, but say the responsibility to clean up the mess on private property rests with the small homeowners association. A county building inspector approved Crompton’s plumbing when the home was built. The developer has long since gone out of business. “I’m assuming when I buy this house, the sewage is hooked up,” Crompton said. “How many people failed here?” An Iraq War veteran who works as an auditor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Crompton has compiled a dossier of notes, timelines and permitting information, seeking answers for what went wrong. She’s invested hundreds of dollars in repairs, several days off work and an incalculable amount of stress. She’s vowing not to pay another cent.  Read more:

Guest blog by Deborah Goonan

November 6, 2014

A recent particle published at Virginia’s TimesDispatch.com, has summarized the proliferation of HOAs as follows:

“(Homeowners’) associations are nearly ubiquitous for new residential housing in the Richmond area, embraced by developers as a way to handle long-term care of common amenities and by local officials as “mini-governments” that can help maintain order and property value.”

The article’s author, Ted Strong, interviewed several county officials on the subject. For readers who may doubt claims of some home buyers that it is nearly impossible to find HOA-free housing in many parts of America, just feast your eyes on the following blatant admissions by Richmond, VA, area officials representing Henrico County:

Kirk Turner, Chesterfield County’s director of planning, said his county wants the associations in the vast majority of cases. “From our standpoint, we actually encourage the creation of an HOA….”

At this point, “probably 100 percent” of new subdivisions in Chesterfield County of at least 20 lots have associations, Turner said.  Read more:

By Ken Amaro

November 3, 2014

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It seems hard to believe that someone could lose their home for failing to pay late fees related to their community assessment. “I’m still in disbelief,” said John Shaffer. Shaffer, a prolific musician, Ph. D., and grandfather can’t wrap his hands nor his mind around what happened. “I don’t see how this happened,” said Shaffer. “I don’t see how this happened.”

On Oct. 28, his home was auctioned off for $12,700 to Duval Land Trust, pursuant to chapter 45 of Florida statutes. “It is just not right,” he said. How did it happen? Court documents show Shaffer owed maintenance fees from October 2011 to January 2014 for a total of $177.70. Shaffer said he eventually paid, but not the attorney fees. He said he was not properly invoiced. “All I did was argued paying a legal fee that I don’t think, to this day, that I owe,” he said.  Read more:

By Darcy Spears

October 28, 2014

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) — A devastated pet owner finds a simple solution after a coyote kills one of her animals right in her own backyard.

So why is her HOA saying no to safety?

“I love cats and I just want them to have a safe environment.” Before you even walk through Marie Hodge’s front door, her love of cats is on full display. The 74-year-old widow lives alone with her furry family.

More than a cat, Arne was Marie’s companion for the last 12 years, “He was the most beautiful kitten I’d ever seen and the bonding was unreal that we had together.”

Arne would travel with her in her motor home. He even walked her east valley neighborhood on a leash.

“People would look out the window and go, ‘Oh my gosh. What is that? That’s a kitty.’ And I’d go, ‘That’s Arne.'”

Arne’s life was cut short three months ago when a coyote jumped Marie’s wall and killed her beloved pet in her backyard.

“When I saw him out there, I couldn’t even believe it that he was gone.”  Read more:

By Jeff German

October 30, 2014

In the summer of 2011, Justice Department lawyers were wheeling and dealing behind closed doors with dozens of targets in the long-running investigation of a scheme to take over homeowners associations in the Las Vegas Valley.

One of those who flirted with taking a deal was former construction company boss Leon Benzer, the man prosecutors call the mastermind of the biggest public corruption case in Nevada history, according to sealed investigative reports obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

As the high-profile case heated up, Benzer and his defense lawyer, Daniel Albregts, secretly met four times with prosecutors and investigators at the FBI’s local office over three months. But no plea agreement was made. Benzer was indicted by a federal grand jury.

But during those wide-ranging discussions, Benzer detailed how he corrupted HOA boards through bribery and election rigging to obtain millions of dollars in construction defect contracts, the reports show.

The scheme was hatched because Benzer felt competing construction companies were using their connections to make it difficult for his company to break into the defect repair business, according to the reports.

He told investigators that the scheme, which ran from 2003 to 2009, was aided by a $1.5 million loan from construction defect lawyer Nancy Quon to purchase condos for straw buyers to be elected to HOA boards.

Benzer, 47, admitted he gave his personal lawyer, Keith Gregory, a $10,000 bribe for work on the HOA takeover at the Vistana condominium complex in southwest Las Vegas. Gregory is also under indictment.

Benzer recalled paying Gregory from his personal account “as a ‘thank you’ for ‘working with us.’ ”

“When questioned as to exactly what he meant by thank you and whether the payment was more accurately described as a bribe payment, Benzer advised that the term bribe was ‘your language’ and he didn’t like to use that term, but that the answer was ‘basically yes,’ ” reads one report.  Read more:

By Jeff German

October 31, 2014

Lawyers for defendants charged in the scheme to take over Las Vegas-area homeowners associations want the high-profile Feb. 23 trial moved out of Las Vegas.

In federal court papers filed late Thursday, lawyers for Las Vegas attorney Keith Gregory said he can’t get a fair trial because of the mass of ongoing “prejudicial” media coverage of the case, primarily from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“The decibel level and tenor of the pretrial publicity which has surrounded this case has been vivid, unforgettable and blatantly prejudicial to the point that it is for all intents and purposes impossible for defendant Keith Gregory and the other defendants to obtain a fair trial in Clark County, Nevada,” wrote Salt Lake City lawyer Rodney Snow.

“Newspaper articles and media pieces have made an unrelenting point of condemning and preordaining a conviction. This is an extreme case which, through a battery of repetition and recrimination, the public has become poisoned against the defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights.”

The move for a change of venue comes as the lawyer for Leon Benzer, the former construction company boss accused of masterminding the HOA takeover scheme, filed court papers late Thursday to stop the Review-Journal from publishing a story on secret talks Benzer held with prosecutors in 2011 to strike a plea deal in the long-running federal investigation. Read more:

By DANIEL HOUSTON

Neighborsgo

Published: 31 October 2014

By Lisa Buie

October 12, 2014

WESLEY CHAPEL — When Bobby Martin suggested his homeowners association hire a public relations firm to help pull his neighborhood from the pit of plummeting property values, his fellow board members responded with skepticism.”It was initially shot down,” said Martin, a 31-year-old financial planner who moved to the Bridgewater community in 2005. But after listening to his pitch — that the move would put the 760-home Lennar community ahead of others in the competition to rebound from the housing collapse — they embraced the idea.

So Martin brought in Jack Glasure, a buddy he met through a networking group, to market Bridgewater to families in hopes of filling the vacant and rental homes with owners. Glasure, a graduate of Saint Leo University, works for French West Vaughan, a North Carolina firm with an office in Ybor City. Its clients include such national brands as Wrangler and Coca-Cola. Closer to home, it represents the troubled BayWalk shopping center in St. Read more:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/wesley-chapels-bridgewater-tries-a-pitching-edge-to-find-buyers/1043512

By Valerie Wigglesworth

October 31, 2014

A district judge’s ruling on Friday effectively allows the nonprofit City House to operate its transitional living program for homeless young adults in a home in a deed-restricted neighborhood in Frisco.

District Judge Jill Willis ruled after a hearing on the arguments that a Frisco homeowners association failed to meet its burden for injunctive relief. The board for the PR2 Homeowners Association had sought to keep City House from expanding its operation in the neighborhood while the civil case is pending. No trial date has been set.

Chad Robinson, who represents the HOA board for the Plantation Resort 2 community, declined to comment after the ruling, saying he needed to consult with his clients. He had argued during Friday’s hearing that the HOA’s deed restrictions required that the homes be used for single-family residential purposes only.

“This case is about the law,” he said. “Just because they are a just cause doesn’t mean they don’t have to follow the law.”

He argued that single-family use restricted the homes in the neighborhood to people who are related by blood or by law. He said Texas courts have also allowed other limited uses, such as nannies or a single renter. But nothing in the law allows for eight unrelated women in a transitional living program to be considered a single family, he argued.  Read more:

guest blog by Deborah Goonan

October 29, 2014

We have a huge, systemic problem in the US. It used to be that regulation was enacted and enforced to protect the People, the taxpaying constituents of government. The purpose of regulation was to uphold individual rights and to honor our federal and state Constitutions.

Over the years, that original purpose has been perverted by pervasively symbiotic public-private partnerships between large corporations and every level of government. Unfortunately, many of America’s elected public servants have sold out to special business interests that contribute heavily to campaigns and pay lobbyists to create and promote self-perpetuating legislation.  Even some of our elected judges have shifted their loyalties to corporate and government cronies instead of individual Americans.

The great citizens’ challenge presented to us in the 21^st century is restoring America’s values to upholding the inalienable rights of its people. American government’s focus must shift away from protecting profits and revenue of power players, to the detriment of We the People.  Read more: