Friday, August 21, 2009

DA looks into Channelview complaints | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

DA looks into Channelview complaints | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "The issues at play in Sterling Green South focus attention on the practices of management companies that collect assessments for associations representing millions of American families.

In many neighborhoods, particularly those in unincorporated areas such as Sterling Green South, power and knowledge are limited to the management company, attorneys who focus on collections and perhaps the association president, said Evan McKenzie, a University of Illinois-Chicago political science professor whose research specializes in private governance.

“It's the most massive privatization of local government that has ever happened,” McKenzie said. “There's no transparency at all.”"

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Don't think I posted this earlier.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, where are the local DA's in areas of Pennsylvania who should be prosecuting those groups who plot and plan these frauds upon the courts and forced, illegall homelessness?

Anonymous said...

Note the management company under investigation is one of Texas Sen John Carona's, namely, Principal Management Group.

In Pennsylvania, he operates under the alias Associa and the local management company is "Mid-Atlantic"

In Texas, his modus operandi is to infiltrate the board, convince the board members to adopt a "priority of payment resolution" which empowers his organization to extort monies other than assessments from homeowners by threatening them with foreclosure. This business practice is unlawful in many states, but not Texas at this time. It is difficult to get reform when you have a senator personally profiting from this unscrupulous business practice.

As you can tell from the article, another modus operandi is to try to intimidate homeowners who expose his business practices by ridiculing them or threatening them with lawsuits to protect the reputation of his management companies (i.e., to prevent others from finding out). He uses an attorney out of the Washington, DC office of Patton Boggs despite the fact that there is no shortage of attorneys in Dallas or even the Dallas office of Patton Boggs (~ 100 attorneys). What do you think the senator wants to hide?

You will also undoubtedly find that his management company will recommend a title company that he owns/controls. Insurance payments will be made to another company he owns/controls. Your management contract will require 10% of insurance proceeds paid as a result of a loss claim to be paid to his organization - this is the same insurance policy he sold you. Your HOA will be charged a premium for a "community website" hosted with another organization he owns/controls. Your banking will probably be switched to First Associations Bank - no mention, of course, of his ownership interest in that bank.

Recordkeeping (as evidenced by the article above) is designed to obfuscate the connections and the money flow. Sen Carona's organization has vehemently opposed open records and open meetings in HOAs for years. Why do you think that is? Could it be that homeowners would discover the graft and corruption running rampant in their HOAs? Who do you think the primary beneficiary of closed records, closed meetings, and all these vendor contracts is?