MARIETTA, Ga. - A condominium owner who's been without water for over a year is pleading with the Magnolia Lane Homeowner's Association in Marietta to turn her water back on. Helen Burgess says she is trying to pay off her debt but says the HOA just won't work with her.
Burgess' attorney said if the Magnolia Lane HOA accepted Burgess' offer last year, she would've shaved close to $3,000 off her debt, but now she's added another $3,000.
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They're all heart, these HOAs, aren't they? They won't work with her and instead of making it easy, they just make it harder for her.
Here is another happy homeowner Zogby missed. An "isolated incident"? I think not.
1 comment:
"Since HOAs are very local and small, participants are often neighbors and hence have incentive to settle disagreements in a civil manner."
-The Independence Institute
"Free-Market Alternatives to Zoning"
February 28, 2009
Perhaps you should invite Jon Caldara, the president of the Independence Institute, on your program to defend this editorial.
If so, you can ask him
(1) whether he lives in a mandatory membership HOA. If he's been living in Boulder for nearly two decades, I suspect not, unless he lives in the Gunbarrel area of north-east Boulder, near the country club.
(2) why he moved to Boulder, and continues to live there, given how much he bad-mouths the politics, the community, and Boulder's housing policies. As the Independence Institute has correctly pointed out, Boulder's limited growth policies (PDF) make housing here more expensive than the surrounding communities. It also makes living here much more desirable.
I don't know how we can be the happiest city in the U.S., with all the non-HOA housing available.
(3) why the Independence Institute, which created the Property Rights Project and Center for the American Dream, has ignored the effects of HOAs on the housing market and individual private property rights.
(4) how adding another layer of government -- even if it's privatized corporate government -- and another layer of taxation advances freedom and liberty.
(5) if he disagrees with Barbara Hogan that comprehensive legislation is the only solution to the problems created by HOAs. If so, what solutions does he propose?
And although he can't speak for all conservatives and Republicans, perhaps he can address
(6) why conservatives consider mandatory membership in a labor union as a condition of employment unacceptable, but support the idea of mandatory membership in a homeowners union as a condition of property ownership? The "right-to-work" laws favored by conservatives are government interference between an employer and employee. When it comes to protecting homeowners from HOAs, they prefer to let the so-called "free market" work things out.
(7) whether conservatives would support the idea of "HOA dues protection" laws, which would prohibit CAI affiliated property management companies and law firms from using money collected from homeowners for political lobbying purposes. Conservatives do support "paycheck protection" laws to prohibit labor unions from using union dues for political lobbying purposes.
Mr. Caldara is in favor of both "right to work" and "paycheck protection" (Nov. 10, 2002)
(8) why conservatives support tort reform to limit the rights of individuals suing corporations, but have been silent about the extortionist tactics of the parasitic HOA plaintiffs attorneys and their hyper-litigation against individual homeowners.
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