The Smart Set: Water View - January 25, 2011

The Smart Set: Water View - January 25, 2011: "The time for sea living is here, and Dennis Chamberland — star of the recent VBS.TV episode “The Aquatic Life of Dennis Chamberland" — intends to be its pioneer. This underwater dominion will be named Aquatica. “We are the first humans who will move there and stay with no intention of ever calling dry land our home again,” he writes on his Atlantica Expeditions website. “We represent the first generation of a people who will live out their lives beneath the sea.”
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And of course there is a web site.

Restless in Texas: HOA inmates rally for reform

Here's a link to the HOA Reform Coalition's Feb. 15 rally in Austin.

AZ Supreme Court accepts George Staropoli's amicus brief in challenge to HOA statute « HOA Constitutional Government

AZ Supreme Court accepts advocate’s amicus brief in challenge to HOA statute « HOA Constitutional Government: "The Arizona Supreme Court has accepted my amicus curiae brief in support of constitutionality of the DFBLS/OAH due process statutes (Gelb v. DFBLS, CV 10-0371-PR). The Court has yet to decide if it will hear the Petition from the homeowner. Neither party objected to my brief, not even the CAI HOA law firm that received harsh treatment. I had presented background facts and arguments in an effort to assist the Court in understanding the disgraceful state of affairs with HOAs."

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Interesting--let's see what effect it has on the court.

Good Legal Advice or Confidence Game? You Decide.

Good Legal Advice or Confidence Game? You Decide.: "An over-reaching attorney, who uses the lure of a “free seminar” to get access to the directors of a community association and, once in the door, threatens the board with personal liability if they don't immediately hire him and his consultants to investigate and pursue a construction defect claim. This scenario is not fiction. It is apparently happening with alarming frequency in the current over-heated market for construction defect legal work. Let's analyze it."

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Thanks to Fred Pilot for forwarding the link to this advice from attorney Tyler Berding. I have seen things like this happen.

Police Arrest Squatters of Foreclosed Home | Articles & Archives | Community Association Management Insider

Police Arrest Squatters of Foreclosed Home | Articles & Archives | Community Association Management Insider: "Police detectives in Newport Beach, Calif., recently arrested a couple for illegally squatting in a $2.6 million, ocean-view home. The couple had previously admitted they had entered the house, changed the locks, and put the utilities in their names, even though they did not own the property or have the owner's consent."
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Several people sent me this, so thanks to all of you, and as it happened I ran across it myself. Given that 11% of US homes are unoccupied and 16.1% of the labor force are unemployed or can't find full-time work (per the U-6) maybe this is the way things are going to be from now on. Sort of a pre-Apocalyptic warmup.

F. A. Hayek, Liberal | Bottom-up

F. A. Hayek, Liberal | Bottom-up: "One of the more pernicious influences of Rand and Rothbard on the libertarian movement was their tendency to treat every policy problem as almost reducible to a logical syllogism. Too many libertarians act as though they don’t need to know very much about the details of any given policy issue because they can deduce the right answer directly from libertarian principles."

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That's a pretty good statement of what's wrong with the libertarian view on HOAs. I found this link originally at Andrew Sullivan's blog

Home Ownership—Nearly 11 Percent of US Houses Empty - CNBC

Home Ownership—Nearly 11 Percent of US Houses Empty - CNBC:

Overbuilding during the housing boom, young people holing up with their parents instead of buying a condo (or even renting one!), other people living with relatives after being foreclosed on, bank-owned properties rotting on the market...I love this economic recovery, don't you?