HOA buys personal alarms for kids following attempted abduction - Story | WOFL:
"The community is not waiting for law enforcement to increase their sense of security. Instead, they are footing the bill for each kid to have a personal alarm. "We've raised over $2,000 in the past couple of days," said parent Stephanie Lerret. "It's a dual-button switch where the student has to hit both buttons to activate if they're in an uncomfortable situation."
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I can't tell from the article whether or not this headline is correct. "HOA buys" suggests that the association is using their funds to buy the alarms. But the body of the article seems to suggest that parents, or the association BOD, are raising money from voluntary contributions and buying the alarms with those funds. The latter approach seems more likely to me, given that using money from assessments for an expense like this could be questioned.
3 comments:
....and your observation confirms the never-ending confusion over whether "association" refers to the people living there or the corporate entity. The term "association" is in fact INTENDED to confuse prospective purchasers, owners, the public, juries, judges, legislators, etc.
If we stop catering to the industry's desire to blur the distinction with the word "association" then we should emphasize "corporation" whenever referring to these entities.
A headline from 20 minutes into the future:
“H.O.A. Corporation Buys Ankle-Bracelet Monitors For Residents”
“In an effort to increase community safety, your Board of Directors are requiring all residents to wear ankle-bracelets, which will transmit their location to the H.O.A. corporation’s contracted security office. Failure to wear the bracelet will incur a fine of $100 per day of non-compliance. Your voluntary cooperation with this community safety initiative is appreciated.”
“In addition to the ankle monitors, the locks on all exterior doors will be replaced with card readers, which will be connected to the H.O.A. corporation’s contracted security office. This will allow the management company to (1) ensure that all residents have arrived home safely at the end of the day, and (2) to allow access to individual units in the event of an emergency or CC&R compliance inspection. Please schedule an appointment with the management company to receive your home access card. Each occupant will be required to appear in person to be photographed for their new I.D. card.”
“A special assessment will be levied to pay for the ankle bracelets, electronic locks, and home access I.D. cards. Owners will be charged a $100-per-year-per-occupant fee for the new monitoring services, in addition to their regular and special assessments.”
If the above scenario in my previous comment sounds far-fetched, consider that “Republicans have this weird view of the world that the government is the only entity with outsized power. All other people/entities are assumed to have equal power, such that anything that happens between them must prima facie be mutually agreeable. The government's outsized power should never be utilized to interfere with that ‘mutual agreement’ (in quotes because in the real world employers have more power than employees when it comes to things like this).”
- comment by Chuckstar in response to “New bill would let companies force workers to get genetic tests, share results. Under the guise of ‘voluntary’ wellness programs, employees’ genetics could be exposed” (Ars Technica, 03/10/2017).
In an H.O.A. corporation, home owners have the same rights as employees do at work: the right to do as they’re told, resulting from the “contractual” relationship between the individual and the corporation. The difference is people at work are paid to be managed. At the end of the day they go to their H.O.A.-burdened home where they pay for the privilege of being managed and told what to do by a corporation. Ten years ago, Robert Metcalf described the growth of H.O.A.-burdened housing as “a systematic infusion of corporate culture and governance into the domestic lives of an ever larger share of the American population. Who wants to live at work?” ("Position Statement on Common Interest Developments”. 2007. Emphasis in original. Mr. Metcalf was the then Treasurer of the Concord Crossing H.O.A. corporation in Chadds Ford, PA).
It’s absolute insanity, yet we Americans have been conditioned to accept this as normal.
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