Condo and HOA Law by Donna DiMaggio Berger, Esq.

Condo and HOA Law by Donna DiMaggio Berger, Esq.
Now, where do you think Donna Berger got the idea for the layout of her condo law weblog? Hmmmm.
Thanks to Fred Pilot for pointing this out.

Brutal death sours cup joy | World news | The Observer

Brutal death sours cup joy | World news | The Observer: "The incident is the clearest demonstration yet that many of Rio's favelas are so lawless they are 'parallel states', with their own leaders and rules. Estimates put the membership of drug gangs at 100,000 - more than the entire police force. With an armoury of about 65,000 firearms too, the traffickers are a parallel army. 'They are the law, the only law, and you have to obey them whether you like it or not,' said Clarissa Fonseca de Bastos, a street vendor who lives in a favela known as the Morro da Formiga, or Anthill.

In some slums, say residents, drug lords decide when shops will open and close, who can enter or leave and where and how houses can be built. Their influence is also beginning to extend to middle-class areas and their growing boldness was shown a fortnight ago when the windows of Rio's mayoral office were shattered by bullets."
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We talk about outlaw private governments, but in Brazil they really have them.

Fannie Seeks $15.3 Billion in U.S. Aid After 10th Straight Loss - Bloomberg.com

Fannie Seeks $15.3 Billion in U.S. Aid After 10th Straight Loss - Bloomberg.com: "Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance company under federal conservatorship, said it will seek $15.3 billion in aid from the U.S. Treasury after posting a 10th straight quarterly loss. A fourth-quarter net loss of $16.3 billion, or $2.87 a share, pushed the company to request its fifth draw on an unlimited lifeline from the government..."
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This is going so well. I suppose we can file this in that bulging folder called "lagging indicators"?

HOA? No. The City of Orange.

Orange County's law-breaking landscapers | MNN - Mother Nature Network: "An Orange County, California, couple face steep fines — and possibly jail time — for replacing a conventional grass lawn with drought-tolerant landscaping."
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You might think that a city named after a fruit would be a little more tolerant of an herb garden. But no. Not with all those HOAs around that the city has to imitate!

Wet Mountain Tribune - Protip: weed burner and propane leak don't mix

Wet Mountain Tribune - Page 1 - 2/25/2010: "Alice French, who has lived in the trailer for a number of years, had called her son, Brad, to help thaw a frozen water line. Apparently, Brad was using a weed burner, which is a device hooked to a small propane tank, to thaw the water line under the trailer. “The underside of the trailer caught fire,” said Livengood. “I suspect there was a propane leak under the trailer because Brad reported hearing a ‘whoosh’ immediately before the fire started.” Livengood also said Alice had mentioned smelling propane a few days before."
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And that's a slice of life from Wet Mountain, Colorado.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights « - Blogs from CNN.com

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights « - Blogs from CNN.com: "Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

The survey indicates a partisan divide on the question: only 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents and nearly 7 in 10 Republicans say the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans."
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If we end up with federal government employees running the health insurance industry that number will go up.

Obama May Prohibit Home-Loan Foreclosures Without HAMP Review - Bloomberg.com

Obama May Prohibit Home-Loan Foreclosures Without HAMP Review - Bloomberg.com: "Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.

The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan."
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How does this "ease the housing crisis"? All it does is keep people in the homes they can't pay for. The HAMP program isn't really making all that big a difference.

Aloha Segregation - The Editors - National Review Online

Aloha Segregation - The Editors - National Review Online: "A bill expected to pass the House today with overwhelming Democratic support would accomplish something peculiar for a liberal republic in the 21st century: It would partly disenfranchise a portion of one state’s residents, create a parallel government for those meeting a legislated criterion of ethnic purity, and would portend the transfer of public assets, land, and political power from those who fail to satisfy the standard of ethnic purity to those who do. For these reasons and many more, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act richly deserves opposition."
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This is a conservative perspective on what I think could turn out to be an interesting law--if it passes the Senate and gets President Obama's signature. The fact that he was born in Hawaii and grew there makes it especially intriguing.

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings."
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This past six months has just been one blow after another to the scientific basis for global warming. Personally, I think there has been a clear warming trend since 1850 or so. But you have to question the most dramatic predictions, which appear to rest on projections from data that have some significant problems.

Bad economies in states to worsen: governors | Reuters

Bad economies in states to worsen: governors | Reuters: "The situation is fairly poor for a lot of states around the country. In fact, most states,' Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is chairman of the association, said at a press conference at its annual meeting.

'What we're finding out from a fiscal standpoint is that the worst is yet to come,' Douglas said.

In a survey conducted last week of 45 of the 50 states, the group found that states have $18.8 billion of budget gaps yet to be closed in fiscal 2010. This comes after they have already imposed measures to eliminate budget imbalances totaling $87 billion in the fiscal year, which for most started last summer.

In the budgets they are drafting for fiscal 2011, states foresee shortfalls of $53.6 billion and for fiscal 2012 $61.6 billion."
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And there is more of this "lagging indicator" stuff. This one's different, folks. This isn't cyclical. It's structural.

Banks in Calif., Ill., Fla., Texas are shut down - Yahoo! Finance

Banks in Calif., Ill., Fla., Texas are shut down - Yahoo! Finance: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- Regulators shut four banks from California to Florida on Friday, boosting to 20 the number of U.S. bank failures this year following the 140 closures last year in the worst financial climate in decades."
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And the carnage continues.

Does deal with feds encourage foreclosures?

Does deal with feds encourage foreclosures?: "A bank can make a bigger profit by foreclosing on a homeowner rather than modifying the mortgage, according to two California real estate entrepreneurs. They blame a sweetheart deal that a new bank negotiated with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The California men produced a video that has now gone viral on the internet, outlining a sweetheart deal for billionaire investors who came together to buy out troubled IndyMac Mortgage Services. The newly formed OneWest Bank haggled with the FDIC to buy out IndyMac's mortgages for 70 cents on the dollar, then convinced the feds to cover nearly all their losses with at least 80 cents on the dollar of the original loan values."
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The video link is here.

San Diego Reader | Home Owner Association Horror Stories

San Diego Reader | Home Owner Association Horror Stories: "In a way, the whole HOA is a sucker’s game set up by a collusion of developers and local governments. Unpaid HOA boards use HOA assessment fees to pay for what should be the municipality’s responsibility, such basics as roads, electricity, sewage, and water. Developers create high-profit, high-density housing and then hand it over, lock, stock, and all financial and legal responsibilities to these amateur boards not only to run what often amount to million-dollar businesses, but also to keep on paying property taxes to local government for the infrastructure services those authorities didn’t actually have to provide or keep up. No wonder cities love them just as much as developers. No wonder HOA-run condo complexes have mushroomed sixfold, from 7000 in California 20 years ago to about 43,000 today, housing around 10 million, maybe a quarter of the state’s entire population."
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The San Diego Reader's Bill Manson lays down the smack on HOAs. Quite a story. Thanks to Fred Pilot for this link.

Printing money, local currencies, communities and the economy - MSN Money

Printing money, local currencies, communities and the economy - MSN Money: "Last year, two Detroit tavern owners were sitting at the bar, sampling their beverages and bemoaning the local economy -- no one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money.

It is, after all, perfectly legal for anyone to issue currency, as long as it doesn't look too much like a U.S. dollar. Thus was born the Detroit cheer, a local scrip accepted by a handful of city businesses, including a pizzeria, an electrician and a doggy day care center."
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I think this story ends with people exchanging live pigs for baskets of apples.

Move Over China: Beijing Sells Whopping $34.2 Billion Treasuries In December As Japan Becomes Largest Official Holder Of US Debt | zero hedge

Move Over China: Beijing Sells Whopping $34.2 Billion Treasuries In December As Japan Becomes Largest Official Holder Of US Debt | zero hedge: "Gradually we are getting confirmation that Chinese 'posturing' about offloading US debt is all too real. The most recent TIC data confirmed the Treasury's greatest nightmare: China is now dumping US bonds. In December China sold $34.2 billion of debt ($38.8 billion in Bills sold offset by $4.6 billion in Bonds purchased), lowering its total holdings $755.4 billion, the lowest since February 2009, and for the first time in many years relinquishing the top US debt holder spot to Japan, which bought $11.5 billion (mostly in Bonds, selling $1.4 billion Bills) bringing its total to $768.8 billion."
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Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure - Cincinnati News Story - WLWT Cincinnati

Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure - Cincinnati News Story - WLWT Cincinnati: "The Moscow man used a bulldozer two weeks ago to level the home he'd built, and the sprawling country home is now rubble, buried under a coating of snow.

'As far as what the bank is going to get, I plan on giving them back what was on this hill exactly (as) it was,' Hoskins said. 'I brought it out of the ground and I plan on putting it back in the ground.'"
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Hey, fair is fair.

Las Vegas Mayor Goodman rejects Obama invitation - KTNV ABC,Channel 13,Las Vegas,Nevada,News,Weather,Sports,Entertainment,KTNV.com,Action News .:.

Las Vegas Mayor Goodman rejects Obama invitation - KTNV ABC,Channel 13,Las Vegas,Nevada,News,Weather,Sports,Entertainment,KTNV.com,Action News .:.: "Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) - Mayor Oscar Goodman has refused an invitation to meet with President Obama when he arrives in town on Thursday. Mayor Goodman called President Obama a slow learner after he told Americans not to blow money on a weekend in Las Vegas if they were saving to put their kids through college.

'I've got other things to do quite frankly for my constituents here in Las Vegas who rely on me to do the right thing as a mayor,' explained Mayor Goodman."
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No beer and apologies for Mayor Goodman...

National Debt, Budget Deficit Scary Forecast for Taxpayers: Obama to Sign Fiscal Reform, Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases - ABC News

National Debt, Budget Deficit Scary Forecast for Taxpayers: Obama to Sign Fiscal Reform, Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases - ABC News: "Over the past year alone, the amount the U.S. government owes its lenders has grown to more than half the country's entire economic output, or gross domestic product.

Even more alarming, experts say, is that those figures will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a dramatic shift in course."
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The CID revolution was accelerated by measures that cut or capped property taxes. Imagine what kinds of institutional changes are in store for us. These gigantic deficits at all levels of government will force cuts in services that we think today are essential, and tax increases that we think nobody could afford.

States renege on local aid

States renege on local aid: "“For the last three recession cycles, it’s been common for states to reduce financial support for local governments during the recession, and once they come out of it, they restore most of what they’ve cut,” says Michael Pagano, dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois-Chicago. This time is different. Now local officials are wondering whether that money will ever come back."
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Wondering? Why are they wondering? The money isn't coming back.

Will San Diego go bankrupt?

voiceofsandiego.org | News. Investigation. Analysis. Conversation. Intelligence. - Explainer: Are Pensions Fair Game in Bankruptcy?: "Since last fall, talk of municipal bankruptcy has wormed its way back into public debate at the city of San Diego."
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The city has a $2.1 billion obligation to the public employee pension funds. There is a difference of opinion over whether they can make this go away by filing for municipal bankruptcy.