Merry Bizaromas - Frederick Meekins
Nancy Levy sent this link to an essay that compares Christmas in an HOA to Bizarro world from the Superman comics, where everything is dysfunctional. That's an analogy I hadn't thought of before, but now that he mentions it...

HOMEOWNERS KEEP FILING – AND WINNING – STATE AND FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUITS

The following was sent to me by Marjorie Murray of the Center for California Homeowner Association Law, which is where the link above will take you. This is a piece from their newsletter, which you can subscribe to by going to their web site and following the "Press Room/Newsletter" link on the left side of the page. I do not have any independent knowledge of the case described below, so if you have any inquiries direct them to Marjorie or the attorneys involved in the case.

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SACRAMENTO -- Working through Fair Housing agencies, legal aid groups and private attorneys, homeowners keep filing civil rights lawsuits against their associations – and winning.
In June, the estate of David Donnell settled with Snowshoe Springs Association (Calaveras County) for an undisclosed amount approved by the U.S. District Court Eastern District in Sacramento [Case # CIV S-01-1953 MCE KJM.].
Disabled by lifelong health problems, including epilepsy, Donnell sued Snowshoe in federal court after it tried to foreclose on his home in order to collect about $1200 in late assessments. [Sacramento Bee, Jan 14, 2001.] The board refused his offer – made publicly – to pay his debt in installments.
With the help of Sentinel Fair Housing, Donnell later petitioned the board formally under Fair Housing laws to be allowed to pay in installments. Still the board refused. The board later claimed foreclosure was the only way to force him to pay. The association had no foreclosure policy in place, when it tried to seize his cabin, built by his parents 40 years ago. The Donnell foreclosure would have been Snowshoe’s first.
The Bee article generated the pro bono services of Roseville attorney, Michael L. Johnson, who stopped the foreclosure. Donnell later sued the Association, several board members as individuals, one homeowner not on the board, association attorney, Curtis Sproul, and his law firm Genshlea Chediak & Sproul for trying to seize his home in a nonjudicial foreclosure. KGS Community Services, the debt collection firm hired by Snowshoe and owned by Sproul’s ex-wife, was not named in the suit.
A chief cause of action in the suit was that the defendants violated civil rights statutes by refusing to grant Donnell’s request to pay in installments and then moving to foreclose when it had no policy to foreclose. After the suit was filed, the SSA board adopted a foreclosure policy.
But before his case could come to trial, Donnell died from his disabilities in September 2005 in a Calaveras County hospital. Snowshoe attorneys moved quickly to get the case dismissed. However, Federal Judge Morrison England granted the petition of Donnell’s sisters to let the suit against Snowshoe forward on behalf of his estate.
On the eve of trial, Snowshoe settled out of court in a confidential agreement approved by Judge England. At Snowshoe’s annual meeting in July, property manager Mark Redding said, “The settlement didn’t cost us anything.” However, sources close to the case estimate that, in addition to the settlement money paid to Donnell’s estate, the insurance company alone paid an estimated $250,000 in legal fees to litigate the case. Whether the costs result is higher insurance premiums to Snowshoe – and higher assessments to homeowners -- is unclear. – end --

Taco Bell uses self-serving polls, too

About 1 in 3 frequent fast-food customers say they plan to eat less often at Taco Bell — or not at all — as a result of the chain's recent E. coli outbreak, according to a national poll done for USA TODAY...Taco Bell President Greg Creed declined in a phone interview to comment on Sandelman's findings. He said Taco Bell has been doing its own polling since the outbreak and that 94% of people who describe themselves as Taco Bell eaters have a "positive" view of the brand; 82% believe the food is "safe."
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What does this have to do with common interest housing? I am often asked about the significance of the Zogby and Gallup polls commissioned by the Community Associations Institute that report general satisfaction with HOAs. I think there are polls, and there are polls. If you work hard enough to get data supporting a particular position, and you ask the questions carefully enough, you can get the data you are looking for. But that isn't social science in my book.

I drove past the local Taco Bell at lunchtime, and there were four cars in the lot. What's my point? Commissioned polls be damned. Taco Bell customers have a choice and they are voting with their feet. It would nice if new home buyers weren't forced into HOAs and condos so we could see what they really want.

Ho, ho, ho.

Suzette Kelo's holiday greeting card to the City of New London
NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) -- The woman at the center of a national battle over property rights has sent some not-so-joyous tidings to people involved in taking her house to make way for private development. Susette Kelo's holiday cards feature a snowy image of her pink house and a message that reads, in part, "Your houses, your homes, your family, your friends. May they live in misery that never ends. I curse you all. May you rot in hell. To each of you I send this spell." The cards were conceived and produced by a friend of Kelo's and sent to city officials and members of New London's development agency. Kelo said she also considered sending the cards to five U.S. Supreme Court justices who ruled in June 2005 that New London had the right to take homes in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood to make way for a riverfront project slated to include condominiums, a hotel and office space.

2005 Tar Heel of the Year - Self-Help's Martin Eakes
Here's a story about the man who started Self Help Credit Union, which in turn created the Center for Responsible Lending. And CRL did the study referenced below. Sounds like quite a fellow.

Report Reveals 2.2 Million Borrowers Face Foreclosure on Subprime Home Loans: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

You can download the pdf of this report at the CRL website, linked in this snippet. It makes for some scary reading, especially when you look the tables. The West will be hit very hard if the data and analysis are correct, and my quick review of the study tells me it appears to be a solid piece of work.

A new Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) study reveals that 2.2 million American households will lose their homes and as much as $164 billion due to foreclosures in the subprime mortgage market. Titled, "Losing Ground: Foreclosures in the Subprime Market and Their Cost to Homeowners," the CRL study is the first comprehensive, nationwide review of millions of subprime mortgages originated from 1998 through the third quarter of 2006. CRL's research suggests that risky lending practices have triggered the worst foreclosure crisis in the modern mortgage market, projecting that one out of five (19.4%) subprime loans issued during 2005-2006 will fail...Trouble in the overall subprime market spells trouble for African American and Latino families across the country. Although white families receive more subprime loans overall, African Americans and Latinos receive a higher proportion of high-cost loans than any other group, a fact consistently verified annually by data lenders submit under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). "Losing Ground" estimates that 8 to 10 percent of all African American and Latino families who received a home loan in 2005 will be affected by subprime foreclosures.

Suburban sprawl may create heavier kids - Yahoo! News

Using data from a national health survey, researchers found that teenagers living in sprawling suburbs were more than twice as likely to be overweight as teens in more compact urban areas. The findings echo those of a 2003 study by the same researchers that focused on U.S. adults. The researchers believe the same factors may be driving the link between suburban living and teenagers' weight -- the major one being reliance on cars. "In a sprawling suburb, you can do very little on foot," said lead study author Dr. Reid Ewing of the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Education and Research.


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Fred Pilot wants to create a new planned community where you have to walk to work and school. How to enforce it, I wonder? Maybe the CC&Rs?

Fighting for oversight - baltimoresun.com
Thanks to Fred Pilot for this:

Seeking to address complaints about abuses in Maryland's growing number of homeowners and condominium associations, a state task force is calling for greater local oversight of these quasi-governmental bodies, which essentially tax their residents to take care of swimming pools, playgrounds, trash pickup and other community services...But the panel balked at calling for greater state enforcement of existing condo and homeowners association laws, for making the laws uniform across housing types or for establishing a "bill of rights" for residents of such communities. "It's a start, but it falls way short of where advocates for residents wanted to go," said Alexander Hekimian, a task force member. The president of a townhouse association in Columbia, he said he has long advocated for greater accountability in associations, including the Columbia Association, which essentially governs a community of nearly 100,000 people in Howard County. Hekimian contended that the task force was stacked with association representatives and "passed the buck" on addressing abuses by leaving enforcement largely up to local governments. He had drafted a two-page "bill of rights" for residents similar to one backed nationally by AARP. But he said the task force was unwilling even to endorse the concept, much less his language.

Developers target niche home buyers | Chicago Tribune
If you look hard enough, you can find some comments by this McKenzie guy.

From American Homeowners Resource Center: JUDGE PUBLICLY ADMONISHED FOR COMMENTS
This is quite a story and I'd recommend reading the whole thing, but here's a sample:

James M. Brooks is a superior court judge in Santa Ana, Orange County, California. He started as a municipal court judge in 1987, and was moved to the superior court in 1998.On November 29, 2006, the Commission on Judicial Performance issued a Public Admonishment - one of the Commission's highest sanctions. In deciding to make the Admonishment public, the Commission noted that he had been disciplined for similar conduct before. This was in response to a complaint filed by Arnold McMahon against Brooks...In the other case, Palacio del Mar Homeowners Association v McMahon, the Commission found that Brooks made statements to the McMahons that were "sarcastic, demeaning and intimidating." Arnold McMahon was explaining to Brooks that he had not been able to attend a deposition because at 3.30a.m. in the morning, he experienced intense pressure in his chest. After his doctor discovered an abnormality in his EKG, the doctor sent him to hospital, where he was admitted to the cardiac unit with a suspected heart attack. Brook's response was: "Gee. I wonder what's going to happen when we put you in jail, Mr. McMahon. Your little ticker might stop, you think?" To Elizabeth McMahon, Brooks stated that if she did not show up for her deposition, "it will be [$]10,000 payable to the court. I'd mention jail but it might give her heart attack."

Just got back from the National League of Cities conference
Tracy Gordon of PPIC and I did a presentation on CIDs and cities, mderated by Kevin Frazell. It was fascinating to hear the audience questions, because they confirmed a number of things that I had said in my presentation. First, many people confirmed that cities are mandating CIDs in new housing. We heard this from delegates from several states. Second, many confirmed that as the developments age and need major fixes that they can't afford, the HOAs come to the cities for help that may not be forthcoming. Third, a number of attendees also confirmed that there are plenty of defunct CIDs around, where the BOD is nonexistent, no dues are being collected, and problems are being created for local government.

Tracy's work is really excellent, and you can get it from the PPIC website. She has the best data on California CIDs available, and she is a very even-handed and responsible researcher. She envisions HOAs and cities gradually working out a functional relationship. I tend to be more pessimistic, because there are so many problems with HOA finances and leadership, but I think she has a point. It is important to keep in mind that in the long run most of the time people find a way to muddle through. But on the other hand, remember the Savings and Loan industry?

MercuryNews.com | 12/10/2006 | Droves say goodbye to Golden State
Fred Pilot sent this along. I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago. I saw nothing but yuppies, homeless people, tourists, and dogs (the residents of San Francisco have an average of 6.3 dogs, if my sampling is accurate). There are no kids in the city, except the ones the tourists bring. It costs a bazillion dollars to rent or buy anything you can live in. And now, forget about San Francisco--it costs a fortune to live even in San Bernardino. So for the first time in memory, people are getting out of California.

Between 2004 and 2005, the migration flow into California from the other 49 states started flowing the other way. Data from the state Department of Finance shows that, for the first time this decade, more people left California in 2005 for another state than the number who moved in. Mary Heim, a finance department demographer, says this particular kind of outflow will continue for the foreseeable future. Unlike the tens of thousands who left Silicon Valley following the tech bust earlier this decade, the new migration is about the quest for something besides a job: a better quality of life at a lower cost of living.

12 million suburbanites live in poverty - Yahoo! News
Fred Pilot sent this link to a story that is buried in the newspapers as well. I have a couple of reactions. First, can we finally have an end to the leftist academics and politicians insisting that cities are full of poor people and suburbs are places of affluence and whiteness? It turns out that now a majority of the nation's poor live in the suburbs, which happen to be place of enormous economic and racial diversity. Second, as Fred notes, what does this suggest about the future of CIDs? I have been arguing for years (and will be arguing at the National League of Cities conference in Reno, where I'm headed today) that we need to watch out for a fiscal crisis in CIDs, as buildings and infrastructure wear out and the reserves are not there, nor is the insurance coverage, nor the construction defect litigation, and therefore not even the bank loan, to pay for repairing and replacing it. Now, add this story to the mix. There are the poor, and also the house-poor. Most of the new housing in suburbs is in CIDs, including loads of former cheesy apartment buildings that are now slightly less cheesy condominiums. Many programs have pushed a lot of relatively low income people into these buildings as first time owners. They, especially, may not have the revenue to do the upkeep and major repairs on these older condo conversion buildings. Tick, tick, tick...

The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas released Thursday. "Economies are regional now," said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty."

Article - News - Leisure World must open its records
This is an interesting turn of events to which I was alerted by the ever-alert Fred Pilot. Leisure World, which is a giant common interest community, is run by Golden Rain Foundation, a non-profit corporation. Residents ask to see corporate records under the David-Stirling Act that regulates CIDs. The corporation says it is not a CID, is not governed by the Act, and doesn't have to release the records. Lawsuit happens. Judge says: oh, yes, you are a CID.

Nice try at avoiding accountability under the law, but no cigar.

...residents argued that Golden Rain was a homeowners association, a type of common interest development. Golden Rain argued that it was a nonprofit corporation and not a common interest development. Consequently, officials said they were not legally obligated to release records to residents. Although Golden Rain voluntarily made public many of its financial records, the residents who sued said they wanted a legal right to access the documents.

Flag-raising raises a fuss at Lino Lakes condo
Fred Pilot sent this along. The flagpole seems to be in the common area, which creates some fairly obvious problems.

World War II veteran Robert Goergen knows he's breaking the rules at his home in Lino Lakes, yet he vows to fight for his right to fly his beloved United States flag as it was meant to be flown -- high and free in the wind. At issue is the placement of a 15-foot flagpole that Goegen planted outside his condominium. Condo managers say the flag is flying on land that belongs to the association, not to him, and they're demanding that he remove the pole and fly the flag according to regulations.

Texas House of Representatives: Member Burt Solomons
Here's the legislator who introduced HR 222, referenced below. This is the ban on municipal mandating of CID construction.

TLO - 80(R) History for HB 222
This is the bill I referred to a few days ago that would do away with municipal mandates for HOAs, at least in Texas.

Judge rewards flagpole lawyer
Fred Pilot sent another account of the work of Attorney Barry Silver, who was awarded twice his usual fees for winning the appeal on behalf of Georg Andres. I think nothing could change the situation of CID owners faster than making the association pay the owner's attorney. As Silver puts it:

Silver got a temporary injunction that kept Andres' American flag flying and then won an appeal that reversed the rulings against Andres. As Silver made the case, he said, he saw a way to argue that the homeowners association should pick up the tab for his services. "In Florida, homeowners associations are used to running roughshod over the rights of their clients. And the reason they can do that is once they decide to go after one of their own homeowners, it's virtually impossible for a homeowner to find an attorney to represent them," Silver said, explaining the crux of his argument.Circuit Court Judge Edward Fine bought it, and as part of the decision awarded Silver twice his regular hourly fee, because of the risk involved in taking such a labor-intensive case without guarantee of payment.

TCPalm: Judge awards legal fees to Jupiter man involved in flag flap

Latest events in the Georg Andres case, sent by Shu Bartholomew:

A Jupiter man fighting to fly the American flag on a pole on his property is claiming victory in a judge's decision to award his attorney legal fees. But the win for Boca Raton attorney Barry Silver's success in a foreclosure action appeal is part of a larger war between George Andres and his homeowner's association that isn't yet over.

The Peace Wreath
Look what just came in over the transom. Thanks, Jim, for a fine piece of Peacemas poetry.

Every Loma at Lindaville liked Peace a lot
But the Grinch and his Cronies certainly DID NOT!
This Grinch hated Peace!
The whole Peacetime season!
Now please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason!
It could be perhaps he just liked to fight, or
Maybe his head was screwed on to the Right.
But we think the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

No matter the reason.
His heart or his head,
He felt really bad, and troubled instead.
The more the Grinch dwelled on the Peace Sign thing
the more he ached to stop the whole thing!
"I must stop this Peace Wreath from being,...but how!
"I know what I'll do, I won't stand this abuse"
He thunked to himself "All I need's an excuse"

He looked for an excuse to take the Wreath down.
But, since excuses are scarce there were none to be found.
Did that stop this ol' Grinch...?
NO! The Grinch simply said
"If I can't find an excuse I'll make one instead!"
He did better than that, he made a Big List,
and Right here they are, and some we have missed.



The Wreath may offend, or it might not be nice,
it might be for Pagans, who drink wine with ice!
Maybe it's code, all secret and sneaky,
Maybe these Loma's are just being cheeky!
Then he fired his cronies (who weren’t so uptight),
They said it’s not bad, but the Lights kept him up nights!
He puzzled and twisted and puzzled some more,
He listed excuses, till his Puzzler was sore.

Then finally his Puzzler hit on the Thing!
Maybe really this Wreath’s not such a bad Zing!
Maybe Peace to the World isn’t so bad,
Maybe Peace to the World, shouldn’t make him so Mad!
Imagine; a world where folks spoke up for Peace!
Like Lisa, the Loma, with her Peace Wreath!

And what happened then...?
In Lindaville they say
That the Grinch's small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight
He could answer his phone and not hide all the night!
He stopped all his Trickzies, and called off his goons
...and he hung back the Wreath, by the light of the moon!

Jim Fuge
Southwest Colorado Peace and Justice Coalition
refuge@frontier.net
jimfuge@webtv.net