Posted on 02/08/2015 9:27:33 AM PST by Oldpuppymax
Committees are now drafting bills to be presented in the March session of the Florida legislature. If enough citizen input is received demanding regulation of single family residences in Florida’s gated communities and regulation of drug-re-hab centers now being located in private neighborhoods (which may or may not be gated), relief just may be coming for oppressed homeowners, their families, their children!
About ten years ago, the Flower Pots bill was successfully passed which regulated only residents of condo communities. However, the State of Florida was reluctant to do anything about giving protection to those of us who own and maintain our own homes in gated communities; protection, that is, from the same Condo Commando mentality that made life miserable for condo dwellers. Hopefully, Florida lawmakers will draft and pass legislation that can exemplify for the entire country just what is needed to protect long suffering homeowners from heavy handed tactics of Home Owner Association (HOA) boards of trustees, the legal firms they hire and the management services they engage to “control” residents, many of whom are elderly, sick, or too beaten down to fight back.
We all become aware of the tensions bubbling just beneath the surface of these Potemkin villages when some sick veteran is put through the HOA meat grinder when he tries to fly the American flag in front of a home he fought and sacrificed to make safe. But here are important issues Florida’s lawmakers need to address first: 1. TERM LIMITS now are vital to stop the ingrained and perhaps, self-serving mindset of HOA board members who are returned to office by select cliques which they accommodate in a quid-pro-quo of political nastiness that shuts out other homeowners. One HOA just had their lawyers deem it perfectly acceptable to hold another election when...
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
I have seen to many HOA’s devolve into petty tin horn tyrannies.
Which is why I will never live in one again. One, who was friends with a guy who sold doors, passed a rule that all members had to buy a certain door of a certain color in a few months or be fined the cost of the door plus fees.
My cousin refused, and they drove him out.
HOAs need to be eliminated not controlled.
One of the first questions I ask the realtor is if there is a mandatory HOA. If yes, scratch that possibility. Most HOAS I’ve seen like that are Agenda 21 connected.
Here in florida it’s almost impossible to find a newer home (newer than 1960) that isn’t in a hoa.
Egggzacly! Populated by the "I really want to feel important even though I'm not types".
In my experience, HOAs are just like politics,, the people who want to be involved are the last people on earth that should be.
You signed a contract when you bought in.
Abide by the contract or sell and move out.
Or negotiate a new contract.
If the HOA is breaking the contract, sue.
So sick of these sob stories.
Generally full of people who failed to achieve some level of power in their professional lives, decide the HOA is the way to do it.
Silly me, I had thought that Coloradans were fiercely independent. But one guy decides to put his car up on concrete blocks in his driveway, and rather than shaming him into getting rid of the eyesore they run like little children behind a covenant or gate and make every slight deviation from their idea of the norm an infraction with a fine.
Now that I'm living in an HOA I see both the good and the bad. There are certain things you can only get accomplished through an organized board and with the help of a management company. We've had lazy boards and bad management. We currently have an active (but not fascistic or nepotistic) board with decent management.
What I've also noticed is that very few members of the HOA ever attend board meetings. Even after being bombarded by all sorts of notices, with meetings being held at convenient times and locations, they mostly manage never to attend. They don't even show up when they have been fined and get a chance to make their case. They are too busy working, etc. to make their case. They have plenty of time, however, to craft lengthy emails on the injustices visited upon them by the HOA board.
The only time there are more than one or two people at the board meeting is after a new policy has been implemented, such as cracking down on dogs off leash. Then they start coming out of the woodwork to demand their rights, etc.
I fear for America not because our leaders are so clueless, but because the people are so damned apathetic.
HOA boards, no matter how incompetent or corrupt, can be dealt with, but that requires an amount of time and effort that most citizens aren't willing to sacrifice.
Maybe Florida is a special case. Maybe Floridians are so in favor of less government that they view HOA issues as being between private parties and should be settled by those private parties without government interference. If so, then people who join HOA's in Florida need to know ahead of time that they may have to take time out of their precious TV viewing schedule to fight the HOA, or heaven forfend, become part of the HOA when necessary.
Why? People aren’t forced to buy into HOA neighborhood.
It’s a contract just like any other contract. You enter into if voluntarily
To greet us and welcome us to the community? No. To hand me the rules of the HOA and walk away. Never again.
I guess you could live in a tent.
An HOA near us started to use tire boots on vehicle’s tires if the owner broke their parking rules. Can you imagine coming out your front door to find your tire booted?
http://krqe.com/2014/12/10/homeowners-association-boots-residents-on-city-streets/
In some towns it’s tough to buy a home in a decent part of town that isn’t in an HOA.
Yeah, HOAs are a scourge. One of the first things I checked when looking at houses.
We had a voluntary hoa in the neighborhood where i bought my cottate...
i served for 2 years on the board..
i quit when they started to want to interview the candidates before they went on the ballot..
i screamed that if this board even remotely attempts to interfere with an election, my first call would be to the michigan board of elections...
the dude that made that statement is now president of the board..
little hitlers/stalins...
I’m convinced their main purpose is to protect the developer until he sells all the homes and bails.
I’ve started seeing a creepy commercial on TV for DelWebb.com, which looks like a “retirement” type community but it features a Stepfordy-type lady talking about how fun it is to ride her bike with her community pals and to ride faster and faster and faster. I’ve not heard of Delwebb but I know it has an HOA.
HOA s are the worst form of the nanny state. Can’t believe you are on this site.
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