Homeowners' Cries for Help Go Unanswered

May 13, 2004

By Dan Ackroyd

The world has been awash in the last week with the stories and photographs of the abuse inflicted on prisoners in Iraq. The spotlight has focused on the photographs showing the torture and humiliation, and the big smiles of American troops who watched it all.

Off to the side in the shadows are the reports that organizations such as the International Red Cross and Human Rights Watch reported these abuses to the highest levels of our government last year. Even Colin Powell states he informed the president regularly last year that abuses were taking place. For months and months, nothing was done. Only belatedly in January of this year did the Pentagon order an investigation. In the meantime, how many beatings, tortures, humiliations, deaths occurred? We may never know. It is now apology time once again. But apologies cannot undo the deaths, beatings and the humiliations.

This pattern of government officials refusing to respond to complaints by citizens echoes down through history to our own day. Slaves in this country begged congress to free them. Native Americans begged congress to stop the slaughter of their people and the theft of their land. Nothing happened. Government turned two deaf ears and two blind eyes.

Over the past 20 years, goverment officials have done the same thing to the pleas of homeowners who live in homeowner associations. Instead, they have been all ears and eyes for those who have sought to strip homeowners of their homes and life savings.

George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas signed a law that was passed without any committee hearings just before midnight in the dying seconds of the legislature that allowed non-judicial foreclosure in Texas homeowner associations. Geneva Brooks led a campaign to overturn that bill until her dying day. She has died, but the law has not. Many homeowners have "died" instead. Reportedly, more than 4000 homes have been foreclosed on in Harris County, Texas, alone since the bill passed in 1995.

In legislatures such as Nevada and Arizona, the CAI lawyers have flexed their economic muscle to prevent the elimination of non-judicial foreclosure. Those who have lost their homes as a result are stacked one on top of each other like the bodies in the Abu Ghraib prison.

In California, homeowners over the years have asked government officials such as
• Jackie Speier,
• Jim Battin,
• Bill Morrow,
• John Garamendi,
• Bill Lockyer,

to rid homeowner associations of the rampant abuse that exists in them. Homeowners point out that it was government officials that authorized non-judicial foreclosure, mandated insurance that would be used against homeowners as a sword, that made homeowner associations into cash registers for lawyers, management companies and other vendors. Homeowners filed petition after petition with the California State Bar against such HOA law firms as Peters and Freedman alleging serious violations of the ethics code of the state bar and other offenses - but the state bar did nothing.

It was only this year after Tom Radcliff lost his $280,000 home for $120 that a legislator, Senator Ducheny, introduced a bill to curb the non-judicial foreclosure power of homeowner associations. Its eventual fate is uncertain as CAI lobbyists fight ferociously to tear it apart.

But how many other homeowners have lost their homes in the intervening years! One single woman was made homeless and forced to sleep in the back seat of her car for several weeks. Another homeowner went to Bill Morrow's office after CAI lawyers made life hell for him as an honest board member. Morrow did nothing - and the disconsolate homeowner thinking that there was no tomorrow for himself, took his own life.

All across the spectrum - from health care to education to housing, government officials turn two deaf ears and two blind eyes. When the ship of state is being guided by people with deaf ears and blind eyes, it is plain that the ship is going to hit an iceberg of some description. Then, it will be too late and of no use for these government officials to apologize. The passengers need to remove these captains before it is too late.