MOVE WOULD MAKE HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION DISCRIMINATION A HATE CRIME

July 19, 2000

By Ed Wendt
Copyright © Ed Wendt

While the California attorney general is conducting hate crime hearings "to examine a variety of issues related to criminal behavior," a bold woman of Malaysian decent is organizing to have discrimination by homeowners' associations recocognized as hate crimes.


The Office of the Attorney General of California - Bill Lockyer, under orders from the United States Federal Government, has created a statewide Civil Rights Commission on Hate Crimes to examine a variety of issues related to these types of criminal behaviors.

Elizabeth J. McMahon says the State of California should crack down on a group of lawyers who are "terrorizing" non-white residents of llily-white neighborhoods. She is Malaysian and her husband is English. She wants these actions to be classified as hate crimes.

For the first year, Lockyer is having the commission study how hate crime reporting in California can be improved. McMahon says hate crime laws could be improved by including violence and terror perpetrated against residents victimized by homeowners associations.

The Orange County Commissioners held a hearing at the Orange County Human Relations offices in Santa Ana. McMahon, a resident of San Clemente - the home of the late President Richard Nixon, told her story to the commission.

The story is similar to those of residents in California, Texas, and Floridia. Houston conservative activist Geneva Kirk Brooks has been fighting a lengthy legal battle in a Harris County civil district court in an attempt by the Northglen Civil Association to foreclose her house in the subdivision over legal fees for minor infractions like peeling paint on the front door.

When Brooks labeled the practice a "racket," lawyers for the homeowners association filed a libel suit against her.

McMahon told the State of California Office of Attorney General's Hate Crime Commission:

"Almost from the moment that I moved in, my house was repeatedly spray-painted in big, four foot black letters "MOVE", and with obscenities."

" I was told variously to go back to Iran and East Los Angeles. Racial slurs were directed at my two young children. My garage doors were padlocked, eggs were thrown at my windows and cars, obscene phone calls plagued us for years."

She continued: "The redneck group that lives off homeowners' dues in the homeowners association, Palacio del Mar, started legal terrorism by filing suits, attempting to foreclose on my home for a false $5. late charge, alleging architectural violations, harassing me at every turn with a blizzard of letters. They have refused to provide any services for years even though I faithfully pay $150 a month.

"As one management employeesaid: 'Hell will freeze over before we do anything for you.'" "They also said: 'We will take your house. We will win in court.'

She says the association board and allied vendors they employ are physically trying to wreck her home.

McMahon charged that the group "has been flooding the unstable ground around my house with water and washing my house downhill."

She continued: "I am constantly repairing my driveway, repairing gas lines, water lines, drainage pipes and repairing walls from the constant movement of my house."

:"They have washed my house downhill. It moved 12 inches in the past ten years. During the last rain sewer lines broke under the association sewer lines in the street in front of my house and under my driveway. It flooded my house. The association refused to repair it for weeks until a relatively new Building Official in the city ordered them to."

To protect her home from further sliding, McMahon asked the association not to turn on the sprinklers in her lot beside her driveway.

The association lawyers Peters & Freeman filed suit and ran up huge legal bills with what McMahon claims includes "the help of a biased and unjust Orange County judge who used to be a homeowners association board member."

" Together they stripped us in our twilight years of everything our family worked for. They are taking our home for the lawyers fees for their hate crimes," she said.

"This legal terrorism and extortion continues," McMahon charges. " These are hate crimes."

"San Clemente was founded by a racist, Ole Hanson. His deeds of trust contained absolutely clear prohibitions against selling to Hindus, Asians, and others people of color. Today, he is venerated as the "founding father". Schools are named after him, tax dollars are used to promote his name."

San Clemente has been known for years as the "white town". " By and large, the same clique or more accurately, gang, - rule the town. Racism, as is the case in most of the world, walks hand in hand with economic crimes. People are out to protect their economic turf, and one way to do this, is to promote racism either overtly or covertly."

McMahon related examples of terrorism against her and other people of color in the neighborhood.

"My cars still get egged. Nails still are placed under my tires, - and the Orange County courts not only do not help, but actively assist fellow lawyers to terrorize minority homeowners who live in homeowner associations to strip minorities of their homes, equity, liquidity and homes.

A phalanx of lawyer/lobbyists, and their puppet boards funded by the giant corporation Chubb Insurance Company, seeks to squelch minority homeowners who protest the discrimination or seek governmental intervention."

McMahon told commissioners that law enforcement officials should "actively prosecute for racketeering all the many lawyers and management companies who conspire to deprive homeowners of their fundamental rights and property."

"I trust that the members of this commission are here today, pledged to do whatever it takes to right the wrongs which are so blatant here in Orange County. Kind words, sympathetic ears, are not enough. What minority homeowners here in Orange County need is ACTION -- bold, swift, decisive action."

Geneva Brooks, president of the Houston-based Property Rights Foundation, is organizing politically to limit the powers and criminalize acts by homeowners associations. The organization has sent questionnaires to all presidential candidates.

"We haven't received answers from any of them," said Brooks. "Green Party and Reform Party officials are in constant communication with me. But George Bush and AL Gore haven't even give us the time of day."

Brooks pointed out that Bush, as governor of Texas, signed a bill that allowed homeowners association lawyers "to foreclose on homeowners for nonpayment of legal fees amounting to pennies."

EDITOR'S NOTE::

Veteran investigative reporter Ed Wendt, of Houston, is developing a feature on homeowner associations and a group of lawyers representing them. It will be the first major investigative report by Wendt, Houston's 1998 Print Journalist of the Year, since his January 14 transplant: This is beginning his research on the California problem. Ed Wendt has already investigated the Brooks case and is headed for Santa Clemente to take on California.

Citizens who feel they have become victims of homeowners association rackets in Texas should contact Geneva Kirk Brooks at Metro News Bureau at (713)664-2171 or AHRC News Services in California at (949)366-2125.

Related link: Palacio del Mar Homeowners Association