Homeowners Now Have a Tool to Fight Back

July 13, 2003

By Willowdean Vance (View author info)

American History is rich with stories of land taking, greed, and politics. But the1936 experiment in common interest developments, also known as, homeowner associations, spawned a new battle to control the courts that created millionaire law firms overnight and a market for more law schools after the1973 congressional hearing to expand common interest developments (CIDs).


The Homestead Act led to a monopoly of huge ranch owners who exploited everyone from Native Americans to Veterans in order to steal undeveloped land to create empires for wealthy families like the Rockefellers. They were the ones who pulled the strings of the political puppets who were paid to maintain these multi-millionaire empires. In the same way, CIDs became the road to riches beyond their wildest dreams for the small law firms who farmed these CID ranches. Then they joined together by forming the Community Association Institute (CAI), and solidified their monopoly.

The IRS - that wasted millions suing an international church on grounds they violated their non profit status - looked the other way when law firms raked in hugh profits by fleecing millions of homeowners in nonprofit Homeowner Associations (HOAs) of the revenue collected for maintenance and reserves. They did this in a variety of ways - by de facto laws, nondisclosure contracts, tricky CC&Rs, unread Bylaws, and naive directors who were coerced into accepting unconstitutional laws designed to prey on the meek, weak and uninformed.

What other profession jumped from a $125 an hour consultation fee to $250 an hour in litigation fees? And then there were the Cayman Island vacations that were paid out of trust funds in Lewes, Delaware or Nevada. They generated these monies by feeding on racial profiling, selective enforcement, gulag police and political management firms that were licensed to pirate confidential information.

John Lennon's ditty, "If you drive a car, I'll tax the street, if you try to sit, I'll tax your seat, " aptly fits the fact that CIDs are becoming the most unfair, double standard tax revenue collectors in America. HOA's are called common interest developments, but the only interest is the monopoly wealth shared by law firms and land developers.

Orange County, California, created it's own legal empire, the California Legislation Action Committee (CLAC), to make sure that as much homeowner monies as possible would flow into their pockets.

Many HOA managers and directors get free vacations in the islands, plush upgrades and landscaping on their CID homes, get wined, dined and golfed with golden state lawyers so that they can fleece homeowners.

State corporation officials close their eyes to keep billions of,"ask me no question and I'll tell you no lies, fees rolling in,. " Homeowners sign contracts that promise fair and reasonable decisions, open records, copies of profit and loss statements, honest elections etc. In many cases, they never get these.

Lawyers invade board rooms by bribing management firms behind closed doors and frighten directors with veiled threats, "If you fail to sue members who violate CC&Rs etc, you lose immunity...making you personally liable."

This lie takes the board control out of volunteer hands and places it in deep pocket lawyers who convince them to change the CC&Rs without a vote, in secret meetings to create more loopholes that even the most prudent homeowner will fail to understand. All this is to increase litigation.

Judges are lawyers. Law firms are clever enough to select a court judge who attended the same law school because what are friends for?

Judges are supposed to make sure that contracts do not violate the constitution, especially the provisions of equal protection and due process. CIDs have turned contract law into a weapon more deadly than an AK 47 assault rifle. They kill equity in homes, homeowner dreams and the roof over their heads. Judges overlook the fact that an unconstitutional contract is NOT valid.

Americans are so eager to live in work free environments, no lawn to mow, no pool to clean and a private club, they forget, the most dangerous thing you own after legal age is your signature- signing a contract without research can kill or imprison you for life.

Jim Troutman was so stressed out he took his own life. Al Gray was killed with a heart attack- the list goes on and on. Instead, lawyers got financial windfalls.

The CID monopoly controlled by CAI is enrich lawyers and managers under pretense of self governed- community harmony . They sought to destroy property rights; eliminate privacy and make a mockery of equal protection and due process. They did so without firing one shot because they bought the politicians.

The truth is, no homeowner association is managed by volunteers. No homeowner association is operated as a 501C -3 nonprofit corporation. All of them are controlled by get-rich law firms who clear the largest profits and fool the IRS in the process.

The Federal Trade Commission did sue CAI for unfair business and creating a monopoly by forcing all managers, vendors etc to buy a CAI membership. The FTC issued a cease and desist order but the FTC does not monitor business firms and the IRS is unwilling to tax millionaire law firms because they have so much power over the judicial system and because the trial lawyers control congress.

America, the land of the free, spends billions for other nations homeless refugees while it creates new refugees at home from apathy and greed leading to the mother of all depressions as bankrupt courts break records on nonjudicial foreclosures, with the help of sheriffs acting under color of law, serving unconstitutional evictions and foreclosures because politics pays more than loyalty.

We have met the enemy. The enemy was apathy and fear. Developers will continue to limit all new housing to CIDs for the greatest profit and law schools will smile as the enrollment goes up to get in on the gravy train destroying the richest nation by individual bankruptcy of single family homeowners.

But homeowners now have a a tool with which to fight back . They can now educate themselves on the web's fastest growing news service for homeowners - the American Homeowners Resource Center. Let's hope education leads to reform by the growing number of support groups and better informed media who are beginning to see the light!

Meanwhile, we write a new chapter in the evolution of the biggest fraud in family history since the American Indians walked the trail of tears and the tears continue to flow while the legal pirate profits grow.