The story goes that any homeowner in a mandatory membership homeowners’ association who is behind in their dues is inherently bad, they don’t want to pay their fair share and deserve to be kicked out. That’s the story the HOA industry lobbyists tell state legislators when lobbying for increased power for the HOA and the industry. They paint a picture of these horrible freeloaders who think nothing of living off their neighbors. “It’s NOT FAIR” they cry. If there was even a grain of truth to any of that, it would be reason enough to pull the plug on a housing concept doomed to fail but instead the people caught in the trap are called every name under the sun and demonized.
The story goes that any homeowner in a mandatory membership homeowners’ association who is behind in their dues is inherently bad, they don’t want to pay their fair share and deserve to be kicked out. That’s the story the HOA industry lobbyists tell state legislators when lobbying for increased power for the HOA and the industry. They paint a picture of these horrible freeloaders who think nothing of living off their neighbors. “It’s NOT FAIR” they cry. If there was even a grain of truth to any of that, it would be reason enough to pull the plug on a housing concept doomed to fail but instead the people caught in the trap are called every name under the sun and demonized.
But let’s take a look at the Florida family who live in Nottingham Harbor in Jackson Florida to get a real picture of what really goes on in HOA land.
Chris and Robin Rolling bought a house in Nottingham Harbor to live and raise their seven children. Robin as a petty officer in the navy and her husband Chris, like so many people recently lost his job and his income. Robin was the family’s sole financial supporter for a time. The predictable happened, with less income they had to decide on what is more important, feeding their 7 children or feeding the coffers of the over bloated HOA legal team. They made the same choice all of us would have made under the same circumstances and they fell behind in their HOA dues by $800. They proposed a payment plan which was rejected by the association so that the debt with penalties, interest and HOA ATTORNEY FEES soared to $5, 800. That is a $5000 increase!nThere were still 7 kids that needed to be fed but now the “community” decided to bury them even deeper.
Jan Bergemann Joins us On The Commons. Jan is the founder and president of the Florida based Cyber Citizens for Justice a grassroots homeowner friendly group that seems to do as much good as CAI manages to do harm. CCFJ heard about the Rollings and decided to prevent the foreclosure of their home. We’ll talk to Jan and find out just how CCFJ managed to help the Rollings and keep the family of 9 in their home. The HOA got their back dues plus a whole lot more. I ask myself exactly who are the freeloaders in this story. Tune in and I am confident you will reach the same conclusion I did.
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