SPENDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY

SPENDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY
by Donie Vanitzian, JD(c) 2007 Vanitzian
August 7, 2007
I mean really! How difficult is it to spend other people’s money? Cheech!! It’s a no brainer, especially with no statutory accountability. "Hey man, it ain't difficult" one board member tells me, he says "no one gives s**t." He proceeds to point to his new hardwood floors and re-tiled kitchen, "how the hell do ya think I got THAT!"
What that arrogant sycophant aptly omitted from his braggadocio, was that any money taken or misappropriated from seniors is equivalent to taking away their lifeline to life itself -- and in some states THAT is a criminal offense.
It is not at all difficult to spend the money of other hard working titleholders who are stuck in godforsaken homeowner associations throughout America -- without ANY meaningful legislation to help them protect their assets.
Today in homeowner associations across this nation, spending money without legislative protections is so easy, hell, a dog could do it. But a dog wouldn’t do it, because dogs are caring and honorable. I can hear the “cat” people purring, so let me rephrase that. Dogs and cats are honorable, loving, and caring. What about humans? Are board directors “human”? Are managers and management companies human? Is the industry human? Let the readers answer those questions.
Below, you can register your manager and/or management company complaints at www.certifymyass.com.
In my article, “Sex, Lies, and Satellites,” you read how titleholders are seduced into believing liars, to the extent they sign away their rights by innocently subscribing to the association’s cable services.
In my article, “Parasitic Association Industries Eat Their Kill,” I describe how industries “will eat you alive and make you pay for the feast.” I write that community association industries are parasitic for-profit businesses that have resulted in an industry that does little more than LOOK and ACT indispensable. They are adept at sucking the lifeblood from titleholders who are held hostage by a defective legal system. That industry organism has perfected taking advantage of those that are most vulnerable.
But for the inept albeit, “corrupt” legislatures across America usurping the residential deed-restricted common interest development titleholder’s rights, that industry organism feeding and growing on OUR MONEY would die. Understand this: Without your money the industry is otherwise unable to nourish itself. YOU keep the industry ALIVE.
This so-called industry consisting of “community association parasites” can be found wallowing below an association’s bowels eagerly living off its excess and swallowing whatever morsels it sucks from its host. IT IS THE HOMEOWNER'S PERSONAL WEALTH THAT FEEDS THOSE PARASITES WHICH CONTRIBUTE NOTHING OF CONSEQUENCE TO THE OWNERS' WELL BEING. No different from traditional hunters, the industry's survival depends on eating their kill.
In my article, “Homeowner Associations: Dynasties of Dysfunction,” I state, in the face of crumbling individual rights, censorship is encouraged and laws are passed that further prejudice homeowners. Not unlike feudal systems, boards delegate their authority to handpicked aiders and abetters who carry out their demands. Rebels, dissidents, and rivals of those in control are easily silenced or alienated from the faithful followers In struggling to fight their aggressors, owners are peppered with intimidating salvos delivered by modern day lackeys like lawyers, managers and industry vendors. The job of aiders and abettors in the pecking order is to push through the board's agenda. As those minions become autonomous, the result is a wholesale disenfranchisement of those who are not part of the “chosen” few.
In an August 6, 2007 Los Angeles Times article, by Sharon Bernstein titled, “Southern California is becoming a tight fit” she describes what Villa Appalling! discussed over five years ago, “The shift has implications for infrastructure, congestion, schools and even the style of neighborhoods, as apartments encroach on single-family enclaves.”
HIGH-DENSITY MONEY COLLECTION
The industry -- yup-- even the management industry -- has an interest in high-density zoning, planning, building and mergers instead of the quality-of-life of its citizens and homebuyers. It doesn’t matter that city growth across the country has accelerated at an alarming pace. [FN1] “Building small deed-restricted developments does not suit the needs of the industry’s corporate business interests in making money. It also doesn’t matter that such city growth places stress on the initial design capacities of these municipalities and the infrastructure as a whole. In keeping with the industry’s goal of making money off of you, they must lobby and promote high-density building projects that include bigger developments, with larger land requirements.” [FN2]
From Villa Appalling! “We murder to dissect. (citation omitted) As cities grow and population density thickens, increased costs and health concerns are thrust on its residents. Increasing combustion by-products from vehicular and other sources gradually exceed dispersal capacity of the local airshed, thus causing air pollution. [More space is needed for] roads and other transport facilities, with resulting costs in terms of dislocation, social disorganization, noise, aesthetic insult, traffic accidents, and psychological stress . . . Some of the costs of urban growth take the form of use of common resources, like the air.” [FN3] Watch for the industry charging you to breath next.
Villa Appalling! quotes one author, “One of the more important factors responsible for this growth is that many local government officials now view Planned Urban Developments and condominium developments as the only viable housing alternative available because they recognize that [the local government does] not have the financial resources available to provide the infrastructure necessary to make the project feasible.” [FN4] Villa Appalling! continues, “Yet every one of these entities failed to anticipate evolution, change, and demographics. In failing this anticipation, they also failed the homeowners who would be burdened with the future problems and debilitating costs.” [FN5]
From Villa Appalling!, “[s]till in the marketing phase, to fuel (build) their housing scam, they invented a way to divorce the roads, utilities, amenities, management, parklands and green belts that might otherwise fall under the auspices of a city or county infrastructure, out of their legislative bills. This was partially accomplished by collectively deeding these items over to the owners of housing in common interest developments. The homeowner association was, by its nature, self-governed, self-managed and self-financed. By doing this, they made the homeowners of the common interest development the responsible parties for the upkeep and financial stability of the development. This means two things: 1) if the deed-restricted development fails--it’s YOUR fault because you did not sink enough money into your homeowner association to keep it viable; and, 2) the developer and the state are off the hook. Homeowners of the city property located within the development pay to upkeep the streets, alleys, sidewalks and so forth, not city tax dollars. Some have argued that this amounts to double-taxation. It does. If you have a Mello-Roos Tax or any other type of tax or diversion fees (transfer fees included) on top it, this amounts to triple-taxation.” [FN6]
No surprise, that the “local governments benefit . . by receiving tax revenues without having to supply and maintain the infrastructure.” [FN7] What IS a surprise, are state and local government complaints about the monster THEY created. Hell-o out there.
REGISTER YOUR MANAGEMENT COMPLAINTS AGAINST ANYTHING, ANYBODY, “CERTIFIED” -- EVEN YOUR DOG, CAT, AND RATS
Nationwide, manager after manager the majority of which claim to be “certified” (certifiable, maybe, “certified” in my opinion has lost all credibility) have appeared in newspapers across the country. Headlines abound: Embezzlement, jail time, took money from HOA, etc.
DON’T WAIT
Go to: http://www.certifymyass.com and register your “certification” complaints. The complaints go to me -- no one else. I read all the complaints. I will write about the complaints. If you have documentation, attach it or if too voluminous, send it to me at: Post Office Box 11843, Marina del Rey, California 90295.
-------------------------------
FOOTNOTES
------------------------------ [FN1] Glassman & Vanitzian, “Manager Oversteps Bounds by Seeking to Annex Neighbors,” Los Angeles Times, Associations, June 17, 2007. Author note: After twenty years, the author has only ONE management company that she would trust.[FN2] Vanitzian & Glassman, Villa Appalling! Destroying the Myth of Affordable Community Living, at 43-45 (2002).[FN3] Vanitzian & Glassman, Villa Appalling! Destroying the Myth of Affordable Community Living, at 120 (2002) (citations omitted, but are available in the book).[FN4] Wayne S. Hyatt, Common Interest Development Community: Evolution and Reinvention, 31 J. Marshall L. Rev. 303 (1998).[FN5] Vanitzian & Glassman, Villa Appalling! Destroying the Myth of Affordable Community Living, at 43-45 (2002).[FN6] Vanitzian & Glassman, Villa Appalling! Destroying the Myth of Affordable Community Living, at 43-45 (2002).[FN7] Fred Foldvary, Public Goods and Private Communities, at 103, (1994).

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