Apparently controversy is brewing again about certain Phase II owners that have landscaped common area property behind their units. In the past fifteen years the Association has never even bothered to pick up the trash that occasionally accumulates on the common area property located adjacent to the Truckee River.

While the Association is free to pick and choose their maintenance policies, which are currently contracted to Granite Peak Management, it is puzzling why anyone would be annoyed by the additional help that individuals ante up. It is even more puzzling that but a single homeowner would become a target since several homeowners have completed some landscaping behind their units.

Of course Mary Denove, a lawyer incapable of thinking out of her box, again suggested that the Association sue. Sue, Mary, Sue almost always offers up this option to various problems. It is very similar to the ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ solution to our energy problems that Sara Palin conjured up even though such a policy would solve nothing.

Some insight into Mary’s personality can be gleaned from her response to a homeowner that was investigating ways to reduce their high propane bill. Mary declared that this was not a problem because she was paying 3 times as much.

Of course, Mary did not recommend suing her good buddy Bonnie Lofstedt who went even further with her landscaping efforts and fenced off the common area property around their home in violation of our governing documents. The Board went even further by publishing policy that stated that if folks wanted to access the Truckee River shoreline that they had to do so by traversing around the front of Bonnie’s unit. Essentially prohibiting access directly behind Bonnie’s unit. This also represents a failure of fiduciary responsibility as our governing documents clearly contain an easement for the public along the Truckee River shoreline.

While I suspect that the majority of homeowners do not object to the various landscaping projects, some of us do object to denying access along the river bank behind Bonnie’s unit. In fact, a path has been cleared through the dense brush along the river bank to promote access to the point across from Bells Landing which is used for recreation.

Over the years some members of the Board have insisted that we need Mary on the Board, based soley on the fact that she is a laywer, even though Mary’s expertise is afar from property management and CIDs. In fact, my experience is that Mary is behind the deliberate efforts of the Board to communicate and negotiate with a lack of good faith.

I have long opposed Mary’s position on the Board and those that have had the dubious pleasure of communicating with Mary are coming to understand my beliefs.

I continue to urge that homeowners not caste their votes for Mary & Bonnie, but realize that there are so few candidates for the Board, that anyone that tosses their name into the hat will be elected.

CONSUMER LAW FIRM FILES CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST ASSOCIATION LIEN SERVICES

The consumer law firm of Mulligan Jenkins & Gabriel has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Sylvia Curry and countless other homeowners subjected to the business practices of debt collector Association Lien Services (ALS).

The lawsuit centers on what are described as the unfair and unlawful collection practices of ALS which, in pursuing collection activities for homeowner associations, has allegedly violated Civil Code 1367.1 by requiring homeowners to waive the protections of this statute before ALS will accept payment from homeowners for past-due assessments and fees.

Curry has always acknowledged that she owed the association money. She sought first to develop a payment plan through the board, then through the property manager, Massingham and Associates. When that didn’t work, she sought help from the Center for California Homeowner Association Law and then from her state Assembly Member Sandre Swanson. ALS fought every one of her efforts to pay down her account. The lawsuit escalates the fight.

An African-American grandmother, Curry has owned the same condominium in Oakland, California for 27 years. She has been trying since early 2008 to set up a payment plan to discharge her assessment debt. She has made numerous payments to ALS toward her account. ALS, however, has refused to cash any of her credit union checks or postal orders unless she lets ALS collect its profits first before paying down her homeowner dues. ALS has now returned all her checks and nearly doubled the collection costs.

Keeping the assessment balance high is the chief method for debt collectors like ALS to increase their profits by levying more interest, carrying charges, collection fees, and payment plan administration costs on the account balance.

The California statute requiring debt collectors to credit payments first toward assessments and only secondly to collection costs has been on the books since 1997. The law was authored by Congresswoman Jackie Speier when she was in the California State Assembly.

The consumer lawyers filed the lawsuit on behalf of Curry and “on behalf of all persons similarly situated.” The class is comprised of “all persons in California who submitted payments to ALS, but were required to waive their rights to have their payments applied according to state statutes and who were charged additional collection costs as a result.”

Association Lien Services is a subsidiary of the Los Angeles law firm of Swedelson & Gottlieb. They have several offices in both Northern and Southern California.

The firm has fought tooth and nail every legislative effort in Sacramento to expand consumer protection for homeowners during the assessment collection process. [Read their six page letter lobbying against Christine Kehoe's legislation AB 2289 posted under COURTCASES/DEBT COLLECTION.]

Curry’s lawsuit was filed in Alameda County on Nov 7. The first hearing is in January 2009.

CCHAL NewsBrief

November 20, 2008

For more information on Swedelson & Gottlieb’s actions against Association Lien Services please visit the American Homeowners Resource Center.  I have also found this little tidbit:

DID YOU GET A STRONG-ARM LETTER FROM YOUR HOA’S DEBT COLLECTOR?

Did it ask you to waive your rights under Civil Code 1367(a)? Did it tell you that, if you don’t waive your legal rights, you can’t pay down your assessment debt?

That’s what happened to homeowner Sylvia C.

In April, she got a letter from debt collector Association Lien Services (ALS) saying they wouldn’t accept any of her payments unless she waived her legal rights under Civil Code 1367(a).

Sylvia didn’t know what 1367(a) WAS, but she knew instinctively that the debt collector’s letter “didn’t pass the smell test,” so she brought the letter to the Center for Homeowner Association Law.

Civil Code 1367(a) is a California law requiring that, when a homeowner makes payments on the assessment debt, the debt collector MUST apply payments FIRST toward paying down the assessments and only SECONDLY toward paying down the collection costs, that is, to collecting profits.

This consumer protection law has been on the books since 1997. It was authored by Congresswoman Jackie Speier, when she was in the California State Assembly.

A moment’s thought will make clear why this law is crucial to homeowner consumer protection: if the assessment balance is being paid down FIRST, then the collection costs — i.e. profits — decrease. Debt collectors typically charge interest, late fees, payment plan administration fees, and who know what else ‐ fees that are computed on the account balance. The longer a debt collector like ALS can keep the assessment balance high and string out the payments, the bigger their profits.

Debt collectors like ALS then sock homeowners like Sylvia with a big balloon payment as the final payment ‐ though they won’t tell the homeowner what that figure is while strong-arming them into signing away their legal rights under 1367(a).

Debt collectors like Association Lien Services hold the homeowner’s payments hostage until they sign away their rights. ALS dunning letters to homeowner don’t just ASK if the homeowner wants to waive his legal rights: the letters DEMAND it.

Sylvia wrote back to ALS saying she didn’t WANT to waive her rights under Civil Code 1367(a) and, furthermore, that ALS couldn’t FORCE her to waive her rights. With her letter she sent another payment and asked that it be credited to her assessment account.

What did ALS do? They sent back ALL her payments: cashier’s checks, money orders, moneygrams ‐ with yet another letter demanding that she waive her rights. Oh yes ‐ and they tacked on another $1000 or so in collection costs.

Not sure if you got a letter similar to Sylvia’s? Read the one ALS sent to her. It’s posted under COURT CASES/Fair Debt Collection Laws on the CCHAL website.

ALS isn’t the only one doing this, by the way: we have seen similar letters from at least five other debt collection companies, so blackmailing homeowners seems to be an industry practice. If you got a letter like the one Sylvia got, then CCHAL wants to hear from you (info@calhomelaw.org)

ALS is a subsidiary of the Los Angeles law firm of Swedelson & Gottlieb. As debt collectors, they are supposed to comply with both state and federal Fair Debt Collection laws ‐ but do they?

CCHAL NewsBrief

November 9, 2008

I am sure all of you have received the postcard announcing that our pool area will soon be reopened complete with the new security code to unlock the door. It was a bit odd that the security code, highlighted in bold text, was published on a post card.

Unfortunately little if any work has been completed over the last 2 weeks. In fact, yesterday Granite Peak Management once again dug up the area flooring once again revealing the jacuzzi plumbing.  That, despite the fact that Granite Peak Management had reported that the leaks had been repaired. The soil in and around the plumbing is visibly much wetter than soil in other areas of our property. Had Granite Peak Management actually used a real plumber for our jacuzzi there probably would not be any leaks.

Today, Granite peak Management is busy working on the plumbing. I wonder how much extra we are being charged for all of the fix it work?

And of course, no work has yet been completed on the fence surrounding the pool area and of course, there is no door in which to use your new security code.

Granite Peak Management is becoming rather well known for water leaks. Ask any homeowner about the water leaks that occurred last winter caused by improper management of our new siding project, managed by, you guessed it, Granite Peak Management!

Google’s Eric Schmidt comments on the increased importance of the Internet on politics and on how the Internet helps to prevent bad decision making by allowing all of us to easily access information that can be more easily be vetted by more and more of us.

Bad decisions can be prevented by eliminating the secrecy behind them. Sound familiar?

By now most of us have at least heard of Keith Obermann’s ‘Worst Person in the World’ segment on MSNBC’s Countdown where Keith nightly lampoons those in our country that seem to be clueless in their stupidity and harm that they cause to others.

Since even David Letterman thinks that Keith has a big head it would seem fitting that I too follow Keith’s lead and announce River Run’s “Worst HOA President in the World!”

My nomination goes to Bonnie Lofstedt who after receiving the votes for the job proceeded to use our HOA to sue the homeowner who so generously cast all their votes for her and in the space of a few short months spent more money on litigation than we spend on our entire annual budget, or in our entire history,  and forced the HOA to use Phase I reserve funds to pay off the lawyers. This act stressed our budget for the next two years. All because Bonnie could not get along with her next door Phase II neighbor and refused to follow our CC&Rs to settle the dispute through arbitration and mediation.

But Bonnie’s accomplishments did not end there, she also presided over having our insurance policy canceled (later re-instated with the work of another board member), was reported to have spent more time at the bar than time attending and participating in her mediation hearings to settle her litigation claims, sponsored a high school football party for her son where her husband directed all the participants to park in our fire circle, the very same fire circle where her husband had actually installed the no parking signs, lived and drove their cars around Tahoe City using Oregon tags in violation of California state law, tried to pass a $500,000 assessment on Phase I based on a single quote from one of our odd job local contractors, a handy man, and caused so much division on the board that one of the board members resigned and demanded that the board be reconstituted.

Of course Bonnie took plenty of shots at me because I opposed her policies. She and her husband were furious that I floated a proposal asking the board to consider that their litigation was a private matter between Phase II owners as allowed by our CC&Rs. Bonnie personally signed the paperwork to tow my boat off of the property without prior notification, and she accused me of copyright infringement for including our River Run logo on my correspondence to my fellow homeowners. She also took great pride in violating our nuisance clauses in our CC&Rs as demonstrated by her husband’s email that accused me of spying on them when I was on one of my routine walks around the common area to stretch my legs.

Why this woman is still serving on our board is beyond me.

Bonnie Loftstedt, our local Diva, and “The Worst HOA President in the World!”

At the HOA meeting last September, a well thought out proposal was presented to allow longer term renters here at River Run keep their pets. Pets were never an issue here at River Run prior to the first year of operation of what is known as Phase II, a collection of duplexes and homes that were built and sold in response to a perceived lack of demand for single family condos.

A rift quickly developed between two of the Phase II owners, the Lofstedts and a local owner that has since sold their interests. The rift soon blossomed into a full scale legal battle whose costs exceeded $100,000. Word on the street was that many of the Lofstedt positions were unreasonable, apparently Bonnie Lofstedt is a Diva.

Bonnie is the type of person that will scream and rage bloody murder if someone parks their car in the wrong place and then wonders why anyone would complain when she parked her cars where they don’t belong.

We miss Brodie!

Part of the fallout was an arbitrary board ruling clamping down on pets, dogs in particular. The “flat landers” on the board apparently have little if any appreciation for Lake Tahoe’s favorite pets, the family dog. Dogs are the preferred pet here and for good reason. Lake Tahoe is a mountainous forest area filled with all sorts of mother nature’s more dangerous animals – bears, coyotes, & raccoons.  River Run is backed by national forest. The family dog is a great way to keep these creatures somewhat at bay, meaning out of your hair. It was little surprise to me that the number of bear incidents here at River Run increased dramatically after tighter enforcement of our dog policy went into effect.

At issue is that one of our units was having trouble finding a long term lease because of the arbitrary dog ruling prohibiting renters from having pets. The “reasonable” proposal presented was to allow pets for leases of 6 months or longer.

The proposal was rejected by the board with claims that boarding of family pets by renters would require significant changes to our CC&Rs. I nearly laughed out loud! I can only assume that this verdict was rendered by Mary, a lawyer on the board whom I believe does not practice law in either the real estate or the home owner association fields.

If I’m mistaken, then perhaps this is just incompetence. You only have to read a short paragraph, Section 2.5 Pets, of our CC&Rs to determine exactly what the authority granted to the board is. You would be mistaken to declare that the CC&Rs prohibit renters from having pets or even that you would need to change the CC&Rs to begin to allow approval of renters with pets.

In fact, the CC&Rs declare that “each Member shall comply with such reasonable Association Rules governing the keeping of pets which may be adopted by the Association from time to time”.

There is the rub. “Reasonable”, and “from time to time”.

Tyler Berding, Esq. wrote an interesting article dated Friday, October 31, 2008 entitled “Why Community Associations are Not Governments” where he describes that while many consider associations akin to “mini” governments, and some boards certainly act in this fashion, there are important differences. The primary focus of an association is on the rights of the individual and that the community function in a kind of consensual harmony. The sole agreement is contractually based. It depends on both parties remaining satisfied for the Association to continue to exist.

To state that our board has been and is primarily concerned with the rights of individuals is like republicans proclaiming to be populists on election day. In particular, many of our board’s decisions, in my view, violate one of the fundamental tenants of contract law, the contract cannot be changed without mutual consent.

There is meaning in the feelings afterward, that the only people that objected to the request were people that don’t live anywhere near here. For me it is yet one more example of the lack, or shall I say, feigned concern over individual rights.

The prohibition of pets to renters at River Run is neither warranted or reasonable. It is simply an arbitrary decision that can be changed at anytime.

Anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool, a zealot, or both.

It has been several months since Sean of GPM, with the help of the Amigos, started ripping down the rotting fence surrounding our pool area. Since that time the pool shack has been resided, the old pool area flooring has been replaced, and new fence posts have been installed.

And this is not the first time that our HOA has waited until eminent failure of common area property before acting.

When I first went out to take a look at the progress, jolly ol’ Sean was there and immediately started yelling at me. Sean obviously has a hard time coming to grip with the fact that GPM is a contractor for our HOA and he does like to order homeowners around. I suspect that he is just not comfortable with HOA oversight, let alone have an understanding of the concept of customer service with a smile.

The pool reconstruction is another example of poor property management by GPM. GPM employed one of their Amigos to complete the plumbing work for the jacuzzi and I am forced to conclude that this several day project implies that GPM and their employees are registered plumbers as required by California state law for any project where the cost of materials and labor exceeds $500. But we all know that GPM certainly doesn’t pay their employees $500 for 2 or 3 days worth of work, but it is clear that the cost of materials does exceed this limit.

While I was not impressed with the plumbing work, none of the pipes were laid in straight and at the proper angles, it became apparent that the plumbing work was also faulty as late last week GPM dug up parts of the pool AREA flooring to apparently fix the plumbing.

Faulty new plumbing?

Of course doing something twice is par for the course for GPM. They recently managed our near million dollar siding replacement which last winter resulted in water leaks into several of our units. The north facing leaks were repaired late this summer. No word on if and when the south facing repairs will be completed. Guess who paid for the mistake?

If one cares to search, one will find numerous examples of petty leadership in the ranks of the boards of HOAs across the country. In fact, it is a lack of integrity in HOA leadership that prevents HOAs from performing their primary task, that of promoting property value. It is curious why unqualified homeowners seek active roles on their boards, after all, it is often described as a thankless job. It seems that one motivation is a desire to control others.

John Dean, in his book “Conservatives Without Conscience“, gives us perhaps the best insight into this problem as he has extensively studied the impact of authoritarian thought in our society and had come to the conclusion that perhaps 30% of our population subscribes to some form of authoritarianism. On one side of the equation, we have many cultures that would never dream of questioning authority. These cultures are content to accept the status quo thinking that, that is just the way of the world. It does not seem to matter to them that they are being taken advantage of. On the other side of the equation are those double dippers, those that derive pleasure from controlling others. These folks boost their self esteem with their personal power quests, whether they actually deserve the honor is always another question.

So today I present another one of those ludicrous power trips from a HOA president whom seems unable to place the business of his HOA in broader social context.

It is my guess that this “mad as hell” HOA president will next attempt to sue the homeowner over the flagpole. I am sure you have heard the argument, “What if every homeowner put up a flagpole?”.

For the last several years, since the Board decided to propose a 3/4 million dollar assessment, I failed to receive some of my mortgage statements. It then came to my attention that a former board member was accepting delivery of my statements when they knocked on my door with the opened statement in hand, offering up a sanctimonious explanation about how the statement had the wrong PO Box on it, and demanding that I have my address corrected. Little did she know that I had already spent hours on the phone trying to get the address corrected with no results.

I occasionally get mail in my PO Box that is not mine and it is a simple act to walk 20 feet and drop it off to Larry or whomever is working the counter at the time. All this started after I helped defeat the first 1/2 million dollar assessment on the grounds that our president at the time, had failed to adaquately do her homework and was prepared to give the job to a local handyman.

Since that defeat, various members of the board have gone out of their way to spread rumor and levy petty political attacks against me for having the audacity for questioning their supreme wisdom. There is no doubt in my mind that my statements were reviewed by one or more board members to check the status of my loan to ascertain whether I could afford the new proposed assessment.

This type of behavior is consistent with my 12 year plus experiences with the board that continually believes that they can arbitrarily deny rights granted in our CC&Rs. But what would one expect from a board that actually spent time discussing and voting on whether they should allow me to work from my home on my computer?

I received this rather unflattering email from Paul:

joel,

if your going to edit my comments like a f***ing english teacher, put your name on the comment and make it your own damn comment!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pf

This is not the first time I have received a crass email from him.

First of all Paul, the post was mine. Second, there is a difference between a post and a comment, although this subtlety is probably beyond your comprehension. I posted your email to demonstrate the usefulness of this new site.

The post generated a comment from Alpine Springs Water District and as a result homeowners learned that they did not have to pay their $1000 water bills immediately, although the “payment terms” are rather extravagant.

So Paul, please be advised if you wish to continue to send me your hot-tempered emails, I’ll be happy to start a category called ‘humor’ and post all of them there. Or perhaps the correct category would be ‘nuisance’ per section 2.6 of our CC&Rs.