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Contributed by: Jan Jackson on 9/13/2008

When the developer-builder, local public official, and then-president of my homeowners association (HOA) filed liens against my husband's and my home and another property we own, his intentions appeared to be to foreclose on both of our properties. To prevent him and our HOA from taking our home through foreclosure, we posted a supersedeas bond for approximately $73,000. That was the amount the then-president of our HOA claimed that we would owe our HOA should we lose our case against our HOA. A copy of that Order can be read online on the Colorado Homeowners News forum at:

http://www.ahrc.se/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=colorado&Number=11761&Forum=colorado&Words=judgment&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=allposts&Main=4752&Search=true#Post11761

Once that screen has been accessed, page down to Message #12186. That message is a copy of the above-mentioned Teller County District Court's Order dated October 24, 2007.

We appealed that District Court's Order in the Appeals Court in Denver. But filing that appeal did not stop my HOA's president from putting a lien on our home. Nor would it have stopped him from foreclosing on it. The supersedeas bond did. What our former HOA president, or our current HOA president -- with the approval of our HOA's board of directors -- will try to do next to my husband and I to (1) try to silence me, and (2) bankrupt our family, is unknown.

Can this happen to you as a homeowner? Yes, it can and does happen to Coloradans and other homeowners throughout our nation who dare to question anything their HOA president and its board of directors are doing or saying. But worse than that, many homeowners actually lose their homes, and everything else they have worked hard for all of their adult lives, during their legal battles with their unscrupulous HOAs. One such victimized homeowner in the Denver area recently contacted me. His HOA story is typical. It is not only humanly (and legally) outrageous, but heartrending.

More later about what I, and other beleaguered homeowners, have experienced and learned over the years concerning some of Colorado's apparently less than stellar judges, and lawyers-lobbyists who are members of a particular law firm who, as far as I know, only represent HOAs, not individual members of an HOA. Why do that law firm's lawyers only represent, essentially, the presidents of HOAs? Because that's where the "deep pockets" of money -- HOA membership money -- is. With that almost limitless source of money, coupled with "less than stellar" judges, those lawyers usually win their cases against individual homeowners hands down.

Homeowners who are fighting the good fight against their HOAs believe that HOAs and CIDs -- both in Colorado and nationwide -- appear to be the creation of power-and-money-seeking state legislators who are in collusion with Community Associations Institute (CAI) lawyers, local public officials, developers, builders, and others who are more interested in acquiring personal power and money than doing their jobs honorably and objectively. Most homeowners are also aware that once HOAs/CIDs are created -- through a legislative mandate such as Colorado's Common Interest Ownership Act (CCIOA) -- they are more often than not ruled (controlled) by HOA/CID presidents and boards of directors of the same ilk.

Many intelligent and rational Colorado voters have expressed great concern about these so-called "privatized" local governments which are otherwise known HOAs and CIDs. But not many seem to be willing (or perhaps able) to take the next logical step of questioning whether they should be allowed to continue to function as they do today, or be abolished.

No homeowner likes the lack of government oversight of his or her HOA and/or CID and believes that -- as long as such un-American privatized housing developments exist -- there should be government oversight to make sure HOA lawyers, presidents and board members are not violating the law in any way. But what our Colorado legislators actually seem to have done, when they created the statutes in CCIOA, was to put homeowners associations outside of the sphere of government. That is, state legislators privatized them under a government-mandated contract that buyers of HOA properties must sign as part of their sales agreement. That privatized contract means that our Colorado government can take a laissez-faire stance about what they have created; a stance that often, if not always, ultimately requires our Colorado courts to deal with HOA problems in an adversarial way when, invariably, ecological and financial problems arise for HOA property owners.

Why do HOAs and CIDs have such serious problems while non-HOAs and non-CIDs don't? Because aberrant need-to-control-others personality types (often found outside mental institutions in the general population, and sometimes are even found at high levels of local and state governments) quickly realized that homeowners associations could be the source of almost instant power and money (for themselves) by developing and building HOA/CID housing complexes or, in already constructed and fully occupied housing developments, seeking to get elected to their HOAs' boards of directors. Those people with such an aberrant need to control others have always been aware that holding any kind of public or private office can, and usually does, bring such power and money to them. Non-controlling types of people/homeowners usually do not have those aberrant needs, so there is a built-in "disaster waiting to happen" in all homeowners associations as controllers and non-controllers clash. And with no government oversight to stop it -- other than homeowners filing lawsuits against their HOAs/CIDs -- many, if not most, HOAs and CIDs are in constant social and financial turmoil. My own HOA here in Teller County typifies such turmoil -- obvious and not so obvious to the general public -- as do other HOAs in throughout our nation.

What's the answer? The only permanent answer is to abolish homeowners associations. For several hundred years, Americans lived in communities without HOAs. No special government-mandated laws were necessary in those communities since their Constitutional rights, along with local, state and federal laws, also applied to them as homeowners. In the current era of HOAs, however, homeowners no longer function under a Constitutional Federal Republic type of government. So, it's up to We The People to see to it that we all once again live in our homes and communities without being burdened with privatized-government HOAs and CIDs -- now and in the future.

I, and other homeowners like me, are trying our very best to abolish this scourge of all unsuspecting home buyers called "homeowners associations." The costs to us -- financially and otherwise -- are great. But we must and will continue to fight against Colorado's and this nation's power-and-money seekers until they and their un-American HOAs are removed from our midst.

Stay tuned....

Jan

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Jan Jackson

Florissant , CO

Jan Jackson has posted 635 stories and 41 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Jan Jackson 's average story rating is 4.43.

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