On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 23:16:33 -0700, "Roger Shoaf"
wrote:
This is weird. Seems to me that the HOA is opting to punish the tenant
rather than the owner.
Most of them don't seem to care who they hurt. If the vocal ones, 2
or 3 of them, had even said, "It's a shame that the tenant will
suffer, but we have to go this way" that would have upgraded my
opinion of their souls, if not their common sense.
If this is going to be done, I would think it ought
to be done just before the end of the month, and then the tenant could pay
the water bill and deduct it from the rent due the landlord.
I used to know 60 of the 110 neighbors, but a lot of people stay for a
few years and move to bigger homes. I guess others can't pay the
bills and move to smaller homes. Unrelated to my current problem,
there is one family whose son was on the honor roll and the varsity
football team, went to a good college, got a job at a Fortune 500
company, and he is making a good living, and both his parents have
real jobs that pay decent salaries also. And the parents are often on
the delinquent list. I think he told me once he didn't pay on
principle -- he was mad at them -- but it's hard to believe that's
still the reason 14 years later. Oops. For 90+ days, now he only
owes 24 cents.
In the alternative, the HOA could just file a lien and threaten to foreclose
on the property and not worry about the silly water issue.
Good point. I'll check on this.
I think they have to get a judgement before they can file a lien, but
all these costs are passed on to the homeowner, and they *were* doing
this. I think we had a lawyer who we paid for other legal services,
but who would do all this "liening" with no money from us. Oh, yeah,
iirc the real hard cases he would stop trying on. Maybe he
threatened to foreclose and they called his bluff, but I don't know
why he didn't foreclose.
OTOH, nobody owes more than 2500 dollars, which is 4 1/2 years worth,
but we've had this problem, at least with one or two people, for the
whole 24 years I've been here. I think 2 people somehow got away
without paying, but
afaik that means that everyone else paid up as of
4 years ago, and only three other people owe from between 2 and 4
years ago. So as long as we're getting the money eventually, and I
suppose we get some interest too, I don't know why they're so upset.
They seem to take it as a personal insult.
I suppose a portion of these delinquents are intentional deadbeats,
meaning they have the money but still don't want to pay, but I'm glad
to say that I don't care. I have enough things that annoy me and I'm
glad this one doesn't. I certainly don't take it personally.
I was on the board for several years, then off for several years.
FWIW, we used to have monthly meetings, and now we have quarterly
meetings and I've been going again since last July and have been on
the board again since January.
When I used to go, they regularly did the lien thing, and were
supposed to threaten to foreclose, and I either can't remember what
happened, or it happened after I stopped going to the meetings.
I also stopped meeting or at least remembering neighbors and I know a
lot of my favorite people moved away. But I found tonight that one of
the nicest people, who I get along with enough to call her a friend,
was on the board most of the time I wasn't. I'm going to ask her
about this.