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WATCH
COMPLETE VIDEO OF TESTIMONY
Texas
Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Relations
COMPLETE
SESSION; Interesting testimony starts at 1:28
At
the end, distraught homeowner breaks down, threatening to take her
own life to end ongoing horrors with her HOA. |
An Opinion By Jan Bergemann
President, Cyber Citizens For Justice, Inc.
October
5, 2006
The
Community Associations Institute (CAI) may call it whatever they
want -- Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (UCIOA) or Texas
Uniform Planned Community Act (TUPCA) -- it's all the same. Under
the cover of creating a balanced, uniform, statewide law for the creation
and operation of mandatory homeowners' associations they are trying to
take away homeowners' constitutional and property rights. These bill
proposals are popping up all over the nation, under various names, but
they all have only one target: To
establish a bigger income for the service providers and to fleece the
homeowners who live in these associations.
Specialized attorneys that grow wealthy from
these associations sponsor these bills. On the Texas
TUPCA website one quote surely stands out: "TUPCA may be the
first state statute in the country to devote an entire chapter to
protecting the rights of individual homeowners." I
think that's about the boldest false
statement I have ever heard! When
any proposal takes away constitutional and property rights from United
States citizens, that creates a dictatorship.
It doesn’t protect peoples’ rights, no matter what its
proponents claim. This is another one of these “FEEL GOOD” bills that
achieves nothing -- no enforcement, no accountability -- but tries to tell
legislators that enacting this bill will bring the necessary reform to
their constituents!
On Monday, October 2, 2006 in a Texas Senate
Committee hearing homeowners' advocates from all over Texas made it very
clear to the senators how homeowners feel about this bill.
Read below the presentation of Beanie Adolph, a
long-term Texas homeowners' advocate -- part of the Adolph family that
created the well-known website HOA-DATA
that finally exposed the foreclosure abuse in homeowners'
associations.
In
impressive fashion Texas homeowners delivered a testimony that
clearly showed the senators what homeowners really think about TUPCA and
the even bolder attempt to take away constitutional rights under the cover
of "protecting" homeowners. Shame on the attorneys who wrote
this bill. You can watch the testimony by CLICKING
THIS LINK!
| The Homeowners'
Advocates came armed with two weapons, besides their
heart-wrenching testimonies: Robin
Lent held up the cover of the CAI Magazine Common
Ground to show how the CAI executives really feel
about homeowners' advocates. And
they exposed Florida's Richard Spears as the CAI
propagandist he really is – a person who, under the
pretense of fighting for association rights, has absolutely
no consideration for the United States Constitution and
private property rights. Spears quote: "Buyers
surrender their civil rights,” says it all!
(Note: Spears is a member of Florida's Commission
on Ethics!) |
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Two
Clear Lake advocates, Gwen Gate and Roberta Toppin, described the
difficulties in their HOA to the Senate committee.
Barbara
Gatlin, President of Texas
Homeowners for HOA Reform, Inc. announced the
AARP
BILL of RIGHTS for HOMEOWNERS in ASSOCIATIONS, and presented a
copy to each of the Senators. This Bill of Rights was created as a model
statute that covers the Basic Principles of Consumer Protection. Even if
some homeowners' advocates feel that it falls short of being a perfect
bill of homeowners' rights, it definitely creates much needed protection
for homeowners, much easier enforcement of the regulations and
accountability of the people in charge.
This
bill, if enacted, will give homeowners protections they desperately need.
And homeowners all over the nation will introduce it to their local
legislators and explain to them that this is what we owners need to
protect our homes against abuses -- protection desperately needed in "The
Land Of The Free"!
Any
legislator who agrees with UCIOA
or TUPCA should be considered an enemy of the United States Constitution,
because agreement with those proposals shows a willingness to take away
our constitutional, civil and property rights!
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From: Beanie Adolph
– Texas Homeowners for HOA Reform, Inc.
We do not like TUPCA.
TUPCA is contrary to the Texas Constitution.
Article I – Bill of Rights, Section 26:
“Perpetuities…are contrary to the genius of a free
government and shall never be
allowed…”
TUPCA 83.004 states: “…the rule against
perpetuities does not apply…”
TUPCA
83.151 – “…the rights listed…are not exclusive or intended
to limit the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of
the United States and this state.”
Yet section after section gives unlimited powers to the HOA
board.
Sec.83.067
states that the governing documents will be liberally construed in
favor of the organization
-
not the homeowner.
I’ve been here almost 50 years and I know that this is
totally contrary to Texas law – an individual rights state.
Governing documents should exist to serve homeowners, not
the association.
TUPCA
83.113 – Architectural standards means a person or persons with
power to approve or deny applications for proposed construction,
etc.
Here you have American homeowners who have bought their
homes, hold responsible jobs, raise their children and TUPCA
forces them to be subject to an unknown entity who will control
their lives.
TUPCA
83.114 – Accumulation of Assessments.
This is a booby-trap for homeowners and a boon to the
greedy industry.
Most homeowners are on budgets and cannot bear a sudden
demand for exorbitant assessments with the alternative being
foreclosure.
This appears intended to overrule the Brooks case where the
Supreme Court ruled
9 – 0
for homeowners.
Associations don’t need this power.
It encourages excessive spending without accountability to
the homeowners who pay the bills.
TUPCA
83.116 – Foreclosure – Obscene for an HOA to have this power.
Nobody else does – not doctors or other professions –
not even Enron.
But TUPCA makes it worse: “A court may not set aside a
sale under this section solely because the purchase price at the
foreclosure sale was insufficient to fully satisfy the former
owner’s debt to the association.”
TUPCA
83.204 – puts the burden of disclosure on the seller of the
property to advise the purchaser of HOA rules and assessments.
Sellers won’t do this correctly.
That won’t protect buyers. –Buyers won’t know what
CAI knows.
On this I agree with CAI’s Dick Spears who said buyers
“surrender their civil rights”.
He said buyers do it voluntarily.
We say buyers don’t know..”
Do you honestly believe that Texas homeowners voluntarily
surrendered their civil rights when they bought their homes?
There
are major problems with Property Code 204.
Our website
www.HOAdata.org.
shows how foreclosure lawsuits grew
in Harris County alone after passage of 204. At first 204
only applied to Harris County.
It’s bad enough that 204 was recently expanded to
adjacent counties.
TUPCA would make this a truly statewide problem.
TUPCA says it must be statewide.
We from Harris County are here to warn all Texans that
TUPCA takes away basic property rights.
TUPCA means a homeowner does not own his own home.
Do your constituents know what you are considering?
Do your children, grandchildren, relatives and friends know
that you are considering denying them their rights “in
perpetuity”?
As
TUPCA states – 83.012 – Uniformity of Application: – Any
amendment… to limit this application to less than the entire
state, e.g. population or geography is void.
For
decades basic Texas law has said that deed restrictions must be
clear and that limitations on the use of property are disfavored.
TUPCA 83.067 has overturned this.
TUPCA says the DRs don’t have to be clear.
TUPCA
83.116 (a) creates the right to foreclosure even if it is not in
the deed restrictions.
That should violate the Texas Constitution because even
Inwood and Brooks require the right to foreclose be included in
the deed restrictions.
TUPCA
83.116 (b) seems to allow an association to sell your house by
non-judicial foreclosure without going to court and even allows
the association to buy the house at firesale prices.
That creates a real incentive to trump up and boost the
fees.
Look at the long list of laws CAI has had enacted against
the homeowner.
Stop these anti-homeowner laws.
Represent your constituents – the people of Texas.
Do not take any portion of TUPCA.
Support the Homeowner Bill of Rights.
Thank
you.
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