HOA President Receives Public Criticism; Responds With Baseless Claims And Empty Legal Threats
from the ALL-CAPS---that'll-show-'em dept
If there's one thing our judicial system has taught the layman, it's this: when faced with public criticism, your first reaction should be to craft angry letters/emails full of baseless legal threats. (Of course, the internet teaches exactly the opposite lesson, one that many have failed to learn...) Today's angry email writer (and phone caller) is the president (and treasurer) [and legal agent] of the Stonecreek Arbor Homeowner's Association, located in Indiana's Vandenburgh County.The Evansville Courier & Press recently wrote a lengthy piece about HOAs and how they can range wildly in quality, from being so laissez-faire that you wonder where your money is going to providing the services your area needs to micro-dictatorships that leave residents unhappy.Anyone who's even slightly familiar with HOAs knows it's going to be nearly impossible to find a flattering article written about these overweening middlemen/micromanagers who have inserted themselves between homeowners and their own property. (At least one that's not written by association board members...) Why so many of these associations exist is a mystery, given that most people resent having arbitrary rules and limitations placed on something they purchased. It's like DRM for houses.
The HOA at the center of this story is called Stonecreek Arbors, in Indiana’s Vandenburgh County. According to the paper, the Stonecreek HOA was responsible for more than half of all the liens filed in the county last year. Many of these liens were for unpaid HOA dues worth a little more than $200.
The 49 liens filed by the HOA translates to slightly less than 1/6 of all the homes in the subdivision.
That being said, Stonecreek Arbor was like any other homeowners association that makes the news. Excessive fees. Sudden bans on a previously parkable driveway, which instead became a HOA board member's private road to and from the lake. Demanding pets be microchipped, even when the existing "rules" carried no language to that effect. And so on.
The Evansville Courier article detailed these offenses, leading off with a photo of the subdivision's entrance which handily sported the Stonecreek name, lest anyone be confused about which HOA was currently abusing its members. Shortly after publication (and following a brief interview with the HOA president Stephen Hess -- captured "on tape" over at the Consumerist), the Evansville Courier & Press received this email from Hess.
“[T]his notice also requires you not to at any measure mention anything regarding my name, any resident of Stonecreek, NOR will we ALLOW any of your printing in any article regarding Stonecreek at any time in any publication… You will be held liable for any violations of this letter and notice/request in this email. If we find/discover you have mentioned Stonecreek in any legal matter their (sic) will be action toward yourself as well as any print paper you represent in the media article.There are a lot of claims being made here that the HOA president can't hope to back up. Exactly how he was hoping to prevent mention "in any publication," much less the one with which he's currently tangling, is unclear. Maybe he was hoping a few CAPITALIZED WORDS would strike fear in their tiny journalistic souls. The double threat of "being held liable" and having "action toward" the paper doesn't seem to have prevented publication of this article on the internet, or in "any print paper."
“You may contact any HOA in the County of Vanderburgh, the State of Indiana, but Stonecreek will not PERMIT OR ALLOW YOU our legal name in any future article.”
The HOA president didn't even throw out handy, but un-actionable, terms like "libel" or "defamation," but he did follow up with one more vocal threat:
That obviously didn’t work, nor did the phone call to the Courier & Press, which demanded the paper “stop this article immediately, because I will sue you just like I sue the people who don’t pay their dues.” he said.While Hess certainly seems to know his way around legal matters like lien filing (he filed more than 47 liens against his neighbors in one day), he seems to have a little trouble parsing the grayer area of public criticism. His response has just dropped Stonecreek's reputation from "bad" to "worse," and he will probably find himself on the outside staring in come the next board election. Now, he's also "internet (in)famous" as well, having successfully portrayed himself as the sort of person who comes out suing at the drop of a hat. Not much fun to deal with at a phone line's length, much less as a neighbor.
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Filed Under: failures, home owners association, legal threats
Companies: stonecreek arbor homeowner's association
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> Maybe he was hoping a few CAPITALIZED WORDS would
> strike fear in their tiny journalistic souls.
The word that should have been used is jurnos.
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/s
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Re: LMAO
I was only mildly interested in this article AND THEN, I followed the links back to this little gem:
http://www.courierpress.com/videos/detail/a-conversation-with-stonecreek-hoa-president-steph /
My favorite quote is at 5:08
"You're in legal, legal.... legal violation here."
- Stephen Hess
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Re: Re: LMAO
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Re: Re: LMAO
Talk about someone with a serious sense of self importance. He keeps referencing people who have complained, but I will lay odds that the people who have complained are his little toadies.
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Re: Re: LMAO
"Detriment of character, despise my requests, and I have a legal right to pursue that therein."
"You have no clue of the legal issues you're presenting"
"There are non-solicited signs on the gates of our community"
"I have legal emails from these residents..."
"I'm gonna sue your people as soon as you hit the newspaper with this! This is legal!"
"I would love to meet with them cause I'm gonna slander!"
"There will be a legal lawsuit and slander and detriment of character."
"I will see to it when I meet you in court that the emails are in line!"
He's just an angry idiot. I believe every single allegation made against this rage-monkey.
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When he accuses the reporter of "betraying" him for not following his email instructions. Later he repeats this with, "you betrayed my requests". Two points here, you can't betray a request and I never heard him come close to making a REQUEST in the entire tape.
When he comes out and says "I'm threatening you".
When he says you better put that in the article, the same article he keeps insisting they NOT publish.
He keeps insisting that reporter shouldn't have been talking to the residents because there is a non-solicting sign posted. Won't someone buy that man a dictionary?
Of course the biggest irony comes near the end when he tells the reporter that the reporter has "no clue of the legal issues you're presenting".
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I'm no fan of HOAs
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Re: I'm no fan of HOAs
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Re: Re: I'm no fan of HOAs
Power is intoxicating, instead of doing the minimum possible to disturb others some start to believe others are holding them back and want to increase the value of their own property or status and do crazy stuff to get it.
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Re: I'm no fan of HOAs
After that I never failed to appear in another schedule meeting, is my interest right there, even if I couldn't do anything after that.
Sometimes people get lucky, have you tried hacking the rules of the HOA to your advantage?
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Re: I'm no fan of HOAs
I'd say that if an HOA property looks more affordable than the non-HOA houses in the area, they aren't really more affordable, they just hit you with hidden fees.
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Re: Re: I'm no fan of HOAs
I would certainly never purchase a house that required being a part of such an organization.
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Sad, but true. It seems these poor people have been scammed into paying a lot for a license to use a piece of property covered by an EULA which is subject to change without notice. They demand your pets be microchipped? - this is beyond stupid.
I'm sure there are perfectly sane HOAs out there and they may even serve a useful purpose, but it seems all too easy for little dictators to screw things up beyond belief.
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The Humane Society chips all the animals they get, which from what I've read can even kill them.
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Oddly enough, there is a decent enough rationale for requiring microchipping pets - that of being able to track a pet in case of loss or theft. Sadly, I don't think that this particular HOA has that use in mind, though...
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Three words
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Looks like..
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We HAD a board prez like that.
This guy had real power issues. Totally a Napoleon syndrome.
He would make up rules, without board approval, and then send threatening violation letters and fines to the homeowners here.
Things got so bad that SWAT showed up at his house because some of the homeowners had confronted him and guns were drawn.
He also has anger problems.. Watch out if you challenged him, he'd get aggressive and confrontational and threatening... Funniest thing of all is watching his face turn from pink, to red to crimson purple when he gets angry.
The whole neighborhood grouped against him and booted the douche off the HOA board and he hasn't been able to get relected since. YAY democracy..
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Re: We HAD a board prez like that.
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Mr Jerk
The fun thing about this is if you publish more stuff and this guy goes off the wall and starts contacting you again, you'll have a lot of evidence to get a PO again them.
Legal threats in bad faith is harassment.
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Necessity is the mother
Originally, Columbus had a policy banning homeowners and HOAs from hiring private plow drivers to plow their side streets, saying they could damage the roads and the city would have to fix it. So in the winter my friend's husband and the other men in the neighborhood got together when the snow got bad, fired up their snow blowers, and would march in a slow line through the development, plowing the road on foot.
Eventually Columbus relented, and instead of wasting money on gas (and getting a lot of back pain) the neighborhood formed an HOA, solely to pool money together to hire a plow driver.
Sadly overtime, the HOA began to insert itself into everything else, and petty people began to try to use it to run everyone else's lives. So now my friend is in a fight with them, refusing to sign onto a new charter that would require the board approve even the tiniest changes to their landscaping.
So, it started out good, but went bad. That's how it happens.
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Re: Necessity is the mother
HOA's also expose cultural tendencies among people, we all have control issues at some level and when we get power we tend to abuse it, most people are not aware of that, mostly because our own vanity make it hard to see those issues.
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Re: Necessity is the mother
Sounds familiar.
Through my experiences with bureaucrats of every stripe, I have learned this lesson: Never underestimate the amount of power that can go to someone's head.
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Based upon the map and its Street View function, I must say that this association is about as vanilla as they come, with what appears to be virtually no significant common area and ammenities that necessitate any annual dues beyond, at best, a very, very modest amount.
About the only thing I noted was a few retention ponds that may or may not be the responsibility of the HOA for maintenance. Moreover, its entrance is "spartan" to say the least (a small, non-descript wall with the name of the area, a very few shrubs adjacent the wall, and no sign of a gate that might require the association to maintain the roads as private roads. IOW, an otherwise ordinary residential community.
For anyone who might be interested, relevant data needed to view the area can be found at:
https://secure.in.gov/sos/online_corps/view_details_ppv.aspx
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legal terminology tourettes
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Turn the tables on him.
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HOA's are driving DOWN the property values
They found one they really really liked, and were about to put in an offer. was only $220k. Then I reminded them about a HOA, and they checked the paperwork. He'd have to get prior permission to work from home. He's a network storage manager for CBS, and works from home a lot. There were other restrictions, like they can come in any time with 24 hours notice. He has a special needs child. Ended up being a no.
2 weeks later the seller dropped the price to 200k. Last I heard it went to $180k.
Meanwhile, they found another place they liked better, and was at $270k, with NO HOA. They move in in 2 weeks time.
"Why so many of these associations exist is a mystery, given that most people resent having arbitrary rules and limitations placed on something they purchased."
I can answer that too. In Georgia at least, any new development is required by state law to start one. then it gets handed off to the residents when enough lots are sold.
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my personal experience w/ HOAs
If you're unhappy with their management, follow the rules and state law and kick the b*stards out of office.
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And this is why you get involved
But, like any politics, most people assume there's nothing they can do, and just bend over to take it in the ass...
I live in a small gated community of 15 homes - we have a psuedo-HOA (more like a road association) to fund road maintenance and repair.
You can be damn sure I would show up and be vocal about anything I disagreed with - and I would probably contact my neighbors to discuss it as well to find out who else agrees with my viewpoints.
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This guy's rudeness and ignorance of the law make him unfit for his position.
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More HOA horror stories
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