TO: Arizona Mayors of Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, Peoria and Surprise
In keeping with your stated objective of educating homeowners about HOAs, the following is important information that I hope you disseminate. It’s my reply to Monday’s local NBC 12News segment on HOA Academies that your municipality supports.
What was the real purpose of this segment on disputes with its 1 minute recounting of the murder of HOA board members by a victim? To educate or to create fear and distrust of those neighbors living next to you in your HOA?
Why did NBC’s 12News show about 1 minute of Richard Glassel in prison uniform with a victim of the shooting recounting the 7 year-old incident? To educate or to create fear? The segment did not mention the CAI member and lobbyist attorney’s claim to $10,000 in legal fees sent to the Glassel’s as intimidation (the Ekmark law firm was not the attorney for the Glassels). The judge, in this simple injunction case leading to the shooting, scolded this law firm (two attorneys make frequent appearances at the legislature and in the media for HOAs) about such an outrageous fee and reduced it to $1,000.
Why didn’t 12News identify the interviewed attorney, Mathew Meaker, as an employee of the CAI member law firm of Ekmark & Ekmark, whose owner is the AZ CAI lobbyist and past president?
Explaining the Academy seminars, the segment stated,
“Some Valley cities offer “HOA academies”, seminars that usually meet once a week for a few weeks, to educate HOA members on the responsibilities they have as homeowners in HOAs. Board members learn how to carry out their roles including enforcement, which often causes disputes and hard feelings.”
For a balanced presentation, where was the mention of Marie Brown (Ekmark again) or Evelyn Lyles, two very ill women who were subject to foreclosure? (Brown, a 77 year-old with severe heart problems, lost her home; and a forty-ish breast cancer victim Lyles was saved by the efforts of then Mayor Berman. Both died in 2006. Why didn’t it ask if these incidents were what CAI means by, “good people should not be required to pay for deadbeats”?
Do these academies teach the severe restrictions on the liberties and freedoms of homeowners when they buy into an HOA. Information definitely material to a fully informed and consensual agreement. Information not found on any government web site — including the cities sponsoring these academies — or in the sales and promotional materials of the developers or CAI trade group. Or is it the aim of these city supported academies simply: “how to be happy in a mandated and repressive HOA and like it”? You can read my “10 Myths About HOAs” as a starter for a balanced presentation.
Why wasn’t it mentioned that over 50% of the OAH cases were won by the homeowners? Or that the homeowner can get justice for the bargain price of $550 or $2,000 while over 78% of OAH cases require no filing fees? Why not? I’ll be very happy to share my summaries as educational examples of adjudication as real guidance for all involved.
Why did NBC mention the solar panels bill, and not the homestead exemption bill vetoed by the Governor or the fair market value foreclosure sales bill still pending?
Why weren’t the “teachers” at these academies named? Was it because they may be the very same business trade, national lobbying group that opposed substantive legislation before the legislature every year in support of HOAs alone?
This was an HOA biased and irresponsible echoing of the HOA proponents’ propaganda, not an attempt to educate the homeowners. Perhaps NBC should listen to those phone calls and emails that I receive and the reaction by the homeowners when they are told the truth about the hopelessness of their position: that the state supports and promotes the existing unjust HOA environment. Typically, their response is, “This is wrong. I wasn’t aware”.
HOA Constitutional Government 
I moved into a new home I had built and discovered I had moved into a HOA. I am sorry I did not have the lawyer/builer place in writting when I ask, There is not a HOA. I love my new home and the property. I hate the HOA here in Moore OKlahoma..