Don't Believe THE LIE--"We have to take away home owner sovereignty or else your property values will go down."

How many times have you heard either from a neighborhood busybody or some representative from a greedy, for-profit HOA management company who think THEY have the right to TELL YOU how to manage or decorate or modify YOUR HOME, that you had better surrender your homeowner rights to them or else your home's property value will sink like a lead balloon? But this is nothing but a big, obese LIE!

For one thing, property values, especially here in East Plano, Texas, have been steadily and dramatically RISING, and it's not because of any draconian punishments threatened or executed by any HOA management company! After all, just look on the west side of Peachtree Lane where homeowners have no HOA violating their homeowner sovereignty, and guess what, their home values are just as high, if not more so, per square footage, than any of ours! There are many reasons why our home and property values are going up (which may sound good until you get your annual, local property tax bill), such as, the collusion between the Real Estate industrial complex and county property appraisers so they can make ever-increasing profits when selling a home, even though the average homeowner income had remained flat for decades! But it's absolutely ludicrous to claim that HOA management abuses have anything to do with increasing home values!

Another false claim has to do with the notion that we need HOA management companies to harass and threaten and intimidate into paying "fines" or else nothing can be done about a neighbor who is really and truly neglecting to care for their property so much that it effects the health, safety or well-being of other homeowners living nearby. In reality, the City of Plano has ordinances which already prohibit any homeowner from doing or neglecting to do things with their property that would actually rise to the level of causing health, safety or well-being problems to others. In this case, all one need do is make a call to the City of Plano Neighborhood Services if there is a real problem. So, since there is already in place a way to address any real concerns that a neighbor might be so grossly neglecting their property, like having a tree that is about to fall onto an electrical line, it can be addressed by the City, which begs the question--"Then what do we need an HOA management company for?" How about, "We don't!"

Moreover, another part of the Big Lie stems from what these HOA management companies have learned how to say, without coming right out and stating, clearly, what they mean--"Unless you surrender control of your home to us, those 'other' people will take over your neighborhood," i.e., people who don't look like you, who have a different skin color, have a different culture, a different race, a different religion, different priorities, different tastes, or any other difference you can think of!

It's very critical to know the HOA Movement was RACIST from the get go! After Segregationists began to lose ground to one court ruling after another, and they could no longer keep minorities out of the same schools, using the same bathrooms, living in the same neighborhoods, they came up with an alternative strategy--HOAs, which would create so many rule about how a house "should" look and "should" be kept, they could easily harass anyone who managed to buy a home in "their" neighborhood, they could pressure them into leaving! However, in so doing, they have simply created a problem that wasn't there before, by empowering people who do absolutely nothing to pay your mortgage, your utilities, and all the other expenses required to maintain your home and fix it up the way YOU want to, to have so much control over your property, it becomes, for all practical purposes THEIR HOME!

What is "ownership" at the end of the day, if it is not the ability for YOU to have CONTROL over the one place where you can have some refuge, the place you sleep, the place you eat, the place you play...the place you LIVE or where you SHOULD be able to LIVE as YOU please!