A Beatrice homeowners association is seeking a judge’s order that would prevent a convicted sex offender from residing in their neighborhood. Full Article
NE: Homeowner Association Seeking Injunction Against Sex Offender Residency
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What would legally allow them to bar a person like this? And if they can, can they also choose to bar someone with red hair, since hair isn’t a protected class?
Wow they printed his name and address as well. How can an Association Bylaws trump State Law?
That sounds like some bullshit.
More NIMBY nonsense.
This is exactly why the Online registry serves no legitimate purpose other than to discriminate, banish and harass. If I were this guy, I’d put a sign in my front yard that says: “Monsters only exist in movies & comic books.”
So as long as this is merely a civil banishment and not intended as punishment, should be no problem? After all, the courts have said as much lately, right?.
Once this passes muster, seems like they could expand it for use against all kinds of pesky people and situations. The courts seem to think it’s okay, apparently.
And this has been going on for a while anyway so…of course it’s only proving the point that a public registry creates problems and protects no one. Dangerous or violent offenders would be locked up. Time served means FREE TO LIVE. The majority of (non)offenders on the registry are there for menial occurrences or mistakes of poor judgement. But we have a predatory system now who sees an easy group to pick on and unfortunately it means drumming up the hysteria and feeding off the public’s reaction. Which keeps making the system untouchable and no one wants to admit they’re in the wrong for having built this system in the first place. Especially not Joe Buddah since he’s only trying to set us up for more failure.
HOAs suck. What started out as a group to assist each other in protecting property values has morphed into a bunch of nosy neighbors with a God complex.
HOA covenants are not laws and have no legal force beyond the association being able to sue a non-compliant member for breach of contract. I would think a court wouldn’t do anything in such a case unless penalties for violations are spelled out ahead of time. Someone with knowledge, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Then again, this may not be a very illustrative case because one of the defendants is a registrant. No state nor the US constitution includes the phrase “except sex offenders”, yet many judges certainly rule as though it does.
Dustin,
@HOAs suck.
People do make their own choices on that. Each has their he choice on whether or not to buy a home in a hoa. It resembles a union of folks working together for collective bargaining agreements with contractors. As you say it is another level of government by consent. It is the ” by concent” that counts in the measure of individual liberty & sovereigns. Naturally, the HOA seeks to banish by rule.
HOAs are not all bad. If you live in a gated community with multi-million dollar homes and amenities, I don’t think you want to go without an HOA. Of course, some can be out of hand. But if people aren’t just natural douche bags, HOAs should be good. But of course, we are talking about America, land of segregation and Registries, so …. there are tons and tons of douche bags living here. Surely more than 50% of the people.
I’ve lived in a few neighborhoods with HOAs and the HOAs were all a good thing. In Georgia, HOAs have a lot of power. If you don’t pay your dues, the HOA will put a lien on your home that is very legally strong. You won’t be able to sell your home without paying it. You probably couldn’t even refinance or get a HELOC with that lien either, although I don’t know that for sure. Further, if you violate a rule and get fined, that can get put into a lien. So you need to have an HOA where you like the rules and want to follow them. An HOA can also insist that you fix violations and if you don’t, they can hire someone to do it and make you pay it! That is pretty drastic but I’ve seen it happen. The homeowner had to pay for the repairs, fines, attorneys fees, and some minor extra expenses of the HOA.
But this whole thing about excluding certain people who are listed on a big government list?! F that. I can understand the motivation of the property owners, but that still means they are scum. If this guy can’t live in this neighborhood then I truly pray that he does not forget those people and a decade down the line pays someone to burn their homes down. I think that would be just perfect. It’s called accountability and consequences.
Nebraska used to put mugshots of people forced to register on billboards Nothing says, “ Welcome to Nebraska the Good Life. Watch out for these monsters.” I can’t recall why they stopped that practice, but I’m glad they stopped. Residency restrictions don’t exist on a statewide level if I’m not mistaken. Stupidity and hate driven by fear is a threat to society.
Time to stand up, show up and speak out at the ridiculousness of sex offense laws based on emotions!!
If we start allowing HOA’s to regulate who can reside or visitwithin a neighborhood, what’s next? Homebuilders who build entire neighborhoods discriminating against registrants, refusing to sell them homes?
Where does this end?
“Exclusive” gated communities. People looking to isolate themselves with other like-minded robots. Each of them participating in the “carousel” of Target shopping trips and InAndOut Burger.
If you’re a free thinker be glad you didn’t fall for their illusion.
Homebuilders have already built entire neighborhoods and advertised and bragged that no People Forced to Register (PFR) would be allowed to live there. There are a couple of instances that I am recalling, quite some time ago though. I have no idea how they worked out or what they are like today. At the time, I was thinking that was a trend that was really going ramp up. But it doesn’t seem to have caught on much.
I think most people that would buy in such a neighborhood probably wouldn’t care much one way or another. They are just buying a house. But any people who do care – those “people” are exactly the kind of “neighbors” that no decent person wants anyway. I’d rather live in a 100% PFR-only neighborhood than in a neighborhood of Registry Supporter/Terrorist douche bags. Any day.
Personally, what I would love to see happen is that any time that there is an issue like this that the homes of the people who support it are burned to the ground. I’d love to see that. There are surely some people who are good enough at holding grudges and take retaliation seriously enough that they would remember and return a decade later to do such a thing. Surely.
An HOA constitutes private property. Even though in most states you can be on private property without breaking the SOR laws the owner of that private property can have their own policies regarding who can be there, i.e. any landlord can disallow felons from living on his property. A better example is Disney World. I would have to register in Orange County Florida if I am there for more than 48 hours. However, according to the sheriff’s office they cannot stop me from going to Disney World because it is private property. They did warn me that Disney does sex offender background checks occasionally with a ticket purchase and they can have me escorted off the property with a trespass warning, meaning next time I would be arrested for trespass. Private property owners and businesses have legal authority to do this. As bad as it is the HOA appears to be correct because their homeowner policy is spelled out in the purchase agreement.
Sorry for being a downer. It is an educational process I have already gone through. This is not about residency restrictions it is about private property owner’s rights.
Thank you for the example. It doesn’t make the BS anymore palatable though.
So the property rights of the HOA trump the property rights of the person who bought the property? I personally would have a VERY big problem with that.
If all that is true, then in my view the only recourse for the HOA should be to buy the house. I would even argue they should have to pay moving and closing costs as well.
There aren’t any HOA “property rights”. The homeowners are the HOA. They own it. It’s them.
In Georgia, it is simple and I expect it is very similar in all states, with just some nominal variances here and there. In Georgia, a neighborhood/community/subdivision/group of properties/whatever can decide it wants an HOA so it just has to file legal papers with the state (including the “rules”, called the “Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions”). It is then a legal entity. It has to file papers every year to “re-certify/confirm” how/that it is operating (last I heard, which was within the past few years). It is just an agreement among all the owners that they are going to govern themselves to some degree and how. Everyone is then bound by it. Each owner agrees that his/her/its property then has the HOA “bound/connected” to it such that if they sell the property, the new owners must accept the HOA (I’ve never heard of an exception to that).
So it is simple for a buyer – you know that the property you are considering has an HOA – you either buy it and accept it, or you don’t.
The only question I see here is if a neighborhood/subdivision/etc/whatever can have in its HOA that some people can never be there (as an owner and/or even visitor!). Will our governments allow that? If an HOA can exclude People Forced to Register (PFRs) then I certainly would think they could also exclude any person who has been convicted of any crime. I don’t see any difference in that at all. Would that be allowed? Guess we’ll all see. Who else could they exclude and for what?
As I mentioned before, I know in the past that some developers were building “no PFR” subdivisions. I have no idea how those went. I would be interested to hear. But not interested enough right now to use whatever free time I have to look for that.
Lastly, regarding the “HOA should be to buy the house”. The HOA doesn’t have any money. I mean, they have a little, but it comes from the homeowners. In fact, if you are in an HOA and it ends up that the HOA has to pay, say just for example $200,000, for something, then it is YOU who are on the hook for the bill. You and the other homeowners must pay it. That happens frequently enough and HOAs make special assessments to cover it (i.e. they send a bill to each homeowner). But just like with everything, the HOA is not just some organization or business doing that. It is all the homeowners working together and deciding that something must be paid and how to do it.
In Georgia, HOAs are legally powerful. If you don’t maintain your house, they can follow the rules to get you to address it but if you don’t, they can actually send workers onto your property to correct it and give you the bills. If you interfere, you can end up in court and will lose. Things do end up in court often enough. But HOAs are supposed to be a good thing. Neighbors working together to keep things good and nice. But we all know how people are, so things can go bad.