My HOA sent me gore photos after complaining about the AirBnbs.
These were included in a cease & desist packet threatening to sue me and several other homeowners for defamation after speaking out at City Hall about AirBnb businesses taking over our residential condo tower. After so many egregious incidents including a cataclysmic office fire, before employing THIS tactic, our HOA may have overplayed their hand to such a shocking extent that it could backfire and end the worst kinds of short-term rental (ie: AirBnb) business practices entirely.
After months of paying inflated HOA bills while also taking care of my elderly mother, my own financial situation is in serious jeopardy. After raising enough funds to get three months of savings back into my personal account, I will use proceeds from this fundraiser for large-scale collective legal efforts that will improve the situations of many, many people beyond just myself.
There's a very good chance that if we can escalate our related lawsuits to a guilty verdict and avoid settling, precedents will be set to ensure this never happens to anyone, anywhere, ever again. But the road there will be very expensive, including not just the lawsuits themselves but also potential foreclosures, receivership, and other as-yet-unknown but predictable hardships. After all, they did send us gore photos!
So if all goes well, the money we raise here will be paying for (in this order:)
HOA Lawyer Retainers: Multiple HOA lawyers who have experience winning against corrupt HOA's need a five-digit figure for their services to escalate these cases to the levels they should go. This GoFundMe will help fill in a big gap in the community's existing legal fund to get those lawyers paid and moving onwards faster.
Foreclosure Defense: Under Georgia law, HOA's have some legal authority to attempt foreclosures on households owing more than $2,000 in unpaid dues. Over the past few months, our HOA has been billing us a "capital budget contribution bill" and attempting to bill us special assessments whose prices seems poised to exploit that $2,000 HOA foreclosure loophole. The foreclosure process does allow homeowners fighting these bills several "second chances" to defend themselves, and I would like the most vulnerable of us, particularly the elderly, to be financially prepared for that possibility.
Defamation Defense: Intimidating C&D packets threatening to sue victimized residents for defamation are not rare in HOA disputes, but actually following through with a defamation lawsuit is. But after sending us gore photos, it seems reasonable for us to expect the worst. In the event that a defamation suit does happen, I would once again prefer for us be prepared for it with a healthy legal fund ready to go.
Receivership Survival: There's a chance the building will undergo a period of what's called "receivership," where state authorities briefly take control of incompetent HOA boards to get things back on track. However, this usually results in a period of increased expenses for the most victimized homeowners. In the event this happens to our building, this GoFundMe will be used to help our most financially vulnerable homeowners (especially the elderly) endure a period of receivership that will likely be much harder to endure for AirBnb investors who own multitudes of units, versus smaller homeowners who own one.
Insurance Fraud Survival: The HOA is currently being sued by two entities with alarmingly expensive cases behind them: a fire insurance company is alleging some kind of fraud over the January 2024 fire, and a fire repair company is alleging some kind of breach of contract over the work they were hired to do. In the event the HOA loses these lawsuits, the expenses may be end up being passed down to victimized homeowners who do not deserve to suffer for the incompetence of a HOA board whose legitimacy is facing so many questions.
Set Precedent & Reduce Temptation to Settle: In the event this GoFundMe becomes very popular, the funds raised may end up being competitive with expected settlement offers from our opponents. Reducing the temptation to settle by relying on GoFundMe funds to survive all this hardship will help ensure that these lawsuits get seen to their full completion, so that a final verdict will set a precedent that will be followed in future lawsuits against allegedly corrupt HOA's & short-term rental companies. This can effectively "change the laws" around how Georgia courts handle HOA & short-term rental matters, which could also snowball into those precedents being followed in other U.S. states as well, and perhaps even other countries on a global scale!
Funding Repairs & Maintenance: In the event this GoFundMe does become very popular and raises a large five or six-digit sum, and in the event control of the HOA board does return back to members who live in the building and are materially interested in improving the building for their own life's sake, these surplus funds will be donated back into maintenance & repair projects that will help ease the heavy wear & tear our building has endured over the past few years ever since the AirBnb business became popular.
Buying Back Equitable Shares of the Building: Last but not least, as a final fantastical pipe dream in case we raise seven-digit "property-purchasing" levels of funding, and in the event our opponents end up selling their interests in the building for some reason, large portions of these funds will be used to put ownership of the building back into a majority of homeowners, ensuring a more equitable distribution of property ownership and a more democratic system of decision-making over our HOA matters for the long-term foreseeable future.