Today’s Sun-Times, via the Associated Press, reports on a Community Associations Institute survey:
Of the nation’s 300,000 homeowners’ associations, more than 50 percent face “serious financial problems,” according to a September survey by the Community Associations Institute, a trade group.
Boards are increasingly foreclosing on people 60 days past due on association fees, says Evan McKenzie, a University of Illinois political science professor and the author of the book Beyond Privatopia: Rethinking Residential Private Government.
Homeowners typically have no right to a hearing, he said.
“These are banana republics,” McKenzie says.
What prompted this untimely story and the strange reference to “banana republics?” It’s hard not to imagine a drunken AP reporter seething over a foreclosure notice for unpaid assessments.