a Better Bubble™
Get your green on and start training by chasing rainbows or leprechauns at the Creve Coeur St. Paddy’s Half Marathon, 7K & Kids Dash Run/Walk.
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Greater Than the Sum of its Parts, Amazing Art from Pieces and Pixels, features Pysanky by Katherine Alexander, Digital Art by Matt Bryan, Mosaics by Brenda Fra-ser, Assemblage by Nell
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A class action lawsuit filed in federal court this week seeks to do what law enforcement and legislators have been reluctant to do – shut down Torch Electronics, the vendor behind many of the video machines in convenience stores offering payoffs of hundreds or thousands of dollars. The lawsuit in Missouri’s Western District, which accuses […]
The post Missouri lawsuit accuses Torch Electronics of violating racketeering law appeared first on Missouri Independent.
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Last month, Brenda Foster stood on the railroad tracks at the edge of her yard in East Palestine, Ohio, and watched a smoky inferno billow from the wreckage of a derailed train. The chemicals it was carrying — and the fire that consumed them — were so toxic that the entire area had to evacuate. Foster packed up her 87-year-old mother, and they fled to stay with relatives.
With a headache, sore throat, burning eyes and a cough, Foster returned home five days later — as soon as authorities allowed. So when she saw on TV that there was a hotline for residents with health concerns, she dialed as soon as the number popped up on the screen.
The people who arrived offered to test the air inside her home for free. She was so eager to learn the results, she didn’t look closely at the paper they asked her to sign. Within minutes of taking measurements with a hand-held machine, one of them told her they hadn’t detected any harmful chemicals. Foster moved her mother back the same day.
What she didn’t realize is that the page of test results that put her mind at ease didn’t come from the government or an independent watchdog. CTEH, the contractor that provided them, was hired by Norfolk Southern, the operator of the freight train that derailed.
And, according to several independent experts consulted by ProPublica in collaboration with the Guardian, the air testing results did not prove their homes were truly safe. Erin Haynes, a professor of environmental health at the University of Kentucky, said the air tests were inadequate in two ways: They were not designed to detect the full range of dangerous chemicals the derailment may have unleashed, and they did not sample the air long enough to accurately capture the levels of chemicals they were testing for.
“It’s almost like if you want to find nothing, you run in and run out,” Haynes said.
First image: Market Street in East Palestine in March. Second image: A warning sign along Sulphur Run in East Palestine. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)About a quarter century ago, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health was founded by four scientists who all had done consulting work for tobacco companies or lawyers defending them. Now known by its acronym, CTEH quickly became a go-to contractor for corporations responsible for industrial disasters. Its bread and butter is train crashes and derailments. The company has been accused repeatedly of downplaying health risks.
In since-deleted marketing on its website, CTEH once explained how the data it gathers about toxic chemicals can be used later to shield its clients from liability in cases brought by people who say they were harmed: “A carrier of chemicals may be subjected to legal claims as a result of a real or imagined release. Should this happen, appropriate meteorological and chemical data, recorded and saved ... may be presented as powerful evidence to assist in the litigation or potentially preclude litigation.”
Despite this track record, this company has been put in charge of allaying residents’ concerns about health risks and has publicly presented a rosy assessment.
It was CTEH, not the Environmental Protection Agency, that designed the testing protocol for the indoor air tests.
And it is CTEH, not the government, that runs the hotline residents are directed to call with concerns about odors, fumes or health problems. Local and federal officials, including the EPA, funnel the scared and sick to company representatives.
First image: A train passing through East Palestine in March. Second image: A marquee in East Palestine advertises a hotline that is run by CTEH. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)In a statement, Paul Nony, CTEH’s principal toxicologist and senior vice president, said the company has responded to thousands of incidents, and its environmental monitoring and sampling follows plans approved and directed by the incident commanders of each response. “Our highly skilled, certified specialists include Ph.D. toxicologists, masters in public health, industrial hygienists and safety professionals, as well as hazardous materials and registered environmental managers,” he wrote.
He added that CTEH has been “working side-by-side” with the EPA in East Palestine “and comparing data collected in the community and in people’s homes to ensure that we are all working with the most accurate data.” Hotline callers receive information, Nony wrote, that is “based on the latest data collected by CTEH and EPA, vetted together to ensure the accuracy of the public health information provided.”
The circumstances of the testing are unclear. The EPA said its representatives have, indeed, accompanied CTEH to residents’ homes, overseen the company’s indoor air tests and performed side-by-side testing with their own equipment. But some residents told ProPublica that even though multiple people came to their doors, only one person had measuring equipment. An agency spokesperson said CTEH’s testing protocol “was reviewed and commented on by EPA and state and federal health agencies.”
Stephen Lester, a toxicologist who has helped communities respond to environmental crises since the Love Canal disaster in upstate New York in the 1970s, said he was concerned about Norfolk Southern’s role in deciding how environmental testing is done in East Palestine. “The company is responsible for the costs of cleaning up this accident,” Lester said. “And if they limit the extent of how we understand its impact, their liability will be less.”
A Norfolk Southern contractor works in Sulphur Run in March. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)An EPA spokesperson said that the federal blueprint for responding to such emergencies requires responsible parties, in this case Norfolk Southern, to do the work — not just pay for it. But the agency has the authority to perform or require its own testing.
The relationship between CTEH and Norfolk Southern wasn’t clear to several residents ProPublica interviewed. Before testing begins, people are asked to sign a form authorizing the “Monitoring Team,” which the document says includes Norfolk Southern, “its contractors, environmental professionals, including CTEH LLC, and assisting local, state, and federal agencies.” An earlier version of the form included a confusing sentence that suggested that whoever signed was waiving their right to sue. Norfolk Southern said that was a mistake and pulled those forms.
In a written response to questions, Norfolk Southern said it “has been transparent about representing CTEH as a contractor for Norfolk Southern from day one of our response to the incident.” The company also pointed to a map on its website displaying CTEH’s outdoor air-monitoring results that says “Client: Norfolk Southern” in tiny type in the corner. “We are committed to working with the community and the EPA to do what is right for the residents of East Palestine,” a Norfolk Southern spokesperson wrote in an email.
When told by a reporter that the contractor, CTEH, was hired by the rail company, Foster’s face fell. “I had no clue,” she said. Looking back, she said, the people who came to her door never said anything about Norfolk Southern. They didn’t give her a copy of the paper that she had signed.
Before the derailment, East Palestine offered its 4,700 residents some of the best in small-town life. Its streets are lined with trees and charming houses. After school, kids played in the street, in the well-maintained park or in its affordable swimming pool. At Sprinklz on Top, a diner in the center of town, you can get a full dinner for less than $10.
Everything changed after the Feb. 3 derailment and the subsequent decision to purposefully ignite the chemicals, sending a toxic mushroom cloud over the town. Dead fish floated in local waterways, and “Pray for EP” signs appeared in many windows. Furniture is piled up on the curbs. Foster said some of her neighbors are replacing theirs because of concerns about contamination. But the 57-year-old, who works shifts painting firebrick, says she doesn’t have the money to do that. So she has come up with a solution she hopes will reduce her exposure: She sits in a single chair.
A black plume rises over East Palestine after chemicals were purposefully ignited on Feb. 6. (Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo) Tests May Miss Some DangersFrom the earliest days of the disaster, CTEH’s work has been at the center of the rail company’s reassuring messages about safety. Norfolk Southern’s “Making it Right” website cites CTEH data when stating that local air and drinking water are safe. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency has not “signed off” on any of Norfolk Southern’s statements “with regard to health risks based on results of sampling.”)
A video posted on Norfolk Southern’s YouTube account shows footage of a man in a CTEH baseball cap looking carefully at testing machinery. “All of our air monitoring and sampling data collectively do not indicate any short- or long-term risks,” a CTEH toxicologist says.
According to the EPA, CTEH’s indoor air testing in East Palestine consists of a one-time measurement of what is known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. These airborne chemicals can cause dizziness and nausea, and, over the long term, some VOCs can cause cancer. Vinyl chloride, a VOC that was carried by the derailed train and later ignited, can cause dizziness and headaches and increase the incidence of a rare form of liver cancer, according to the EPA. The machine that CTEH uses in East Palestine captures VOCs if they’re above 0.1 parts per million, but it doesn’t say which specific compounds are present.
CTEH said that when VOCs are detected, the company then tests for vinyl chloride. According to the EPA, the indoor testing has detected VOCs in 108 buildings before Feb. 21 and 12 buildings after that. Follow-up tests found no vinyl chloride, according to CTEH and the EPA. CTEH’s Nony said, “CTEH has not considered conducting long-term VOC air sampling in the homes because real-time air monitoring results do not indicate a significant impact of VOCs related to the derailment in the homes.”
But five experts on the health effects of chemicals consulted for this story said that the failure to detect VOCs should not be interpreted to mean that people’s homes are necessarily safe.
“VOCs are not the only chemicals that could have been in the air,” said Haynes, the environmental health professor. Haynes also said that because the testing was a snapshot — as opposed to an assessment made over several days — it would not be expected to detect VOCs at most household levels.
Many of the toxic chemicals that were airborne in the early days after the derailment, including pollutants that can cause cancer and other serious problems, may have settled out of the air and onto furniture and into crevices in houses, Haynes said. So she also recommended testing surfaces for compounds that could have been created by the burning of vinyl chloride, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, including the carcinogen benzene. Young children who play on the floor are especially vulnerable, Haynes added.
Two couches were left outside of an apartment in March in East Palestine. (Courtesy of Justin Merriman)Even a week after the derailment, Haynes said VOCs likely would have dissipated. “To keep the focus on the air is almost smoke and mirrors,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, the air is fine!’ Of course it’s going to be fine. Now you should be looking for where those chemicals went. They did not disappear. They are still in the environment.”
In addition, Dr. Ted Schettler, science director at the Science and Environmental Health Network, noted that some VOCs can cause symptoms at levels below 0.1 parts per million, which CTEH’s tests wouldn’t capture. Schettler gave the example of butyl acrylate, one of the chemicals that was carried by the derailed train. “The symptoms are irritation of the eyes and throats, headaches and nausea,” he said.
In its statement, Nony acknowledged that some homes in East Palestine had the odor of butyl acrylate, but he said that “current testing results do not indicate levels that would be associated with health effects.”
Health experts are particularly concerned about dioxins in East Palestine because the compounds can cause health problems, including cancer. The combustion of vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride, two of the chemicals that were on the train and burned after it derailed, have been known to produce dioxins.
But, in his statement, Nony dismissed the idea that the incident could have created dioxins “at a significant concentration” and said testing for the compounds was unwarranted. The company based that assessment on air monitoring it did with the EPA when the chemicals were purposefully set on fire; they were looking for two other chemicals that are produced by burning vinyl chloride.
Last week, the EPA said it would require Norfolk Southern to test for dioxins in the soil in East Palestine. And the agency has since released a plan for soil sampling to be carried out by another Norfolk Southern contractor. But some are arguing that the EPA should do the testing itself — and should have done it much earlier.
Results Used to Deny ReliefThe results of CTEH’s tests in East Palestine were used at one point to deny a family’s reimbursement for hotel and relocation costs. Zsuzsa Gyenes, who lives about a mile from the derailment site, said she began to feel ill a few hours after the accident. “It felt like my brain was smacking into my skull. I got very disoriented, nauseous. And my skin started tingling,” she said. Her 9-year-old son also became sick. “He was projectile puking and shaking violently,” said Gyenes, who was especially concerned about his breathing because he has been hospitalized several times for asthma. “He was gasping for air.”
Zsuzsa Gyenes and her partner, Brian Crossmon. Behind them are containers used to haul away debris in East Palestine in February. (Courtesy of Justin Merriman)Gyenes, her partner and son left for a hotel. At first, Norfolk Southern reimbursed the family for the stay, food and other expenses. The company even covered the cost of a remote-controlled car that Gyenes bought to cheer up her son, who was devastated because he was unable to attend school and missed the Valentine’s Day party.
But the reimbursements stopped after Gyenes got her air tested by CTEH. Gyenes was handed a piece of paper with a CTEH logo showing that the company did not detect any VOCs.
The next time Gyenes brought her receipts to the emergency assistance center, she said she was told that no expenses incurred after her air had been tested would be reimbursed because the air was safe.
A post office clerk, Gyenes described her financial situation as “bleeding out.” Nevertheless, she continued to foot the hotel bill. “I still feel sick every time I go back into town,” she said.
When she called the hotline, she got upset when she said a CTEH toxicologist told her that there was no way her headache, chest pain, tingling or nausea could be related to the derailment.
ProPublica asked Norfolk Southern about Gyenes’ situation. A spokesperson said the company reimbursed her $5,000, including some lodging and food expenses, after the initial air tests even though the company said her home is outside the evacuation zone. It noted that Gyenes used “abusive language” when questioning the toxicologist. (Gyenes acknowledged that she called her a “liar.”)
Norfolk Southern said it is working with local and federal authorities to arrange another test of the air in her home. “We’ll continue to work with every affected community member toward being comfortable back in their homes, including this resident,” a Norfolk Southern spokesperson said in an email.
After ProPublica asked about the family, Norfolk Southern restarted payments.
On Wednesday, when Gyenes returned to the emergency assistance center, she said that she was given $1,000 on a prepaid card to cover lodging, food and gas.
Do Blocked Railroad Crossings Endanger Your Community? Tell Us More.
Kirsten Berg contributed research.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Last year, when the Colorado legislature passed a bill aimed at protecting residents in disputes with their homeowners associations, lawmakers had one key goal in mind: reducing the number of foreclosures filed by HOAs.
So far, the reform appears to have had its intended effect. An analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica shows that HOAs filed 47 foreclosure cases in the nearly six months between Aug. 10, when the law took effect, and the end of January. That’s a significant drop from the same period for the previous four years, when an average of 281 cases per year were filed.
During the 10 weeks between the reform bill’s signing and its implementation, HOAs appear to have been in a rush to start foreclosure motions, filing 151 cases, compared to an average of 98 cases per year in the same 10-week period for the previous four years.
“We see that this is working. It’s preventing people from being foreclosed on, and people are being able to stay in their homes,” said Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat who cosponsored the bill.
But advocates and some lawmakers say more needs to be done to address lingering problems with how HOAs are run in Colorado. For one thing, the drop in foreclosure filings might be only temporary. HOA attorneys told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that the drop may be due to HOAs restarting their collection efforts — the law requires most HOAs to update their collection policies, provide homeowners with several notifications about delinquencies and offer longer payment plans. Once they’ve complied with the new rules, HOAs may decide to restart their foreclosure efforts.
Ricks said she plans to introduce a number of fixes during the current legislative session aimed at undoing some “unintended consequences” of last year’s reform bill. She said the changes would primarily be focused on the aspects of the law that dictated how HOAs can enforce violations of their community rules with fines. The law, for instance, required HOAs to give homeowners more time to fix violations before fining them, but Ricks is considering a proposal that allows HOAs to impose more immediate penalties for acute problems, such as noise nuisances.
“I think the covenant violation side of [the new law] was mangled. … It didn’t appreciate the many different types of violations that could exist,” HOA attorney David Graf said. “I think we need to streamline some of the procedural aspects of it while trying to retain as much owner protection as we can.”
To study if other HOA reforms may be needed, Rep. Brianna Titone, an Arvada Democrat, cosponsored a bill to create an HOA task force that would take a deeper look at issues like foreclosure, fines and communications practices, taking into account the perspective of homeowners. Titone said she hopes the task force can also explore ways to keep HOA disputes out of court.
“What we’re really after here is just trying to figure out the fairest way of keeping efficiency in the process of HOAs, but giving people who are in HOAs relief when they need it,” Titone said. “I think this is something we should have done a long time ago.”
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.
Karl Paymah was on the clock.
A certified letter from the Rock Ridge Condominium Association in the Denver suburb of Aurora said he had 30 days to pay $1,515.45 in unpaid homeowners association dues and penalties — or face foreclosure.
After receiving the letter on Dec. 23, 2021, Paymah said he tried to pay the balance through the HOA’s website, as he had done in the past. But his account had been locked because it was turned over to the HOA’s collections attorney, Tammy Alcock. Next, he called Rock Ridge’s management company, which he said told him to discuss the matter with Alcock. But there was no answer when he called her office three times that afternoon. The office of Alcock Law Group was closed for the holiday.
“I can’t pay. I can’t pay through the portal. I can’t pay with the management company. I can’t pay with this attorney that they’re telling me to go through,” Paymah, a retired NFL cornerback, recalled thinking. “So I’m just sitting there.”
Watch Rocky Mountain PBS’s Report (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)Turning the account over to Alcock meant that the association was asserting its right under Colorado law to charge him for the attorney fees it was incurring, causing his debt to grow rapidly.
By early February, when Rock Ridge began moving forward with foreclosure, the legal process of taking the home from its owner, Paymah’s debt had more than tripled to about $5,000, mostly because of legal costs.
Paymah’s experience is a case study in how even a small dispute can quickly escalate into an expensive legal fight in Colorado, where state law empowers HOAs to initiate foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who owe money to them. As Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica have reported, HOAs have filed thousands of foreclosure cases in recent years, in disputes stemming from as little as a $308 lien.
To file foreclosure cases, HOAs in Colorado often turn to the expertise of seven law firms that specialize in handling disputes with homeowners. From January 2018 through February 2022, each of the law firms filed at least 100 foreclosure cases on behalf of HOAs in Colorado, according to an analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. One of the law firms with the highest number of filings is the Alcock Law Group.
Seven Law Firms Each Filed More Than 100 Foreclosure Cases on Behalf of Colorado HOAs Over Four YearsCases filed between January 2018 and the end of February 2022
Note: Foreclosure cases filed by HOAs were identified using a list of all relevant foreclosure cases in the state, which the news organizations searched for plaintiff names containing HOA-related keywords before manually reviewing the results. For more details, see our methodology. (Source: Analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica)Foreclosure litigation can be a lucrative business for law firms, which can reap thousands of dollars in attorney fees from each foreclosure case they help file. Critics say this system creates a perverse incentive for attorneys to advise the HOAs to file more foreclosure cases, rather than to find less expensive solutions.
Alcock Law Group said in a court filing that it represented about 50 HOAs and that a typical uncontested HOA foreclosure case generates between $4,000 and $6,000 in attorney fees. Alcock has filed more than 300 foreclosure cases since 2018, the analysis shows. Rock Ridge’s financial documents obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica show that the HOA has billed more than $76,000 in attorney fees and legal costs to delinquent residents — including Paymah — since January 2021.
State Rep. Brianna Titone, an Arvada Democrat, has long argued that the state needs to do more to keep HOA disputes out of court, pointing out that, in these cases, attorneys always win.
“Whatever dispute happens, the HOA attorneys are the ones that are always reaping the benefit,” Titone said. “They get paid by both parties, basically.”
Representatives from four of the seven law firms that collectively filed hundreds of foreclosure cases told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that foreclosure is typically a remedy of last resort and represents just a fraction of debt-related matters that they handle on behalf of HOAs.
The Rock Ridge Condominium Association has filed five foreclosure cases since the summer of 2021. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)Jeffrey B. Smith of Altitude Community Law said his firm, which represents about 3,000 HOAs, doesn’t “push associations towards foreclosures except in those few cases where other options have proved futile.”
Hal Kyles of Orten Cavanagh Holmes & Hunt said profit motives do not play a part in how his firm handles HOA-related cases. “Issues of monetary return are no factor in recommendations to foreclose and would be a violation of my ethical obligation to act in the best interests of my client,” he said.
Two other law firms, Alcock Law Group and Vial Fotheringham, did not respond to questions for this story. Tobey & Johnston declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Paymah, who has lived in Colorado since being drafted by the Denver Broncos in 2005, decided to do what other homeowners facing foreclosure rarely do: fight the HOA.
Paymah’s legal strategy centered on challenging attorney fees that he considered exorbitant and unjustifiable. “I felt bamboozled,” Paymah said, noting how quickly his debt grew. “I felt like somebody was trying to take advantage of me.”
When the case went to trial in August, the HOA defended its action, casting the whole dispute as being of Paymah’s own making.
“The facts here are absolutely undisputed that Mr. Paymah was delinquent in payment of assessments,” said Alcock, who presented the mounds of correspondence that the HOA’s management company had sent to Paymah notifying him of his delinquencies.
Alcock also noted that, if a series of unpaid dues like Paymah’s were allowed to go uncollected, it could ultimately lead to serious harm to the neighborhood.
“There are many, many … examples where associations have large delinquencies, don’t collect assessments, and aren’t able to properly take care of the community and ensure safety of the residents,” Alcock said.
In his testimony, Paymah, whose company bought the Rock Ridge condo in 2018 as an investment and has since rented it out, admitted that he had not been as attentive to property-related matters as he should have been for several years, as he dealt with a custody dispute over his son.
But Paymah said he had already caught up on his unpaid dues and penalties before trial, paying about $3,600. What was keeping the case from being resolved, he said, was attorney fees.
In the end, Judge Paul King ruled in favor of Paymah’s main argument, agreeing that the court should review the reasonableness of attorney fees, which ballooned to about $50,000 after the trial concluded.
But it was a pyrrhic victory for Paymah. After reviewing attorney fees and legal costs, King ordered Paymah to pay $25,774 to avoid foreclosure — far more than he would have paid had he never mounted a legal challenge in the first place.
Paymah said homeowners like him face a “lose-lose situation” in a dispute with their HOA. “It’s almost like you have to lay down … and just let them do whatever they want. I can’t really advise anybody to do that,” he said. “And then your latter alternative is what? Get a lawyer and spend a bunch of money.”
When Nicole Plybon moved to Rock Ridge in 2004, the community was brand new. Then came what she called a “slow dilapidation.”
“Shingles were blowing off the roofs, the stone was falling down, the sidewalks were all cracked up, the gutters are pretty much smashed,” Plybon said. “Just a lot of problems starting to accumulate on one another.”
This common infrastructure is the responsibility of the HOA, and its upkeep is funded by the monthly dues paid by every owner in the community.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and residents were staying home more, they began asking questions to the management company, which had run the community for more than 13 years, and to the HOA board, which they said rarely held meetings.
A group of residents decided to organize and eventually voted out the board and brought in a new group, which included Plybon. The new board quickly replaced its management company and started taking on projects to improve the community.
Soon Plybon and other board members realized that their predecessors hadn’t built up enough savings to cover future maintenance needs. This led to their decision to raise the community’s monthly dues by 48% last year, making payments that used to be as little as $178 to jump to $264.
“Unfortunately, we had to be the bad guys on the board,” Plybon said. “We had to start thinking about a five-, 10-, 15-year plan, where that was never done in the past.”
Nicole Plybon, a former member of the Rock Ridge HOA board, said the community needed to build up enough savings to cover future maintenance needs. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)In addition to raising dues, the HOA began cracking down on delinquent homeowners, filing five foreclosure cases starting in the summer of 2021.
All five cases reached resolutions that allowed homeowners to avoid foreclosure, and they were resolved without much delay — except for one: Paymah’s case.
That legal contest stretched on for about a year, and all the while the HOA’s board members assumed that Paymah would eventually be held responsible for paying attorney fees and legal costs.
But King reduced what Paymah owed the HOA in attorney fees and legal costs by more than $30,000 on several grounds, finding that Alcock had charged for some tasks that could have been handled by a paralegal and billed more time than was likely necessary for certain tasks. He also struck some of the fees resulting from Alcock’s work on the HOA’s allegation that Paymah had put his property under his business’ name in an attempt to defraud the association, ruling that the association did not prove its case.
The attorney fees that Paymah didn’t have to pay are now being shouldered by Rock Ridge residents. Current and former HOA board members told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that they felt caught off guard by King’s ruling.
“You get people who just want to help their community on a board. But most of the time, we’re not educated about bylaws and all that stuff, much less the implications of laws,” current board member Trish Westin said.
Former board member Erik Elisary said he found it frustrating that the HOAs have few options. “What other avenues does the HOA have to get the homeowner to pay?” he said. “Any time the homeowner is causing the HOA to have to spend attorney’s fees, they should be the responsibility of the homeowner.”
For his part, Paymah pointed out during the trial that there was another way to solve a dispute like this, citing a lawsuit filed against him by a different HOA for $1,438.85 in unpaid dues and late fees.
In that case, court records show that attorney fees and legal costs were kept to a minimum — about $815 — in part because the other HOA had opted for the less expensive tactic of seeking a judgment in county court, rather than seeking foreclosure in district court.
Paymah testified he was able to work with the HOA to keep the dispute from escalating. “I called and explained it,” he said. “So I made it current. … [A] similar situation, but that was just handled a different way.”
Rock Ridge’s HOA has billed more than $76,000 in attorney fees and legal costs to delinquent residents since January 2021, according to financial documents obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)Advocates for homeowners in HOAs have also been backing a number of other ideas for keeping housing disputes from resulting in exorbitant legal bills.
During last year’s legislative session, lawmakers considered one such idea as part of an HOA foreclosure reform measure. The measure, which prevents certain types of HOA foreclosures and requires more notification and longer payment plan before initiating a case, passed in May.
But a provision that would have limited the amount of attorney fees that HOAs could recover was dropped before the measure’s approval.
State Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat, said the move was a concession made during negotiations with HOA industry representatives. She acknowledged that unchecked attorney fees remain a problem for homeowners but has not offered any bill during the current legislative session to address the issue.
“It is like a blank check, in my mind, that’s been given to these HOA lawyers,” Ricks said. “There’s no dispute resolution process for homeowners. The only way to do this is to go to court.”
HOA homeowner advocate Stan Hrincevich, who runs Colorado HOA Forum, an online resource for homeowners, said his top priority for many years has been to empower a state agency to resolve disputes between homeowners and their associations, with a goal of keeping them from going to the court in the first place.
“Folks, don’t go to court. It’s not a great place for justice,” Hrincevich said. “Can you imagine how much this is costing homeowners every year?”
Titone, the state representative, said an out-of-court dispute resolution process is also one of her top priorities, but she has no current proposals to create such a process. She said the HOA industry’s lobbying has prevented such efforts from moving forward in the past.
“You need to have somebody be able to say, ‘Why do we need to go to expensive court here? You owe $2,000,’” Titone said. “There should be a more civil way to do it than doing it this way.”
HOA attorney David Graf said he supports the intent of Hrincevich and Titone’s proposal, but he is concerned about the costs that HOAs could still incur in such a process.
“I love the idea of having someone who can resolve these complaints without having to go to court, but I'm not sure if substituting a state officer as the judge of this issue is any better than where we are now,” Graf said.
Rock Ridge board members said they think a dispute resolution process would be helpful in avoiding what they’ve experienced — both in their efforts to catch up on overdue maintenance in 2020 and their efforts to collect delinquent debts since.
“There have to be other states we can model something better around to protect the homeowners,” Rock Ridge board member Nick Losito said.
The Riverboats at the Gateway Arch award guests one of the best views of St. Louis’ working riverfront, the Gateway Arch and the city skyline. Narrated by the captain
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