Unpaid dues are no big deal...when your friends are running the Board

As most homeowners know by now, to get behind on your monthly HOA dues is a quick way to get crossed off the Sutherland's Christmas card list - and find yourself on the wrong end of an instantaneous full-court press collection effort. GIL history is littered with examples of fellow homeowners who have, for one reason or another, wound up in an financial thicket and quickly discovered just how aggressive the Association can be under the reign of the Sutherlands and their attorney-for-every-occasion mentality.  There's the one homeowner that got behind on her dues only to find her wages from a local university garnished (embarrassing, I'm sure). And, oh the number of liens that have been filed over the last nine years - if you put them all end-to-end they would stretch from here to Miller-Gallman and back!


Don't get me wrong - I think it's a good thing that our Association goes after every penny it's owed.  Can you imagine how outrageous the dues would be if they didn't!  Everyone should pay their dues in full and on time.  It isn't fair to your neighbors if you don't.


I only make mention of how hard the Association comes down on those who are late to pay because I have recently learned that there has been one, very eyebrow-raising exception, where a homeowner failed to pay their dues for months on end and didn't get the 'Sutherland treatment' that you and I are familiar with.  What did he get instead?  (Continued...)

Well, of course, he got the 'Sutherland treatment' that he was used to and has always gotten - friendly and preferential.



Who was this homeowner that stopped paying but didn't have two guys from Jersey show up at his doorstep?  You guessed it - Kit and Stuart's BFF, Jerry Miller - who, up until his recent foreclosure (apparently, the recession hasn't put Karma out of work yet) owned unit 309 Phase I for the past six or so years.


What happened to him when he quit paying, you ask?  I'll give you a clue: I have found no indication that any liens were ever filed; no wages in danger of garnishment; no attempt to put a lien on other property or assets he owns; no nothin'.  In fact, he still owes our HOA his unpaid dues (that got tucked euphemistically into the budget as 'Delinquent Fees', or, 'money we'll never see').


I know, some of you might be thinking that he might not have any assets to speak of if he just had his loft foreclosed on.  But that would only be true if it happened to common folk like you and me.  People like that don't stop paying their bills when they have nothing left, silly! That would be, well, half-ethical.  Those kind of people strategically stop paying their debts to others long before it would keep prime rib off their table, chardonnay out of their glass - and long before it meant that they couldn't still come home to a million dollar pad (which he quit claimed over to his wife just before his loft foreclosure, 'natch) at the end of a long day of screwing other people over. Don't you worry about him - he's still livin' large over on Noble Dr, not far from Glen Iris Lofts....here's an aerial shot from Bing maps of his real home:

Nice diggs, huh?  The guest 'cottage' in the back is my favorite.  Must be nice.


But then you can afford nice things like that when you have friends - and, as has been alleged, business partners - in high places.  Friends that have seemingly opted to stick it to their fellow homeowners every time instead of sticking it to who should have gotten stuck.  Friends that always seem to go into the phone booth as collection thugs with brass knuckles...but come out as puckered-up collection patsies whenever they get your call.

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