the "Enemy....

"Mass movements can rise and spread without a belief in a God, but never without a belief in a devil."

Community Associations Institute (CAI)

In their "Glossary of Terms" AHRC defines CAI: "Community Associations Institute (CAI) is a trade group of vendors who earn their living working for homeowner associations. This group is run by lawyers who lobby and write laws so they can convert homeowner dues, insurance policies and home equity into legal fees. The laws they wrote give them unlimited lawyers fees for collecting minor anounts (sic) of dues or fines. These have resulted in the foreclosure floods in homeowner associations throughout the States." 

One of the constants that run through most of these sites is their absolute hatred for CAI.  

The Community Associations Institute was formed in 1973.  Its original purpose was to provide education and information for the relatively new form of housing, the condominium or homeowner association.  It board was equally divided among five interest groups - associations, managers, professionals, public officials and developers.  Any public policy matters had to be approved by a majority of al five groups.  As a result, CAI was not actively involved in legislative activities, as an organization for its first 20 years or so.  During this time, its marketing materials often stated that, among other things, it was the only national organization that represented the interests of the associations and the owners.  Back then, nobody really thought to separate the two -  the association was made up of owners -  the owners were the association. 

 Although the leadership remained equally balanced, the membership at this time was made up of about 55% associations and individual owners, about 40% managers and professionals (mostly attorneys, accountants and insurance agents), and about 5% developers and public officials.  This stayed pretty constant as CAI grew from a few hundred members to around 16,000 at the turn of the century.  However, it was obvious that the managers and attorneys dominated the group, due to their ability to attend national conferences, take roles on various committees and actively seek leadership roles. 

During the '90's, another change began, as CAI became active in legislative activities.  By this time the board configuration had changed and it no longer required a majority of five interest groups to adopt a policy, but a majority of the board.   From that point on, CAI often found itself in contention with the people on these sites.  Around 2004, CAI changed its marketing materials to reflect its changing philosophy.  It no longer claimed to be the representative of the associations and owners, but instead, focused on providing materials to help create "communities".  In 2005, CAI completed its slow, but steady conversion to a trade association, aimed at managers, professionals and vendors.  Associations are still a major focus, but are a separate group inside the organization. 

A lot of the contention that is apparent comes mostly from the political battles at the state level.  In the late '80's, CAI encouraged its local chapters to form separate political action committees to lobby for or against new legislation that was being proposed in state legislatures.  Some of the founders of the web sites noted began their "careers" following legislative battles with CAI members or lobbyists.  To the "True Believer", CAI is the face of the enemy, never to be trusted, always to be opposed.  There is no middle ground as far as they are concerned.  A jihad has been declared and they will brook no peace talks. 

Read the article that CAI wrote about some of the people and groups on this site, and then, if you want to find them, look at what the groups have to say about CAI

Of course they've never provided one single bit of evidence of any scam or fraud, they just like to throw the words around.