Villa Appalling (Donie Vanitzian & Stephen Glassman)

The Book

Anyone actually purchasing and reading this diatribe will come away thinking anyone who ever sat on a board of directors for a community association is basically incompetent and evil, that managers and attorneys who work in the industry are vile, money-grubbing thieves, and that anyone who chooses to live in one of these monstrosities is an idiot.  Since millions of people manage to live very comfortably in them every single day, you could say that the book takes the worst examples and implies that its the norm.  Any relationship to a broad reality is ignored.

The People

Donie Vanitzian, BA, JD, is an Arbitrator and commercial property manager. She authors the Los Angeles Times Homeowner Associations column and is a UCLA Extension Professor for the course, Protecting Yourself in Common Interest Living. Her book, Villa Appalling! Destroying the Myth of Affordable Community Living, is touted as the "Ultimate Buyer Beware" guide. Contact Ms. Vanitzian te P.O. Box 11843, Marina del Rey, California 90295.

Donie and Stephen write a periodic column for the LA Times, in which they routinely rip into associations, especially boards, attorneys and management firms.  I've yet to run across a single article which even remotely has anything positive to say about them. I guess if you live in California, you'll find nothing but bad people, since those are the only ones who seem to get elected to boards.

Don't know anything about Glassman

The Writings:

In one article entitled, "Homeowner Association Communities:  Dynasties of Dysfunction" the headings include:

• Managers of modern tyranny
• Your cookie, their fortune
• Hunter and hunted
• The great wall of inequity
• Perversion of the fittest
• etc.

Other articles written include:

• Forget Kahn and Hitler; Industry's Role Model is the California Legislature
• Parasitic Association Industries Eat Their Kill

In a guest article for George Staropli's newsletter, ("CAI Fosters Harmony???") Donie attacks CAI for making statements unsupported by facts and then proceeds to attack everything about community associations, without citing a single fact, just more vituperous rants.

She routinely attacks the California legislature in the same manner.  A real object lesson in how to win friends and influence people.

Here is an excerpt from an article attacking attorneys:

"This is about titleholders getting the raw end of the court-deal, the raw end of the legal representation-deal, the raw end of the legislative-deal, and the raw end of just about ANY deal as it pertains to those g-d forsaken, expensive outhouses that we pay billions of dollars for, only to be told by some piss ass barely-high-school-grad manager who INSISTS on bragging that he/she/it is so-called c-e-r-t-i-f-i-e-d (at what is anybody's guess) and an employee who likely can't converse without a dictionary in one hand, a thesaurus in the other, AND, who very likely cannot even afford a down payment of his/her/its own -- BUT TELLS US what the hell WE can and cannot do with OUR property. They can do this because they belong to an industry that gives them FREE legal advice how to SCREW YOU and ME OVER and STAY ON *YOUR* ASSOCIATION'S PAYROLL come hell or high water. The problem: we're letting them do it."

This is one sad, mean, little person.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.