Below is a review of the posts on Facebook and LinkedIn from the past week. You can check out the full posts by clicking on the links.
NOTE: remember that we now post every other day.
The posts on Sunday 7/26/2026, here and here, noted that HOA wants to foreclose over nearly $10K in unpaid dues, fees. What else should a condo or HOA do when one owner refuses to pay and the rest of the owners are essentially paying that share too?
Here the association is in Boca Raton, FL. The HOA is suing to foreclose on a townhome, claiming the owner racked up more than $9,300 in unpaid dues, interest and fees. The Boca Golf and Tennis Townhomes Homeowners Association, also known as The Greens at Boca Golf and Tennis Townhomes Homeowners Association, filed the foreclosure complaint in state court against homeowner: Dawn M. Perez.
According to the complaint, Perez stopped keeping up with monthly assessments, and the unpaid balance. What led up to the filing of suit is noted in the post.
The amount owed in April? $9,328.79. The breakdown is detailed in the post. Note that under FL law (as under PA law), associations are allowed to charge interest and fees on delinquent accounts and can pursue both a lien foreclosure and recovery of what’s owed.
The relief sought in this suit is also noted in the post.
Some readers may be thinking “how can that HOA take that person’s home?” Well, what else is the HOA to do when the owner does not pay assessments, still receives services, and other owners end up paying more to cover the amount not paid by that owner?
TAKEAWAY: Condominiums and HOAs do not want the houses – they want the money to operate and maintain the community. But when someone doesn’t pay, they may need to resort to a foreclosure to collect that money (and get in a new owner who will pay what is due).
The posts on Tuesday 7/28/2026, here and here, explained that federal Third Circuit says PIP’s proximity to EEOC charge does not save bias complaint.
The end result: a Black former portfolio manager for BNY failed to show that racial discrimination, rather than lack of qualifications and poor performance, led to his alleged demotion and termination. Now let’s circle back and get more facts.
BNY terminated Lynn as part of a reorganization process that aimed to reduce redundancy between roles. BNY viewed Lynn as the poorest performing of the candidates selected for possible termination. He alleged that BNY placed him on a performance improvement plan (PIP) and later fired him in retaliation for filing a discrimination charge with the EEOC. He also claimed that BNY replaced him with a White employee.
A federal trial court granted summary judgment for BNY on all claims and now the 3rd Circuit (which covers PA cases) affirmed on appeal, holding that BNY did not actually replace Lynn’s position, but instead spread out his responsibilities among existing employees. The court also held that BNY offered a nondiscriminatory reason for the termination — Lynn’s poor performance — which Lynn failed to show was pretext for discrimination.
Let’s dive a bid deeper into the 3rd Circuit’s holding. It noted that evidence offered by BNY cut against Lynn’s claims of discriminatory animus. For example, the White employee whom Lynn claimed replaced him was an existing employee at the time of Lynn’s termination and performed only some of Lynn’s duties after Lynn was discharged. The 3rd Circuit also had other support relative to the White employee; that is in the post.
The Court also had to decide if the timing of the PIP was discriminatory. Here Lynn had been placed on a PIP less than three months after he filed an EEOC charge and sent an email to his supervisor as described in the post. The 3rd Circuit found almost nothing besides the timing of the PIP to show that it was discriminatory. What the court said about Lynn’s supervisor and her decision to give him the PIP is in the post.
The 3rd Circuit also rejected Lynn’s argument that he had been demoted before moving to the role at BNY that he held prior to his termination. The Court’s analysis on that is in the post.
The reinforced lesson here is that PIPs do not always constitute an adverse action under federal anti-discrimination laws. The 1st Circuit dealt with the issue in a March decision involving architectural firm HNTB and an employee who had been placed on a PIP. The post has more details on that case.
But every PIP is not necessarily legal either. A 2025 decision from the 7th Circuit held that a PIP with “impossible” conditions could be viewed as discriminatory relative to an employee who is fired as a result of not completing that plan. The facts underlying that case are in the post.
TAKEAWAY: Employers do have leeway to caution poor performers with a PIP, but that authority is not without guard rails.
The posts on Thursday 7/30/2026, here and here, were more about pigs: Man bitten by escaped pet pig sues HOA, 2 owners. What if it had been a dog instead of a pig? This is why enforcement can be so important.
A resident is suing a homeowners association and two other residents after having been attacked by their pet pig in their neighborhood in 2024. Paul Soucy filed the lawsuit against Maple Ridge Estates HOA and Derek and Blair Davis. The suit alleges that the HOA’s bylaws prohibited the Davises from owning and keeping Lulu the pig on their property. It further alleges that the HOA knew the Davises had Lulu on their property and was negligent when Lulu escaped through a broken fence on Oct. 10, 2024, and, unprovoked, attacked and bit Soucy as he was trying to corral it after getting instructions from Derek Davis. Where was Soucy at that time (because legally that can make a difference too)? See the post.
The lawsuit also alleges that the Davises knew Lulu was aggressive and failed to reasonably keep her in the yard.
Soucy’s alleged injuries and what he seeks as damages in the suit are described in the post.
TAKEAWAY: Regardless of the type of animal, owners are responsible for the behavior of their pets. And a condo or homeowners’ association can share liability for damage or injury to person or property by an animal that was prohibited from being in the community or was getting out of its home/yard and despite knowing about it, the association took no action. Work with a community association lawyer when it comes to animals in a community association.
The posts on Saturday 8/1/2026, here and here, ROAD To Nowhere: 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Is Now Law with Possible Chilling Effect on Estate Planning and Estates.
What the ROAD Act Intends To Achieve. The ROAD (Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream) to Housing Act, now branded the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act”, was passed by Congress on July 10, 2026. It is a large, bipartisan housing package aimed at increasing supply and tweaking federal housing programs. The ROAD Act bundles together 40+ provisions related to housing supply, manufactured housing, homeownership programs, counseling, veterans’ housing, rural preservation, and oversight of federal housing agencies (whew).
You probably heard about this legislation. There was a lot of bipartisan hype and back-slapping after the ROAD Act passed after political drama that kept it from becoming law for unrelated reasons. Supporters touted it as being terrific for the housing market, but is the ROAD Act all that it was hyped up to be? It seems to mostly just repackage familiar tools, meaning that its long‑run impact on housing affordability is likely to be incremental or nominal. And seemingly without a great understanding of what the problem actually is.
According to the US House Financial Services Committee (whose report is linked in the post), the ROAD Act tries to make it easier to build more homes, cheaper to produce certain types of housing, and harder for large investors to out-compete families buying single family homes (despite those large investors representing only 1% of buyers). See the detailed bullet list in the post. The law brings no money to the table to solve the problem, but it works within the existing legal and regulatory structure to improve efficiency. All good, but not really impactful in the current housing affordability crisis.
Problem Between This Housing Market and the ROAD Act. Typically, the relationship between existing housing inventory and newly constructed inventory shows a dominance by existing inventory. Normally, the national split between the two listing inventory types was between 90/10 and 85/15 for decades, with existing inventory being the larger numbers. But today it is different – see the current split (with low existing inventory), supply months detail, and year-over-year change, all in the post.
The ROAD Act’s supply story focuses almost entirely on new-construction and permitting (as explained in the post). Its only existing-inventory lever is thinning out corporate-investor competition for homes already on the market. What the ROAD Act does NOT do is address the lock-in effect that’s actually suppressing existing listings. The “lock-in effect” is defined in the post.
Given the foregoing, and talking hypothetically, if you doubled new construction inventory overnight, it still wouldn’t be enough to solve the affordability problem facing the US housing market. So …
What Was Missed In the ROAD Act. Dealing with the biggest driver of tight existing inventory: the mortgage “loc-in effect” where owners who have sub-4% rates avoid selling in a current 6.5% rate world. Ahat might be able to address this? See the post (including mention of pending legislation on that front). One economic modeling piece from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) estimates that addressing that issue could return 450,000 – 600,000 homes to the market over a decade, which is the actual key affordability problem.
Let’s take an example. Since 1997, home sellers have been able to exclude from taxes $250,000 (single) or $500,000 (joint) of capital gains on the sale of their principal residence. Sounds great, right? Hmmm. Those dollar limits were not indexed to inflation and with rising home prices in the intervening years, what the exclusion would need to be today to keep up with inflation is noted in the post. Because the exclusion wasn’t indexed or updated, many long-time homeowners, especially seniors, now face a real tax bill if they sell their homes. But if that same owner holds their home until death, then the heirs inherit it at current market value, wiping out the capital gain entirely for tax purposes. This is a mighty strong incentive to keep the house rather than sell it during retirement. So you can see the domino effect on getting more existing house listings into the housing market.
Final Thoughts / Summary. The ROAD to Housing Act adds no new federal spending, so its real impact on housing affordability will likely be small. It mostly targets new construction when the actual shortage is the turnover (via sale) of existing homes. The Act ignores the bigger problem, homeowners with low-rate mortgages who won’t sell because of the “lock-in effect” that is exacerbated by a capital gains tax exclusion that still uses 1997 numbers. But the lock-in is easing a bit on its own now. The post details the share of outstanding mortgages under 4% and how that compares to the historical high.
So in the end the ROAD appears to really be a road to nowhere.
TAKEAWAY: While perhaps well-meant, the legislation may have no true effect on affordable housing but a large effect on estate planning and wealth transfer through probate/inheritance.