66-year-old man jailed for being too poor to obey homeowners' association

I've said countless times that homeowners' associations are paper tigers. Although many have become fiefdoms that micromanage residents' lives with illogical (often illegal) Allowed Clouds, they wholly lack arrest powers.

Until now.

In Bayonet Point, Florida, a 66-year-old grandpa has been jailed by his homeowners' association because he can't afford to resod his lawn.

The man has owned his home since 1998. His homeowners' association requires yards to be covered by grass, but his lawn went brown when his sprinkler broke. He's 66, and he couldn't afford to resod the yard. The man was in such dire financial straits that his car got repossessed.

Because he couldn't afford to keep his lawn green, the homeowners' association sued him to court. The court gave him 30 days to sod the yard. The court also made him pay hundreds of dollars to the homeowners' association in legal fees.

Needless to say, he couldn't afford that either. So the court jailed him for contempt - and is refusing to release him until he can afford to sod the yard and pay the association's legal fees.

Wasn't debtor's prison abolished in the 19th century?

And since when do courts do the bidding of homeowners' associations, which are not public entities but are organized under corporate law? That's like throwing someone in jail because they wore the wrong shirt to work.

Now I know why the community is called Bayonet Point. It's because homeowners' associations enforce their whims at the point of a bayonet.

This is how they treat a 66-year-old man with a heart condition?

The homeowners' association spent much more on legal fees than it would've paid if it had sodded the lawn itself. But the court's order for the man to pay up is a bonanza for the association: It lets the association effectively receive free legal help - plus reimbursement for the $150 fee it paid for an expert witness.

Being a corporation means never having to pay to fight your own battles.

Now someone's grandfather is rotting in jail (with no bail) all because he can't afford to put fresh grass on his lawn - or pay the legal fees of a corporation that sued him over this fact. The jail has a capacity of only 782 inmates, but it houses 1,132 - so it's already overcrowded to begin with.

The taxpayers are being forced to pay for the association's abuse of power. It costs money to keep people in jail, you know.

Welcome to BushWorld.

(Source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article847365.ece)