Prestonwood Forest Homeowners Organization welcomes you

Foreclosure rates are up across the country, primarily driven by lending institutions. Prestonwood Forest is different.

It is likely Prestonwood has its share of homes with bank foreclosures. But there is a far more disturbing trend here.

According to a report by the Associated Press filed today, home foreclosures are up an astounding 71% in the third quarter, compared to the same time last year.  And this includes only bank-initiated foreclosures.

What is a person to do?  For the past year and a half, PFHO has been telling the Board of Directors of the Association that foreclosing on our neighbors is a bad thing to do.  They haven't listened... after all, our own CC&Rs (deed restrictions) and By-laws (2000 vintage) actually ORDER them to "foreclose the lien" on homeowners who have failed to pay their HOA dues.  But boards are put in place to serve the needs of the whole community, and not just their own selfish interests. 

In the last couple of weeks, debris removal in Prestonwood really started to pick up (pun intended).  Seems like the BOD says we have 60 days to clean up the mess.  Ok, guys.  Sixty days from when?  H-Day?  Today?  Inquiring minds would really like to know.  Also, 60 days seems a bit short since fence boards and shingles (among other things) are in really short supply right now.  They are about as unavailable as insurance adjusters.

Driving around the neighborhood, we couldn't help but notice that the Board's houses are all neat and orderly.  Either they got no damage or they got rid of the evidence.  Now why do you suppose they did that?  So they can nuke the rest of us poor schmucks with a clear conscience that they have no problems?  Seems reasonable to us. 

Some of you are undoubtedly wondering just when the limbs, trunks, and leaves that Ike brought down will be picked up.   A week after the storm, the Prestonwood BOD finally got off the dime and sent out a 1-page letter on what to do with storm debris (cut the limbs into 10-foot lengths and put them and the leaves at the curb -- unbagged).  Yeah, right.  First good wind comes along it will look like we had another storm, and if we have a rain the same time we'll probably flood houses when the drains fill with the leaves.  Great advice, guys!!!  BTW, Board, since your note was so timely, almost all your neighbors had already bagged their leaves in the first days after the storm.

So PFHO was also interested in learning when the debris will go, until we heard a news report on TV a couple days ago that said Houston had so much debris it would take up to a year to remove.

There are some more learnings from Hurricane Ike that I have been informed of or have come to realize.

I got a small puncture wound on Saturday afternoon (a week after the storm) and knowing that tetanus is one of the few medical diseases that is still 100% fatal, I called around to find a place that could just give me that one simple injection.  The process was complicated by the lack of internet.  But after hours of searching, nobody seemed to have any tetanus vaccine that was still usable (an internet search indicates the tetanus toxoid needs to be stored at a temperature of 2°-8°C [35-42°F]).  It was hard to believe that not one of the Houston area Redi-Clinics  had a single dosage that survived the storm.