Elderly Immigrant Wrongfully Dispossessed of Home by Local HOA

Marshall S. Swanson Marshall S. Swanson
Mar 4, 2021 - 17:32 Updated: May 3, 2022 - 23:34
Elderly Immigrant Wrongfully Dispossessed of Home by Local HOA

In what some are calling a high tech lynching, one elderly immigrant from Jamaica learned the hard way about a duplicitous home owners association in Central Florida.

In January, 2014 Dazrine Forbes, a 75-year old Jamaican immigrant suffering from dementia and paranoid schizophrenia was living alone in her home in South Orange County, Florida— a home she had owned and lived in for 15 years.  She owed no money on the home. However, Woodstone Homeowner Association, the HOA of which she was a member (through its late President Charles Humphry), its Board of Directors, the association's management company (via local lawyer Karen Wonsetler) filed in Orange County Court a foreclosure action against Mrs. Forbes over a disputed homeowner association lien.

Mrs. Forbes lived in her car as a homeless person for almost a month and a half before being found and placed in an assisted living facility after being ejected from her home by her own homeowner association.  But the court filings reveal there’s even more to the story. A 2016 lawsuit charges that Forbes’ descent into homelessness began when her local HOA railroaded and abused the senior citizen with a web of lies and deceit.

In January 2014, the Woodstone homeowners association, led by one of Forbes’ neighbors, with the help of attorney Karen Wonsetler, initiated proceedings to eject the elderly Jamaican/African-American woman from her home over disputed $2,286.51 homeowner association dues and late charges. The HOA falsely claimed that Forbes, who owned her home outright, failed to maintain her yard and kept a non-compliant shed which never existed.

Despite court documents and exhibits revealing Forbes gave written notice to Woodstone in addition to payment in the full amount owed in early February of 2014, the association improperly rejected her attempt to remedy the dispute by returning her cashiers check— never informing the court of Forbes’ attempt to pay off the lien in full or satisfy the lien.

What’s more, Woodstone Vice President Diane Miller, Forbes’ next-door neighbor, testified that she knew the elderly woman suffered from mental illness before the association filed its foreclosure suit against her. Court filings by Forbes’ attorneys also state that Woodstone dropped Forbes husband as a party to the foreclosure suit to avoid giving “him a chance to stop it,” falsely claiming she was no longer married.
In a recent court case, Judge Patricia Strowbridge noted that “from the outset the [Forbes] was known to be mentally ill and a vulnerable adult, who suffers from senile dementia, paranoia, and schizophrenia. This information was known to Woodstone… after further discovery was conducted in the county court case, the County Court learned of several misrepresentations that Woodstone furthered, including that the plaintiff had attempted to pay the monies owed and she never had a non-conforming shed on her property...”
The county court vacated the judgment in favor of Woodstone on July 20, 2017, noting the error made as a result of the association’s misrepresentations to the court.