UPDATE: In recent articles, Dwight Schar is being accused of extortion and gangster behavior.
Whether you live in a gated community or in a normal neighborhood district, one thing can be certain. The Homeowner’s Association you are forced to work with has a list of unnecessary rules and an even longer list of lawyers. In Bella Collina, resident Don Juravin and his family have been suffering “selective enforcement” as a form of retaliation from Dwight Schar’s controlled HOA after posting an honest online review exposing the truth about Bella Collina.
Bella Collina, a community in central Florida, owned by Redskins minority owner and billionaire Dwight Schar (who acts through various DCS entities or Bella Collina Real Estate), is so poorly managed that it’s driving homeowners or potential residents away. The properties are losing money drastically. Too many people are deciding to jump out of the sinking ship. An estimated 300 to 500 families actually decided they didn’t think Bella Collina is worth any further investment and they prefer not to pay Club or HOA dues and lost all of their investment and fled Bella Collina.
In order to live at Bella Collina, residents are forced to pay $40,000 to $80,000 in club fees (the fine print reveals that you can practically never see that money again), and $5,000 to $10,000 every year. Dwight Schar, or his employees, can decide at any time and for any reason that your family and kids are banned from the Club at Bella Collina and still force you to pay the fees forever. Does it sound like an illegal or retaliatory act?
The HOA is meant to be run by the homeowners and the property owners. However, because Bella Collina is sort of a ghost town, with only about 70-90 real families live in the neighborhood year-round out of a possible 900 lots. This makes it possible for Dwight Schar to overrule the homeowners and use Bella Collina to do anything they want, even against the interests of the homeowners. According to a court deposition, it seems like Dwight Schar’s employee, Randall F Green, retaliated against a family, a mother and her kid by canceling a school bus that was driving in Bella Collina to pick up the children, so that they had to walk all the way out of the neighborhood to get to their bus. This exposed them to the danger of the road, Florida sun and heat. This was Dwight Schar’s HOA punishing, retaliating and harassing residents via their kids, as they have recently have done to the Juravin mother and 3 girls.
Paul Simonson, Dwight Schar’s finance guy, runs now Bella Collina, after about 5 years that Richard Arrighi managed the place. Paul Simonson himself was a defendant in a class action accusing of scam, fraud, embezzlement, and racketeering.
Another Dwight Schar employee is Randall F. Greene, who was sued for a fraudulent real estate transaction. In essence, Randall F. Greene and wife Christina Greene were accused of “stealing a house” in Bella Collina. Greene was accused of engaging in “fraudulent acts in furtherance of a fraudulent scheme to prevent the Plaintiffs from taking possession of…” a Bella Collina property.
According to Juravin, these offensive employees are bankrolled by billionaire Dwight Schar. One can only imagine that he knows or approves, at least in financial terms, of the actions of his employees.
Residents Don Juravin and his family have experienced the unreasonable rulings first hand. Mr. Juravin moved into Bella Collina in December of 2015. After a few months of living in Bella Collina, he was tired of living in a community that claimed to be one thing on the advertising brochure but was, in fact, something else. For the amount of money invested in Bella Collina, the Club, and the amenities, the return was small.
Mr. Juravin penned a review and placed it on Google. The retaliation he received through Bella Collina’s HOA bankrupted him.
Immediately, the Juravin family–including his wife Anna and their three daughters–were banned from Bella Collina’s Club. The letter Mr. Juravin received marked the family as “dangerous.” When a neighbor took the Juravin children to the community pool with her own children, the Juravin daughters were told they could not enter.
According to Zillow, Juravin himself, like probably all homeowners in Bella Collina, lost money on their investment in Bella Collina. In just two-three months, his house dropped $229,000 in value–a total of 10.9%. That is a massive property loss.
Despite being banned from the pool, the Juravin family was still forced to pay the massive fees associated with the Club. Meanwhile, Mr. Juravin was told by the local court that the fees were legal because he agreed to them. Moreover, the court reasoned that the fees were legal because Mr. Juravin was paying them.
Mr. Juravin was not the only homeowner that tried to take on Bella Collina. Other families tried to actively fight the HOA at Bella Collina, only to be chased away.
Three families, the Heckenbergs, the Sheltons, and the Sutherins, sued the Bella Collina Club, calling the massive Club fees they were forced to pay “unjust” and even “illegal.” However, even in these cases, while the homeowners were not paying the fees, their cases were dismissed.
In retaliation, Bella Collina canceled the school bus that came to pick up the Sutherin children. The children were forced to leave the community to be picked up by the bus. Eventually, the Sutherins were forced to move to another neighborhood.
Dwight Schar’s HOA has made it clear: one can’t just leave their HOA past behind. It will catch up to you. The Sutherins were chased down Dwights Schar‘s henchman Randall Greene whom he placed to control the Board. Randall F Green, in what seems like a scary harassing way, sent a mug to the Sutherins with a note: “We sent you a mug just to let you know that we have not forgotten that you still owe us money and we know where to send the copy of the judgment when we get it…I really don’t like white trash.” Is that what we should expect from Dwight Schar the “philanthropist”?
It should come as no surprise then that Dwight Schar’s son, Spencer Schar, was accused of assaulting or harassing two females. Such actions taken against these families may be seen as illegal, says Don Juravin and may have no corporate protection.
2 Responses
Owners of Bella Collina should consider it, or else this community will quickly become a relic since no one wants to live in a location where they are constantly threatened.
Can’t be more true.