726 Waterfall Way

Yes we all feel deeply bad for this family that suffered a fire last week. This was a rental unfortunately the owner has no homeowners insurance to rebuild and likewise the tenants had no renters insurance to replace their valuables that were lost.

Today 10/23 they have been there cleaning up and salvaging what they can and dumping what they can't salvage on the ground around the dumpsters. This is clearly marked that they cannot do this. When asked nicely by another homeowner to remove the garbage they dumped on the ground including a mattress and chair they became irate, they claim they have permission from the HOA to do this. We checked and were told they called Kuester and asked for permission to leave their unneeded furniture outside the dumpster and were told no. A few miles down the road is a County drop off site where they could easily take all this unwanted stuff and drop it off with no problem.

This case we fell is egregious they called for permission and were told no, they moved all these items during a weekday when the county site was open, they had vehicles large enough to carry these items to the county site, and than were asked to correct this, but instead of being good neighbors got ugly about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR_ndtcHbvw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m2RieO2JTs

And in case you missed it here is a link to the Lake Wylie Pilot article about the fire.

We know the fire was started by a female cooking on a grill to close to the house

After a search of York County Court Records reveals the female living at 726 Waterfall Way Christie Filomena Johnson has several pending criminal charges against her all filed earlier this month including LITTERING, Driving with a suspended license, her license is suspended due to a DUI,  and she also has a pending charge of Criminal Domestic Violence. 

In the last 3 years she has been charged with 3 separate DUI's a Disorderly Conduct, and habitual traffic offender. 

This leads to some interesting questions 1) Was alcohol abuse possibly a contributing factor to the fire. and 2) Was Ms. Johnson even legally allowed to be at the residence of the time of the fire. Normally when you are arrested for Criminal Domestic Violence upon arrest the court issues a restraining order to ban you from returning to your residence with the victim in the case, and from being around the victim or having contact with them in any way. Was Ms. Johnson violating this court order at the time of the fire? 

Dumpster

Here are some pictures of the dumpster area this morning December 1st, There is one large pile of garbage topped of with a couple of pizza boxes clearly marked as belonging to 745 Waterfall Way, apparently they had no problem just dropping their garbage on the ground and walking away. Kuester is supposed to fine anyone leaving garbage outside of the dumpsters a $100 fine.

If you have excess garbage or the dumpsters are full, you should either wait until they are emptied which is Monday, Wednesday and Fridays, or take your trash to the closest York County drop off site which is free to all residents. The two closest garbage collections centers are:

Bethel 3150 South Paraham Rd, south of Hwy 55 in Clover

Allison Creek

5725 Campbell Rd, at the intersection of Campbell Rd (County Rd 80) and SC 274

We realize with the Holidays the regular pick up schedule is going to be interrupted but again there are other options available. 

Harpers Mill Forclosures

In the recent newsletter that was sent out, the HOA mentions that if you are having financial difficulties to let them know so they can work with you. Now sometimes filling a foreclosure is a necessary thing to do, however, we have heard that the HOA has filled foreclosure paperwork on homeowners just 3 months behind, and they would not work with the homeowner at all. What is worse is if you having problems after 3 months that would leave you with a balance of $375.00 plus late fees, but when they file the foreclosure paperwork almost never notifying the homeowner before hand you suddenly have at least another $800 in legal fees added to your burden.

There is a recent case where a long term homeowner who was one of the first to live here, has always taken care of their home and never caused any problems to their neighbors is being foreclosed on by the HOA, we wonder how much they tried to work with this homeowner. We know the person in question lives by them self and lost their job about 6 months ago, we also know by looking at the court records the homeowner is not being forclosed on by the bank only the HOA, indicating that the bank is working with them in their time of need, we have our doubts if the HOA is doing the same.

If you want to see foreclosure records for the community follow these simple instructions, these records are open to the public and available online

!) Goto: http://judicial.yorkcountygov.com/scjdpublicindex/

2) Don't change anything just click "Accept" towards the middle bottom of the page.

3) In the box labeled "Last/Business" Type "Harpers Mill"

4) Than you will see a listing of all cases filed since inception of the community, you will notice there are 7 pages of records, to go through, some by banks some only by the HOA. We count 32 Foreclosures that the HOA has filled as the Plaintiff, many of which show a status of cancelled which means the homeowner paid the past due amounts including all the inflated legal costs that were added to save their homes.

We hope this will bring some attention to this, and hope the HOA is really working with homeowners that are having difficult times and not just filling the paperwork and adding tons of legal fees on top of someone who is already struggling and would work with the HOA if the board was sincere in really helping our fellow homeowners out.