SIDE STREETS: Loss, illness take precedence over HOA battles
For years, Jan Jackson has raged against her homeowners association in rural Teller County and against all HOAs, which she describes as “little dictatorships run by egotistical power-seekers.”
She has campaigned for laws to rein in HOAs and for an amendment to the Colorado Constitution to abolish HOAs, run by voluntary boards that enforce covenants — neighborhood rules governing parking, landscaping, home appearance and other things.
Jackson waged her war in hundreds of scathing blog posts on state and national Web sites, in newspaper rants, and even in verbal screeds broadcast on her Web-based radio program.
She has sued her HOA and been sued for libel for things she said about her HOA board.
Jackson expanded her reach by adopting an anti-government rhetoric akin to the Tea Party activists, regularly attacking President Obama as a “pathological socialist,” a fascist and narcissist.
For a while, it seemed Jackson might become a geriatric Glenn Beck.
Until last spring.
Her voice went silent. The 77-year-old Jackson seemingly had disappeared.
I caught up with Jan last week by phone at her remote home west of Pikes Peak. I wanted to know where she’d been — I hadn’t received one of her scolding e-mails chastising me for months.
I wondered if she was still pursuing her constitutional amendment and if we’d be seeing her in Denver during the upcoming legislative session.
But the Jan Jackson on the other end of the phone was not the same fiery woman I’d come to know. She sounded subdued. Tired.
There was a good reason for her recent low profile.
She’d been distracted from her political crusades by the cruelties of life: her own prolonged illness and hospitalization; and the death of her husband, Richard Thomas, on July 3.
“I’m all by myself now,” Jackson said, her words punctuated by muffled sobs. “We were married 27 years. I miss him.”
Clearly her illness and personal loss have taken their toll on Jackson. She struggled to recall Arnold and Elizabeth McMahon, the California couple whose battles with their Palacio Del Mar Homeowners Association made them legends among HOA haters and inspired them to found the American Homeowners Resource Center, a leading Web site in the fight against HOAs. In fact, AHRC made Jackson a star, giving her a platform for her HOA blogs.
Jackson says she may give up the fight when her last pending lawsuit is resolved.
“I think I’ve done my part,” she said in her typically unapologetic style.
“I made people aware of HOAs and how destructive they can be to our freedoms and liberties. I’ve warned people about them and they don’t want to live in them anymore.
“I hope I’ve helped people see how bad HOAs are.”
