One part of Pinkston's plan is to get the Section Two homeowners association under the same umbrella as sections one and three. He says the only way to make any progress in Tymber Skan is if everyone's contributing to one organization, and right now, Section Two's independence – which may be the only thing keeping it afloat – makes that impossible.
"The original developer intended the development to function having all sections under one management party, the HOA," he says. "But what happened in Tymber Skan is for years prior to us coming on board the sections operated independently of one another, so if one section had problems, the others would watch that section fail, instead of combining efforts.
"In order to move forward, we need to have all the sections under one entity, so we can go to outside parties and say, 'Hey, this is what we have,'" he says. "We're going to need about $10 million to $20 million to redevelop this place."
But therein lies the problem: While everyone who's invested in this place wants improvement, not everyone wants to hand their property over so it can be leveled and redeveloped. McIntosh points out that there are some elderly people who own their units and some people who are still paying off mortgages. She says that Section Two has spent a lot of its time and money buying up units and fixing up the ones that aren't too far gone so they can be rented to people who need affordable housing – an increasingly rare commodity in Orange County.
"We are trying to do a program where people can do homeownership, rent to own, so they'd have the ability to own so they wouldn't have to worry about anything but water and electric and they could call it home," McIntosh says. "A lot of people in Orange County don't have a place to stay. And this is better than staying in a hotel."
Pinkston, though, has filed a motion in court to stop McIntosh and her fellow Section Two board member Joanne Ham from pursuing these activities. His filing says that in order for their homeowners association to be legitimate, it would need at least three board members – Ham and McIntosh are the only ones on the board in Section Two. He also says that neither of them is doing their due diligence when it comes to background checks on tenants, and that they are running an apartment-rental business rather than a legitimate HOA. He's asked the court to hand over control of Tymber Skan on the Lake Homeowners Association Section Two to the master organization he's in charge of "to manage its day-to-day activities." That case is still working its way through the court.
McIntosh's lawyer, Robert Anthony, who's been following the Tymber Skan saga for the past two decades, says Pinkston has no legal standing.
"His claims are without merit," Anthony says. "Section Two is a valid association and it's been a valid association for decades. It's totally independent from Section One and Section Three and Mr. Pinkston doesn't have any lawful rights to do anything about it. This is a highly unusual case, and what makes it very unusual is that Section One was an independent association, and Section Three was an independent association and Section Two is an independent association. Mr. Pinkston was somehow able to get himself appointed as the president of sections one and three, and he's been designated by himself as the president of this other association, which that I refer to as the so-called master association."
Whether his efforts to take control are successful or not, they may create enough chaos and confusion, especially amid the impending water shutoff to most of the homes in the community, that more people jump ship. Pinkston isn't shy about admitting that's what needs to happen. In the media over the past year, he's been the one urging people to get out, and having the water turned off will finally force the issue for many of the people who've stubbornly held on even as things grow more desperate. "Even though it's a bad situation," he says, "it's almost a situation that has to happen."
Orange County Code Enforcement says things have gone from bad to worse lately. The trash doesn't even get picked up anymore because the HOA doesn't pay the bill, and on a recent ride-along with code enforcement's chief inspector, Kurt Fasnacht, he points out that somebody has put big black tarps over full-to-the-brim Dumpsters so people can't add more trash to them. Sometimes, Fasnacht says, people light the overflowing Dumpsters on fire.
When asked what he thinks will happen to the people who've lived here as a place of last resort – the only place they can afford, even if it's too dangerous to go outside at night and the walls are crumbling down around them – Pinkston doesn't have an answer.
"I don't know," he says. "Like I tell them, it's never personal. It's business. I don't know what you do with people who don't make an income but need to live somewhere. I just don't."