According To The HOA, Community ≠ Residents

I live in a gated community. For over two decades, this was not the nightmarish HOA situation most people know about because we had a reasonable president who curbed most of the overly ambitious stereotypes on the board.

Then she decided to move across the country to be with her family.

The new president was one of the people she was keeping on a leash. Two months into his presidency, new restrictions were passed, and there were more fines than our last president gave out in her last year. Most of these could have been intercepted before residents sunk a ton of cash or time into it (painting the house a certain color, certain decorations that were put out, etc.).

Then they suddenly dried up.

I found out why when I started a garden. The following morning, I found a note in my mailbox. This note quoted the bylaws related to gardening, cited where in the bylaws it was found, and workarounds that the president and his cronies may object to, but are fully allowed.

I changed trajectory to stay within bounds, and, sure enough, that list of exceptions came through at arbitration. Almost everyone in the community was getting similar anonymous notes any time they started a project, protecting us from investing into a fine. The only people who were not were the board members. They quickly began turning on each other since, for some reason, the board was driven to fine someone and make it as painful for that person as possible.

The situation was fully exposed a few months later, when my neighbor needed professional help with his lawn.

In the middle of the project, the neighbor had an unrelated incident that required him to turn off the water. There was a communal spot to run the hose (for situations like this), but due to distance and geography, it would be best to run the hose through my yard. I gave oral permission, but after the landscaper hooked in his hose, he came back to the door with one of the security guards.

The guard handed me a form that outlined everything I agreed to orally and asked me to sign. I saw no meaningful difference, so I signed every line he showed me. The guard then took one copy for himself, handed one to the landscaper, and left the third with me. Then he supervised.

In the middle of the job, the hose stopped working. The president walked up to the landscaper, said he could not run the hose through the yard, and dropped off a fine for my neighbor. The guard tried to explain why everything he just did was wrong (from the work to the permission), but he heard nothing.

Instead, this genius decided to shout down at the security guard, demanding he remember who signs the paychecks, then laid hands on the guard. That last part was enough for a takedown and a call to the police. Our president was removed from the community in handcuffs, and the work resumed. And obviously, the fine was overturned.

About a month later, the board held an emergency meeting. That guard who helped the landscaper brought the board’s eyes onto to our security team. The guards were the ones dropping off the anonymous notes. That led to more tongue lashings from the president and the board, demanding they focus on protecting the community and not its residents.

When the community’s contract with the security company was up for renewal, the company more than tripled their rate, citing the “increased revenue” due to the community from the “projected up-tick in fines.” The board sought new quotes from other companies, but evidently no one else was willing to take it; it turns out this company’s president blacklisted our community, so everyone else was quoting even higher.

The board eventually agreed to sit down with the company president to find an equitable solution, and that was this meeting. Imagine the board’s surprise when the person who walked in was the same guard who helped the landscaper.

As he put it: “I don’t trust HOA boards to treat my teams properly, and showing my team how their leader treats you c***s helps them rediscover their own spines.”

And his demand was pretty simple: he would undo the blacklisting and offer a reasonable rate if the entire board stepped down. Otherwise, the community would have to pay the higher rate, or (and he used the same legalese the team had been using to help us) the community violate its own charter and be forced to disband.

And that is how I wound up on the board of a gated community and helped set things back to how the good president left them. And the security company president only drops by (unannounced) for a few inspections rather than being our full-time guard.

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