I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, and there’s one particular board member who makes it a complete nightmare on par with the horror stories you normally hear. We’ll call her…Carol, because it starts with the same letter as a certain four-letter word that describes her best.
Carol likes to send her lackeys on the board to patrol the neighborhood whenever she pleases, and swoops down with fines like she has a quota to meet. Among other things, others and I have received fines for:
– Didn’t set your trash out by 7 AM on collection day. Doesn’t matter that the trash men don’t usually come through until closer to 8 AM, and she doesn’t care if you’re sick or for some other reason. And don’t even think about setting it out the night before, you get fined for that, too, because “there could be a raccoon outside”.
– Didn’t shovel your sidewalk after snowfall by 9 AM, even if it was still snowing. My next-door neighbor got nailed with that one because she was four days post-partum and her husband worked nights, so neither of them could shovel the sidewalk. Her exact words were “I’m forty-nine years old and I get up at 6 AM shoveling, what’s your excuse?” (Note: she didn’t shovel. She got her son to do it.)
– Didn’t take your holiday decorations down by morning the next day. I got hit with that one because I was up late with my family for a Christmas party and was going to take the decorations down the next day. Nope, has to be gone before morning. Oh, and you can’t NOT decorate, either, because we don’t want a “boring” house standing out. You’re also not allowed to say no to trick-or-treaters; you have to have candy for them. She checks that, too, because “only poors don’t give out candy on Halloween”. One neighbor got hit with this one because he didn’t want to chance his dog getting out when he opened the door.
– Ordered food for delivery. My neighbor across the way got hit with this one when he needed to figure out dinner because the food he planned to make went off, so he ordered pizza. According to Carol, we can’t have “unknown vehicles” stopping and dropping off packages, because “they could be delivering drugs, for all we know”.
– Didn’t immediately bring in a package from Amazon when it was delivered, because they were (*gasp*) at work when it was dropped off. It wasn’t even a large package; it was one of the bubblewrap-lined envelopes. Carol sent one of her lackeys to confiscate it from the porch because “it could be dangerous and makes you look like a terrorist”, because people totally order bombs off of Amazon.
– Had a family member stay overnight. I got hit with this one at the same time as the Christmas decorations. My parents stayed later than anticipated, so instead of having them drive home in the middle of the night, I offered to let them stay the night. Apparently, having an “unfamiliar car” in my driveway warranted a fine, because “you could have illegal acts going on for all we know”.
It was unbearable, and Carol basically had our entire neighborhood in a chokehold, but with the housing market as it was, none of us could readily leave and find another place without an HOA. She ruled with an iron fist and made our lives miserable, as if it got her rocks off to issue fines for the stupidest of reasons.
And then, our saviors arrived: a new couple moving into a house that was vacated by someone lucky enough to escape. They were a lovely pair of ladies, one black and one Latina, with their three-month-old pit bull puppy. We’ll call them Angel and Hope, because that’s basically what they were for us, because their presence proved to be Carol’s downfall.
As per our usual “traditions”, the neighbors all came one by one to greet Angel and Hope and welcome them to the neighborhood. We introduced ourselves and welcomed them with little housewarming gifts, like nice dish towels, throw blankets, and homemade food. We also took the time to discreetly warn them about Carol and her cohorts, because the last thing new neighbors needed was to get slapped with a fine over something they didn’t know about. It was a good thing, too, because Carol showed up shortly after.
Now, one thing I learned about Carol is that this woman never seemed to crack a smile unless it was when she was handing out fines. But this was a whole new level of disgust on her face. She looked like someone shoved a whole bucket of lemons into her face with how scrunched up her face was, looking the two up and down like they crawled out of a sewer wearing used toilet paper as clothes. She “greeted” them, but didn’t stick around, turning on her heel and flouncing down the street almost as soon as she stopped talking.
It didn’t take more than two days for Carol to start slapping fines on them, and I heard through the grapevine about how fine-happy she was getting. First, she accused them of having a guest over overnight, and asked what their husbands must think. Angel was the one home at the time, and she went ballistic because she and Hope, her WIFE, had signed the paperwork together, thank-you-very-much. That fine got tossed, but then replaced with a new one about having a dog breed that wasn’t allowed per the HOA bylaws, specifically a pit bull. Nowhere in the paperwork does it say what breeds are and aren’t allowed.
This time, Hope was the one to tear her apart by not only pointing out that the only stipulation about dogs was that they needed to have collars with tags, needed to stay in the yard unless on a leash, and have up-to-date shot records, but also to point out the neighbor walking his own MASSIVE pit bull down the street, asking if she’d fined him too.
The fines started to get more absurd.
They started a small flowerbed in their front yard and got fined for having “dead dirt” where they’d planted the bulbs because they hadn’t sprouted. They hosted a pool party and got fined for consumption of alcohol in public (neither of them drank, so there was absolutely no alcohol at the party; the “alcohol” Carol saw was cans of flavored sparkling water). They invited a friend over for dinner and got fined for having an “unregistered vehicle” parked in their driveway.
The last straw, however, was when Hope was leaving for work. Angel had come outside to see her off and gave her a peck on the lips. In swooped Carol with a fine: indecent acts in public where a child could see them. She didn’t even stick around after throwing the paper at them, storming off, and bellowing that she would get them out of their “good God-fearing neighborhood” once and for all.
Something about Carol’s behavior change was suspicious, but unfortunately for her, her actions had been consistently recorded on their doorbell camera (something we’re all required to have per the HOA). Word spreads pretty fast in our neighborhood when it comes to Carol.
So, at Angel’s prompting (because, in her words, they’d dealt with things like this before), we all started gathering our recordings of Carol’s reign of terror: issuing fines for the smallest transgressions with the smug confidence of a haughty millionaire, swiping packages off of porches without so much as a word, snapping photos in the middle of the night.
We also learned something very important: Hope was a lawyer, and made it her job to study contracts with a fine-toothed comb. Absolutely nothing in the contracts gave Carol the power to do what she wanted like this.
There was no set deadline for setting out trash cans, as long as they were out before pickup. There was no deadline for shoveling snow, and if it was still snowing or you physically couldn’t, it was fine to shovel it when you got the chance. There was no requirement to decorate for holidays, nor to give out candy to trick-or-treaters, and decorations could be left for up to THREE days for holidays such as Halloween, and after New Year’s for Christmas.
There was no rule against ordering delivery food. There was no rule about packages being left on the porch that allowed someone to take them; the only notes about packages were that if there were no vehicles in the driveway and a package was left on the porch, a neighbor was encouraged to contact the homeowner to tell them. There was no rule about family members spending the night. There was no list of acceptable dog breeds, no rules against drinking on your own property, no rules about planting flower bulbs, and most importantly, no rules about kissing your partner.
Once we gathered all of our evidence (the post-partum mother being harassed for not shoveling her sidewalk, the woman with arthritis being harassed for not setting out her trashcan first thing in the morning, the man being harassed for ordering pizza, my being harassed for my parents spending the night and not taking my decorations down that night, and Angel and Hope’s repeated harassment including the “God-fearing neighborhood” comment), Hope compiled everything and went directly to the HOA board to field a complaint against Carol on our behalf.
At first, the board tried to dismiss her, stating that Carol was operating within the bylaws, but Hope doubled down and brought out her copy of the bylaws, with every single “offense” highlighted to emphasize how Carol was abusing her power to target others in some sort of twisted power trip.
She also pointed out how Carol acted like a glaring hypocrite with her behavior, thanks to Angel observing some of us in the neighborhood. The massive pit bull was only one such case: another neighbor was sitting on his porch with an open bottle of beer in his hand and didn’t get a fine, and one couple always greeted each other with a kiss when one came home from work.
Finally, Hope dropped the bombshell: “I have reason to suspect that my wife and I are being targeted due to discrimination against us being a same-sex couple, and to consider Carol’s harassment as a targeted hate crime.”
Investigations were launched, and it turned out that Angel and Hope’s suspicions were correct: Carol was a homophobic bigot and fully intended to chase them out of the neighborhood so they wouldn’t lower the property value as “godless wh*res”.
She and her followers were ejected from the board fast enough to give them whiplash; the more reasonable members of the HOA board realized that her actions were a liability, and she had been skewing the truth every time she issued a fine so as to seem completely in the right.
A message went out for anyone who received fines from Carol to gather up the paperwork and bring everything to the HOA board to be reimbursed; they cut a check for nearly everyone in the neighborhood.
To celebrate Carol being finally dethroned, we organized a huge barbecue (within the constraints of the bylaws, of course) where everyone was welcome to join in. As for Carol? She ended up moving out of the neighborhood because everyone hated her guts.
