I’ve been dealing with this for the last three months and it has FINALLY reached its climax. I own a towing company and am currently renting a home within a homeowners association that I was NOT informed of when I signed the lease. My wife and I broke ground on our dream home days before lockdown went into effect in 2020. We signed a two-year lease as we were offered a $250 reduction in rent if we did.
The house has a three-car garage attached to it, as well as parking for an additional two cars in the driveway. I keep my tow truck in the driveway or parked on the street in front of the house as it is classified as an “emergency vehicle” by the state and not merely a commercial vehicle. This means it is not against the HOA to have it in the neighborhood.
We also own many cars as all three people living in the home are car nuts. We do not keep all of the cars at my home, but we do have a total of six cars at the home, plus the tow truck, which means two vehicles are always parked on the street. For reference, the cars we keep at home are a 1967 four-door Chevy Impala, a 1967 Ford Galaxie, a 1993 Mazda Rx-7, a 1994 Nissan Silvia, a 2013 Subaru BRZ, and a 2008 BMW M3. Of these cars, all of the imports have wide body kits that cost between $4,000 and $12,000. (This is important as to the value of the vehicles as well as looks.)
After living here for just over nine months, and as the lockdowns were ending and the world opened its weary eyes just to get punched in the face again, the HOA that we had absolutely no idea existed started by ticketing the tow truck parked on the street stating that it could not be parked on the street.
Okay, I’ll put it in the driveway, no problem. I paid the $150 fine to the HOA after getting the contract from the landlord and reading it, figuring it was best to just go along with it and not ruffle any feathers. Since I moved the tow truck into the driveway, I started parking the RX7 on the street.
The two classic cars are kept in the garage, as well as the BRZ as it is my project car and I’m in the middle of building a very high-end drift car out of it. The other two people in my house drive the BMW and Nissan every day.
The very next day, I returned home, and there were tickets on both the RX7 and the Silvia which were parked on the street by our driveway. Numerous neighbors were also parked on the street, mind you, without tickets from the HOA.
I immediately called the a-hole in “charge” of the HOA to ask what the h*** was going on. [Head Of The HOA] told me that our “junk” was devaluing the neighborhood and could not be parked on the streets, and he cited a rule in the HOA guidelines about vehicles being in disrepair or essentially a junk status needing to be put in a garage. I laughed, a full-on gut chuckle. The guy I was talking to drives an early-2000s Cadillac that may be worth $10,000. He told me me that if the vehicles continued to be parked on the street, he would have them towed.
Okay, let’s play. I told [Head Of The HOA] that he needed to read his own manual and look at the vehicles he was talking about. Clearly, both cars were not in disarray.
Ten days after the initial ticketing, [Head Of The HOA] called for a tow truck. This is where I should mention that the reason my tow truck is listed as an emergency vehicle is that my company has the county police contract for their towing, as well as the township. When a small-guy towing company showed up to impound my vehicles, I was not home. I got a call from [Small Towing Company]’s owner informing me that he had been sent to impound my cars. (We know each other from the businesses we operate, and I often kick him work when we are holding over a ninety-minute ETA to not upset customers.)
Owner: “I have to tow your cars due to my contract with the HOA, but I don’t have a truck that can tow these lowered cars without damaging them. Can you come home and remove the bumpers so they will go on my truck?”
Me: “That’s not going to happen. I’d hate to look for another towing company to send overflow work to while we see how the courts feel about the impounding and potential damages to the cars.”
[Owner] wisely decided not to tow the vehicles.
Over the next several months, [Owner] called me dozens of times about [Head Of The HOA] calling him repeatedly to tow the vehicles. [Owner] told him that that the only company in the area that could tow these vehicles was my company.
FINALLY, [Head Of The HOA] called my company to impound MY cars. Okay, no problem. I sent three of my guys over in the shop pickup to drive my cars back to the shop where they had been parked and kept for the last month. My wife had started driving the Impala regularly as it was summer.
On Friday, we went to small claims court as I sued the HOA for towing costs of $250 per vehicle, as well as storage on each vehicle of $62 per day each, AND an additional $3,000 for inconveniences due to not having the cars for daily transportation. I added on an additional $1,500 for lawyer fees.
After roughly five minutes, the judge asked [Head Of The HOA] for photos of the cars, which he handed over.
Judge: “These cars are nice; they are clearly not in disarray.”
Me: “Thank you, your honor. Can you see the Cadillac parked on the street way in the background of the photo, as well as the other five or six cars in the frame?”
The judge affirmed this and asked [Head Of The HOA] about these cars. [Head Of The HOA] stated that they were NOT in violation and even coughed up that the Cadillac was his car.
The judge smiled a toothy grin and confessed to being a car guy and estimated that each of the two cars that had been impounded were worth $50,000 each and that [Head Of The HOA]’s Cadillac would clearly be the eyesore of the community. The judge then dismissed the HOA’s claims and explicitly told [Head Of The HOA] that he was NOT to tow any vehicles out of the neighborhood without police confirmation of their disarray or abandonment.
The judge went further and stated that the HOA was in violation of the township ordinance as the streets are NOT private streets but belong to the township. The judge then grabbed what I assumed was a calculator and started punching away. After about a minute and a half of pure silence, the judge looked up.
Judge: “Okay, as stated before, [Head Of The HOA]’s claim for the HOA has been dismissed. As for [My Name]’s counter suit, I will rule in favor in the amount of $10,100 and $65.50 in court costs to [Head Of The HOA]’s HOA.”
[Head Of The HOA] lost his freaking mind. He went on a rant about communism — what? — and how the judge was the problem with this country, and he went into election conspiracies and every whackjob theory you can think of. The judge warned [Head Of The HOA] twice, and he finally ordered him in contempt and invited him to have a weekend stay at the local jail on the county’s dime.
[Head Of The HOA] will be home tonight as the judge set to release him at 6:00pm. The cars are back in their original spots, and I cannot wait for the hand-wave and grin as [Head Of The HOA] comes home this evening.
