Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious,
they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin
from reddit/pettyrevenge (long)
How I gutted my HOA
This is the story of how I completely changed out my community’s HOA board and foreclosed on one of their houses after they disrespected me.
TL;DR
I got fined for ridiculous things by my HOA and got ticked off and decided to get on to the board. I then spent a year removing all members of the board I joined and replacing them with people that were pro-small HOA. I have since helped reduce policies and tried to make the community better for everyone.
Backstory
A few years ago, I bought my first house in a medium-size (500-1000 homes) neighborhood in a southern state. It had an HOA, but I actually picked the neighborhood because they had the lowest HOA dues in the city, the fewest rules, and the house was by far the nicest one I could afford in my budget.
After a few weeks, I get a violation notice from the HOA telling me that I had two violations needing correction:
My lawn was not green enough.
My trash cans were too close to my driveway.
I was thoroughly confused about #1 as it was February, in the middle of winter, so of course my lawn was dead (like pretty much everyone else’s), so I had assumed that either this was a mistake or an existing offense from the previous owner. As for the trash cans, I kept them on the side of my house and I think when the HOA came by, my trash cans stuck out past the side wall ~1 foot, so HOW DARE I?! I shrugged them off and continued on.
Come March, I got another notice, this time fining me for both violations. Each one cost me $100 and they wanted the money in two weeks. I. was. pissed. This has made no sense and I was not about to let them just try and get money for BS violations. So, I called the management company that worked with the board to get them appealed. The lady told me that I needed to appeal directly to the board, and that I could do so in the next annual meeting in a few days.
So, I of course showed up to the meeting. Prior to it starting, I met with a few homeowners and learned that they were all there for similar BS violations, and were pissed off too. I then talked with one of the members of the board about the fine appeals process. He was older guy in his 70’s with short grey hair and a very worn and angry face. He asked what I was getting fined for, and when I told him, he just looked at me and said: “And you should get fined for that. Young people like you not taking care of their homes is the whole reason I got on this board. Learn to be a better property owner.” This dude was the VP of a volunteer board telling me that I did not know how to take care of my house. What a sad life.
The meeting then started and the moderator mentioned that since this was an annual meeting, we would be voting on 3/5 board members. They had some applicants to the board, and we could also nominate someone today. That’s when I had the idea of how I could get my revenge. When the election part of the meeting came, I nominated myself, gave some BS speech about HOAs are not here to make money and that I wanted to serve my community. I won in a landslide, and you could see the board members getting annoyed because they had scowled during my speech.
After the meeting, I appealed my violations (in a very elegant way) and they agreed to waive my trash can violation. As for the grass one, apparently since I had weeds growing in my yard (like tiny patch in the corner), they were still fining me because the weeds were turning yellow after I sprayed them. I was dumbfounded how they could get away with this, but they used a technicality in the bylaws that I had signed, so I ended up losing $100.
Revenge
I will be honest, I had not expected this too work. After joining the board (of 5, including myself), I was appointed secretary and had to help maintain meeting notes and review records. They specifically told me that I was not allowed to propose new policies, but I could vote on new ones proposed by the VP or President (which I later learned was actually a violation of their own rules). I voted every new rule down as long as I was in that position. I decided that my best course of action was to listen to how the others operated, and look for an opening to get each of them off the board.
The first opening came when the President (who literally looked like the most Karen woman ever) mentioned that she had wanted to fine for flowers that were not “neutral” color. Basically, if a homeowner wanted to add something like turquoise flowers, we would fine them. She apparently had a neighbor that had flowers that she didn’t like, and she wanted to use the board to stop them. It was pretty insane. I then started my revenge on her. I started a message thread (on Slack since that’s how we communicated) with the other board members and asked what they had thought about her policy and reasoning. After far too much deliberation (two of them honestly thought that this was ok), we agreed that the policy went too far. I then made a long post in the main channel telling her that her actions were not only wrong, but that she should be excused from the board. When she inevitably flipped out, I called a board meeting in the following week, and the other 4 board members voted her off for targeting a community member for personal gain. She gave a sob story about how the board was her life and that the neighborhood was like her child, but I didn’t care. That was one down. I \ convinced one of my good neighbor friends to join a little later on to take her spot.
The next members I targeted were the treasurer and director, as I wanted to save the VP for last. They were actually pretty easy to get off the board because they were very easily swayed by public opinion. So, I made a fake account on Nextdoor and waited until Spring (when most of the violations go out). When the letters went out, I looked for angry posts on Nextdoor. I then would comment on each one giving them the first names of the two board members as the culprits and told them to come to the next HOA meeting to appeal. It worked far better than I had expected. During the next meeting, over 50 people showed up and called out those by name. It was glorious. During the open session, community members grilled those two for their poor policies (even though they did not make most of them). The VP (now president after the other one resigned) tried to defend them, but ultimately failed. The two members were so distraught after the meeting, and I told them that maybe they should resign, and they both did. That was two more down (both of which were replaced by a couple who came to the same meeting and wanted to get rid of these rules).
Finally, the board had been flipped to 4 out of 5 people wanting to get rid of all these dumb rules. The president however, was still same old angry hateful man. He tried to add more rules to increase violation revenue and we voted him down every time. He started to get annoyed, but stayed steadfast to the board. I tried a lot of tactics to get him to leave, and not much swayed him. A few months went by and we started with a new management company. They had a much better style of property management and a website for looking through our community’s records as well as automated reports. When we got our first fines report, I hit pay dirt. The President’s house appeared, and he owed around $10,000! Apparently he had open violations that he had never paid and the other management company hid it from the board for him (since he had been on the board for close to 7 years). So, I looked into remedies. Since his fines were over $3,000, our bylaws stated that a majority vote of the board could start an HOA foreclosure on the home (which I still think is INSANE that HOAs can do that...). So, I got all the docs together and double-checked with the new management company that the fines were correct, which they confirmed. I called an emergency board session, presented the information, and 4/5 of us voted to start the foreclosure process. The president got angry, cursed, and left the meeting early.
We were informed a few days later that the President had resigned, paid his fine, and put his house up for sale. While I am sad we couldn’t force a foreclosure, at least he was off the board. I am currently president to this day, and I have reduced the fining policy to be a maximum of $400 and home owners can appeal any time that they wish digitally. In addition, I have banned any grass fines until May, and trash can violations have been super relaxed.
Morale of the story: never fine me $200, call me a stupid young kid, and expect to not lose your house.
MY moral: Don’t get mad, get involved. Be the sand in the gears.
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.
As nations become corrupt and vicious,
they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin
That story was great….. I’ve met some of those same people over the years.
I said 27 years ago that I would never buy a place ruled by an HOA and I’ve stood by it. I’ll retire to a 31 acre property in NH. Looking SO forward to it. It should happen within the next two years. I’ll keep working remotely as long as I can but that will be our forever home.
-SB
Give someone a bit of power and they turn into tyrants.
Great story!
I love a feel good story where petty tyrants are given their due justice. Job well done!
Thanks for the ping. Love this story, gw! The ending, and, moral of the story....priceless!!
Yes....don’t get mad, get involved!!
EVERY HOA should be so lucky, as to have this gentleman on board. Too many Karens (and, Kevins) let being on an HOA board go to their thick skulls.
Awesome story. HOAs are magnets for Nazi types.