Posted on 12/20/2022 6:30:14 AM PST by Red Badger
WESTON, Fla. – A Weston Hills Country Club homeowner has been put on notice and told to park his new $100,000 pickup truck in a garage, out of sight, or face fines.
That homeowner is gearing up for a fight, claiming the rules are outdated and ridiculous.
“How long did you wait to get this vehicle?” Local 10 investigative reporter Jeff Weinsier asked.
“It was ordered over a year ago,” said Weston Hills resident Glenn Gordon.
Gordon’s truck was delivered just a few weeks ago.
“I felt like a little kid waiting for it,” he said. “The first one I saw was mine.”
Gordon’s truck is the first of its kind – an all-electric pickup called the Rivian R1T.
It looks like nothing else on the road and can go 315 miles on a charge.
Some can turn like a tank and go from 0-60 mph in three seconds with 800 horse power.
The truck drives itself on the highway and there are 11 cameras on board.
It’s become an attraction in the neighborhood.
“Some are taking pictures of it,” Gordon said. “They say, ‘beautiful vehicle, can I see it?’ That’s the only comments I have got.”
Less than two weeks after taking delivery, Gordon received a notice from property management that the truck can’t be parked in his driveway overnight.
The country club has strict rules for trucks, trailers, RV’s and commercial vehicles, set by Arvida, which developed Weston back in the 1980s.
They want it out of sight.
Gordon has lived there for 27 years, and called property management to discuss the issue.
“He said we will wind up getting fines and penalties, and until we remove it, they can even lien our house,” Gordon said. “We could even lose our house over this.”
“Did the rule ever cross your mind when you ordered the truck?” Weinsier asked.
“I never thought there would be a rule like that,” Gordon said. “There are trucks all over the place … We don’t have room in our garage to put it in there.”
Gordon says rules need to change with the times.
“These were written in the 1980s by Arvida and it said no trucks and no vans. Since then, trucks have become a popular vehicle for personal use,” Gordon said.
Minivans were being invented when they were writing the rules and there are now minivans all over the place.
“It may hurt our home values as these new vehicles come out, as they evolve and come out, we will discourage people from buying in our community,” Gordon said.
Jerry Engelhard is the president of Gordon’s association in Weston Hills, and left Weinsier the following voicemail after he called him:
“You can have a truck but he has to put it in the garage and it cannot be sitting outside the house all day long. If the gentleman would have read the documents when he bought the house, he would have seen that and there is a possibility that he would not have bought the truck.”
Engelhard didn’t return a call when Weinsier tried to follow-up.
“There are judges that have ruled that these vehicles are regular vehicles, they are not inherently a commercial vehicle just because it is a pickup truck, if it doesn’t have commercial markings or anything else like this does not -- it’s a regular vehicle,” Gordon’s attorney, Andrew Ben, said.
In the Villas of Bonaventure, another pickup truck owner wound up suing his association.
Not only did he win, but the association had to pay $40,000 for his attorney’s fee.
In that 2001 judgment, Broward County Judge Steven Shutter wrote, “personal use pickup trucks do not carry the negative implication they might have 25 years ago. In no way could parking these vehicles interfere with the quiet enjoyment or the property value of the condominium residents.”
“Is there anything that is going to make you get rid of that vehicle?” Weinsier asked Gordon.
“No,” he said. “We are ready to take it … It is just wrong.”
Letter sent to the Gordons from Central Hills Maintenance Association:
VIEW BELOW: Broward judge’s ruling on Villas of Bonaventure case:
VIDEO AT LINK..................
Let’s try this again. Legal precedent is strongly on the vehicle owner’s side.
A lot of those in east LA as they call it a bus.
Other homeowners have fought the same thing and not only have one but have gotten the HOA to pay their legal fees. A pickup is not really a truck.
Good, all of this is merely good old-fashioned snobbery.
Yep. I get a feeling a lot of people haven’t actually read the full story on this. The HOA is going to really regret that they did this. As have others. A pickup is not really a truck they won’t really hold any more than most cars and they simply have an open back. And the comedy here is that this one doesn’t even have an open back. It has a cover over it. It’s really just a slightly more utilitarian car.
Pickups are not a truck. That’s the point. There are glorified car with an open back. That is why other people in the same situation this man is in have won their lawsuits and even had the HOA forced to pay their legal fees.
People may call or pick up a truck, but that’s really just slang. It’s not a truck like I said in another post, don’t call want a truck in South dakota. You’ll get laughed out of the room.
Pickups are not a truck. That’s the point. There are glorified car with an open back. That is why other people in the same situation this man is in have won their lawsuits and even had the HOA forced to pay their legal fees.
People may call or pick up a truck, but that’s really just slang. It’s not a truck like I said in another post, don’t call want a truck in South dakota. You’ll get laughed out of the room.
I think some people really do like living in HOAs because they really are willing to give up some of their rights to make sure they live in a homogeneous neighborhood. Where it becomes a challenge is when they suddenly realize that things they just took for granted that would be okay turn out to not be okay.
But usually, everything’s fine. Just as this guy with the pickup thought everything would be fine until it wasn’t. The good news is precedent is on his side. It’s going to be very difficult to convince anyone that this pickup is actually a truck as it is called up in his HOA agreement. It’s a car with an open trunk. It’s no more a truck than an El Camino is a truck.
“Pickups are not a truck”
First time I ever heard that. SMH
For over a quarter of a century the dude didn’t mind his association keeping any actual working stiffs from having a truck in his yard, so I’ve no sympathy for him having to garage his honkin’, virtue-signaling, anti-environment, vanity EV now.
If the license plate/tag is for a truck, it’s a truck. Legally speaking.
You had better correct GM, Ford, Toyota, Chysler their trucks are not really trucks.
Pickups have been called trucks in every ad and tv commcerial and inn all the literature for the last 100 years
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The article photo shows the home with a two door garage.
It may be at capacity.
I wouldn’t be comfortable charging, or even parking an EV in a garage.
Kinda what I was thinking.
A little like saying a lion isn’t a cat. 😏
I know what they are doing and I have been there watching them do it. Yes, the African leadership of those countries allow and profit from this type of slavery. China is especially egregious, they actively buy slave labor from local tribes for their mines in the jungle areas of West Africa.
But there are ways to mine cobalt in America, but environmental regulations have closed 59 of the 60 mines which used to produce cobalt. People would rather little brown children be slaves than possibly getting our water dirty.
So this truck owner is right that the HOA is becoming comically outdated. But that just means it needs to be addressed by the homeowners. Appeal to his neighborhood to update the HOA, rather than complaining about what it says and imagining the rule will just vanish of its own accord.
I lived near there in the late 70’s.
Custom vans were the craze then. “Land Yachts” we called them. Very expensive.
People in HOAs couldn’t park them in their driveways because vans were considered ‘work/utility vehicles’................
Maybe YOU don't buy in HOAs, but keeping retards and trash out of our neighbothoods is nothing close to losing liberty, it enhances it.
My HOA doesn't have a truck rule save for commercial, but I'm happy to have standards. The subject of your article is some entitled bitch-boy with no legal leg to stand on.
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