Private property is an inalienable right of every US citizen, and this right is enshrined in the Constitution. Indeed, no one can encroach, for example, on your house, no one has the right to tell you what to do on your land plot, how to run a household, how to do (or not to do) repairs in the house - unless, of course, this violates the rights of other people.
But it's with this that three completely magical letters are connected, hiding behind which, some people quite legally dictate to homeowners what they should actually do and how. What are these three letters? FBI? No. CIA? Absolutely not. HOA? That's it, bingo!
Here's more proof of just how entitled and cheeky HOA can be these days with this post by u/nexttohoa on the AITA Reddit community, with nearly 18.1K upvotes and around 2.5K different comments in a year. The story of a dramatic confrontation between one person and a soulless bureaucratic machine... However, let's talk about everything just in order.
More info: Reddit
The author of the post inherited a house with a vegetable garden from their late grandpa
Image credits: Thank You (23 Millions+) views (not the actual photo)
So, the author of the original post inherited the house from their late grandfather a few years ago. According to their own words, the OP had just graduated and the house was very close to the area where they wanted to work. In other words, not just a house, but a real dream. There was also a vegetable garden near the house, which the old gentleman had been cultivating with such love for many, many years.
Image credits: nexttohoa
Several years ago, a development company build a semi-gated community close to the author's house
So several years passed, and then a development company began to buy out neighboring houses, planning to build a semi-gated community in their place. The OP recalls that the company representatives also made an offer for their house, but the homeowner flatly refused. In the end, the fence of the new community ended up about a few yards from their property, but it wasn't closed all the way.
Image credits: nexttohoa
The HOA board started bombarding the author of the post with letters on fees, their lawn and the house paint
And so, after a while, the OP began to receive regular letters from the local HOA about fees, their lawn, and their house paint. The thing is, says the author of the post, that the house was painted brown, and all the buildings in the new community are designed in a gray-blue color scheme. As a result, HOA management required the OP to repaint the house, arguing that they were automatically a member and therefore must obey their rules.
Image credits: nexttohoa
Of course, this was not true, the OP recalls, because they had official documents, certified by county, about where the boundaries of their land plot began and ended. The OP tried to contact the HOA president to stop this wave of emails, however, they just never got back to them.
Image credits: nexttohoa
The homeowner ended up crashing the HOA meeting with all the papers claiming that their plot is not a part of the community
So after receiving yet another outrageous request, the OP just crashed the last meeting they had and explained that their house wasn't part of the neighborhood and therefore not part of the HOA. After seeing the papers, the HOA board slowed down a bit, but said that since the OP's house is so close, they still have to abide by their rules. To this, the OP simply showed an official response from the development company, confirming the boundaries of their plot.
Image credits: denisbin (not the actual photo)
Interestingly, after this very confrontation, the OP unexpectedly received an email from the HOA president, who demanded that the vegetable garden be torn down and the house repainted because it supposedly looked "rustic" and, in the president's terminology, "was bringing property values down". Of course, the OP did not comply with these requirements, although they did not want to negatively affect others, especially considering the current market.
People in the comments encouraged the author, stating that they've done everything right and giving their own examples of entitled HOA
However, the commenters were quick to dispel the Original Poster's doubts, arguing that even if their house was in complete disarray, this does not give the HOA representatives absolutely any right to dictate any orders and make demands of them. "What if I said, hey your car is parked close to mine so therefore your car is my car?" aptly notes one of the people in the comments.
It must be admitted that such arbitrariness on the part of the HOA, alas, takes place literally everywhere. For example, one commenter described how a friend of theirs not only faced HOA demands from new neighbors about the appearance of their own house and car, but they even called the police several times.
It all ended, as the commenter recalls, when their friend simply put Halloween and Christmas decorations up in the middle of summer and would park his old beat-up truck front and center. Great way to deal with such an entitled bureaucracy, by the way!
To go on with the subject, here is another story about how entitled neighbors tried to force this homeowner to build a new, bigger house on their plot. And besides, as always, we look forward to your comments on this tale, as well as stories about your own history of dealing with overly annoying HOA.
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