America’s Homeowners’ Associations, or HOAs, are designed to promote community well-being and keepneighborhoodsorderly and enjoyable. But in practice, their overly strict rules often go to absurd extremes, earning them a reputation so notorious it’s recognized far beyond the U.S.
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HOA in California tried to limit lights and decorations to December 1st through December 31st. Our multi-ethnic, multi-religious complex went balls to the wall - Hanukkah, Halloween/Dia de los Muertos, Eid, Easter, Holi, Solstice…lights everywhere, people were getting inflatables, I put a light-up tinsel polar bear on my roof. It was really awesome. I’ve never been so proud to be part of the melting pot.
I read of a fam who was mad the HOA would not approve their preferred color of house paint. Apparently there were 5 or 6 approved colors. Period. So they painted the house striped in all the approved colors.
I pressed trespassing charges. I had a compost bin against the house. The only way the Karen in charge of the HOA could have see it was to go onto my property. She said something about having an unauthorized structure. What are you talking about, Karen? Against the back of your house. You mean the 4 pallets I screwed together? Yes, take it down immediately. Eff of, Karen. She sent me an “official” letter which I took to a lawyer. So we sent a cop to her place to give her a citation for trespassing. Got her name in the local paper (back when local newspapers were a thing) for being anti environment because she was against compost bins, she rather see it all in landfills. Things like that. She ended up backing off.
Not exactly revenge, but we got a dinger notice about a few bald spots in our lawn. The spots we get always fill themselves in once the summer temps go up enough so I didn’t worry about it. What I did do, because it was such a petty complaint, was to go to the HOA-maintained clubhouse and took pictures of its many bald spots….the kind that don’t fill themselves in (different grass, different lighting, etc). I sent the photos in an email telling them that I’d fix mine when they fix theirs (knowing full well that my grass would be all filled in within a month). All HOAs need to have a petty meter. Sigh.
I was told I couldn’t store my sawhorses on my balcony. I bought a used coffee table, used said sawhorses when cutting off the legs, and placed the legless table on top of the sawhorses. Now they’re a “table” that doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing and draws more attention than two stacked sawhorses. Best $10 I’ve spent in a while.
Not me, but my friend lives in an HOA and they have all kinds of weird rules. All cars must be in the garage unless being loaded or unloaded and no cars in the yard or parked in the street which means that if you have two cars you can’t have anymore visitors than can park in the driveway. Forget big family holidays or Super Bowl parties. She is a biker with her husband and her having their own Goldwing motorcycle. She decided to put their rules to a challenge and invited everyone she knew from their riding club to come over for a cook out pool party and advised them all to ride their bikes for parking space. The HOA rules specifically said cars, not pickup trucks or motorcycles or vans or motorhomes for that matter. It was always assumed that the intent was to include all types of motorized vehicles, but not specifically ever defined as such. Sure enough, 20 motorcycles ended up parked in the driveway and in the yard and the HOA had a fricken fit. They tried to send her a citation and a fine. The whole thing ended up in court and dismissed. Apparently the judge said something to the effect that the language is specific about cars and not ambiguous enough or broadly defined as motorized vehicles to be a violation. I don’t know if the rules were ever changed, but the HOA ended up paying for her lawyer and any fees associated.
My parents lived in an HOA area. The HOA was called the Art Jury then, and had a lot of power respecting things like roofing materials, exterior finishes, paint colours and the like. The area was a sort of “Spanish colonial” looking area (red clay tiled roofs and stucco’d houses painted white, cream, pale gold, pale tan and the like).A neighbour of theirs wanted to paint the exterior of his house a pale blue. He submitted his colour and was turned down. He had a careful read of the rules and discovered that he could resubmit up to three colour chips, but the Art Jury, having refused him once, was legally obliged to select one of the three resubmitted colours. So he submitted a black and a vivid purple chip, along with a pale blue chip almost identical to the one the jury had rejected. The jury had little choice but to okay the pale blue.
A group of us ran as a slate of officers and got ourselves elected to the board.Our board had three officers and all were elected annually and the same group had been on the board for several years. They had a sweetheart deal with a management company and too much money was being spent on management fees and the amenity infrastructure was not being maintained properly. For three months prior to our January meeting we very quietly canvassed the neighborhood gathering support as well as proxies and at the January meeting well over 100 homeowners showed up and we took over the board. We immediately initiated an audit and we were able to secure the return of some funds from the management company and then terminated their contract for cause.People often forget that the HOA is the homeowners and not some foreign entity. If taking control back into the citizens hands is revenge then I suppose we got revenge.
Our hoa “Karen” kept b***hing about me parking in a firelane. No one else cares and in no way was it blocking access to a fire hydrant or any houses.I rented a used fire truck and parked in said fire lane.“Karen” lost her mind. Even the police laughed…where else does a fire truck park!
Not really savage, but entertaining, to me at least.Got into an argument with the HOA president over some flowers my wife and I had planted - they said I needed the board’s permission to plant flowers, per the CC&Rs. I got my copy of the CC&Rs and showed them where it said I had to secure their permission to plant trees or large shrubs. I asked if annuals were trees? No? How about large shrubs? No? Get off my 1/114th undivided interest in the lawn.Then, I studied the CC&Rs, and noticed that, per the rules, people were not permitted to ride bicycles, tricycles, skates, skateboards or scooters around the grounds.Nothing about unicycles. So I went to my folks place, and got my old unicycle out of the garage and rode it all over the common areas for a couple of months until we sold/moved. I believe this could be categorized as malicious compliance.Next place, no HOA - mostly good, but…there were a couple of things where an HOA would’ve been nice there. But that’s another story.
My parents got a nasty letter one year about how chickens couldn’t live in our yard. We keep it trimmed, it’s a nice suburban lawn. My parents bought plastic chicken and stuck them in the lawn
My HOA had sent me a few complaints about a brick tree well I have on my property that had a few bricks fall out, 4 or 5. I don’t check my physical mail often because I opt for most everything digital and wasn’t getting email notifications of the violations, so it escalated to the point where a lawsuit action was FedExed to my door with signature requirements.They hassle me quite often for ridiculously small things and I was already in a state of displeasure with them.So, to assuage the complaints, I went out and bought some mortar, slapped as much as I could on with my hands, and just put the bricks on well enough that they wouldn’t fall out of place. It looks like melted ice cream.This stopped the lawsuit action and I now have something that makes me giggle everytime I come home and see it.
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Not exactly an HOA, but our small town city council had functionally become the same thing as one of the nightmare HOAs you hear about all the time today.We were at war with the council for about 18 different conflicts our family were having with the town council in an official capacity and interpersonal drama with the councilmen themselves.We owned a historically protected 100 year old automobile service station in the center of town. We took a wooden fence panel, cut and painted it to look like SpongeBob, gave him some arms and hands, positioned the arms and hands to be flying double middle fingers and planted him on the roof of the old gas station. We told the town council that our beautiful modern art piece would only come down of they repealed the subjective “lawn beauty” ordinance they had passed to selectively run people out of town who they didn’t like.
Our fence contractor accidentally built our fence 6 inches over an electrical easement for 4 feet of a length of our fence. Utility company approved it. HOA denied it. I had the fence company come out and move the fence the next week, but since the HOA was such a pain about a small 6 inches, I strung them along in a fake legal battle for 14 months (too many details to explain but it’s funny) then eventually sent them a letter with the date of the fence construction and they were piiiiiissed to find out they were looped into 14 months of me just wasting their time.
Not pay my $20 (yes only $20) a year dues because the HOA board leader was rude. We never signed a contract, same as about half our neighbors. So they can’t force any of us. It’s “requested.” I got the notice, filled out a check, and was going to mail it that following Monday.Well, I joined a social page for our neighborhood over the weekend, and posted a welcome message telling everyone a bit about us, because we are the newest neighbors. Within the hour, the HOA leader commented, introduced herself with one sentence, then wrote half a paragraph asking if we received the request for the annual dues (8 weeks after we moved in) and asking for my address to send us a request, since she didn’t recognize my name, and she fills out all envelopes personally, so she’s sure we didn’t get the request. So please, PM the address so she can send it ASAP.I thought asking for money was a pretty s**t welcome. So I tore up the check I had written out.
The best revenge I heard of was about a guy who was forced out of a neighborhood for keeping homing pigeons. He sold, but didn’t take the pigeons with him. So the pigeons’ descendants continue to torment the neighborhood to this day.
Nothing direct or intentional, but when I sold a condo because I was fed up with the HOA, I ended up selling to a man from Albania who was one of the biggest jerks I have even met. In any setting, he strove to be the Alpha Male and treated women like servants. I was delighted to close the sale knowing that he would never give in to HOA rules and would drive them crazy.
Our apartment building had a Body Corp which employed a Building Manager. Half of the apartments were Serviced Appts and the BM was the SA franchisee.The lazy sht told his staff not to deal with the residents and so it was hard to get him to do anything. Worse, he was a voting member of the BC via the proxy votes for the SAs.One day, I went down to work and found he’d stashed beds in the fire escape. He was on duty at reception and I asked him to get them shifted as it was a fire hazard. He asked what I was going to do about it and I told him he could be done for Manslaughter if there was a fire and people got trapped.As the saying goes, “if you talk to a pig, it just makes the pig angry”, so I decided to fix via the back door. I went to the office where I was working for the Council’s internal property department at the time. As I walked in, I saw one of the property managers, so I hit him up for advice. He said to ring the Fire Service and file a complaint; my colleague would call his colleagues at Building Control and someone would be round ASAP to “deal” to the BM.When I got back in the evening, he’d had a visit from both the Fire Service and Building Control and the mattresses were gone! He kept the common areas much tidier afterwards .. though he was still a lazy, rude sht. Unfortunately, we didn’t get him purged from BC committees despite them being told and getting a warning from both Building Control and the Red Boys.
I wouldn’t call it tyranical HOA actions but in my old neighborhood a guy refused to cut his lawn. It got so bad the city got involved and between the hoa and the city they told the guy that if he didn’t cut it they would do it and bill him.Mowers showed up with a couple of cops for protection. Guy took a shot at the mowers and the cops.Guy ended up [taking his own life] and burning down his house.
I was respectful at all times, and paid my dues ahead of the due date - every time.Hahaha those fkin idiots will never figure out how much I hate them.
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