HOA Weaponization

We live next to a woman who used to be on the HOA Board. When she was part of the board, the HOA handed out severe judgements with minimal time to comply. They were more interested in punishing violators than resolving violations.

We have been here 6 years and worked constantly on the house but over that time she has filed countless complaints with the HOA and even called the police and fire departments on us. None of the HOA complaints ever result in an action and the police and fire department left shortly after arriving and finding a small, tended fire in a patio chiminea not the open blaze threatening residence that had been reported.

Still it continues. Worse, the woman has a group of friends who get together, drink wine and decide who they will asault next. So, when the HOA receives multiple complaints about the same issue, it appears to be a legitimate problem. Except that they always come from the same people and are always against the same people.

We have called the HOA Management company and met with HOA but they maintain that they must investigate every complaint. Their investigation requires the acused homeowner to produce HOA design approvals, pictures, measurements, etc. to prove the complaint is invalid rather than the long forgotten American value that the acused is presuumed innocent until proven guilty.

So, we get a never ending list of baseless compliants and have to spend weeks providing evidence through correspondence with the HOA to have the complaints closed. The most recent batch of four complaints included two that had HOA approval and could have easlity been verified by the HOA and rejected. One identified a bush blocking a city street sign which is the city's jurisdiction not the HOA's and could have been likewise rejected. The final was a trivial complaint about a temporary wrought iron fence around a flower bed which was dropped once we showed the HOA the offending fence. These required two weeks of daily communication, providing copies of the HOA approvals and we had to contact the city who agreed to move the sign rather than have us destroy a mature bush.

Again, these resulting in no violations but we spent weeks defending ourselves. Since there is no adverse action to the women filing these complaints they find it amusing and it will not stop. We are being punished by the process but there is no parallel process to punish people flagrantly abusing the system. At this point our only recourse is to file a civil harrassment suit which will escalate the current anamosity regardless of the outcome.

This could be easily resolved by the HOA having a consistent process focused on rejecting complaints rather than finding violations and enforcing them. Second, the HOA should track people fiing basless complaints, provide a notification that they are a nuisance after a second baseless complaint, level a fine after the third and continue increasing the fine with each subsequent complaint. It would stop.