Life Plan Derailed for Years

This story isn't entirely new for DORA, as I've submitted complaints and such over the past few years, but I wanted to share it again in this form. We are currently in litigation with the HOA, after 4 years of non-cooperation to build a house on a vacant lot we own, so it is still unresolved.

Years ago, the now wife and I were planning a future move to a ski town from the city, and in 2015 I bought the vacant lot in an HOA, as the HOA's rules seemed to be quite reasonable as written. In 2018 we were married on the property, and planned to make it our future permanent home.

In April 2019, we contacted the HOA with a preliminary report of what we wanted to build, questions about building rules that were unclear from the HOA documents, and also to request a site visit with the HOA board a couple months from that point. As we are starting discovery, it appears that the property manager only forwarded the email to the HOA's architect, and didn't even bother sending it to the board until July of 2019, so we were mostly ignored for 4 months. In August 2019, we met with 2 board members, including our neighbor who had just joined the board, to go through our proposed build, with the primary goal to confirm the location of the house, as the lot has a limited area at the front of the lot where it is reasonable to build, as the middle/back of the lot is aspen grove, is sloped, and also has underlying shale close to the surface. During the site visit, it was confirmed that it was fine to locate the house right up to the front setback, but one board member (self proclaimed "I wrote the rules and know them better than anyone else") became aggressive when we said we were planning to use the full 35 feet of height allowed by the rules without a variance, claiming that the height limit was only 30 feet. We explained that the county had a different height rule, with a different measurement metric, that was 30 meet, but the HOA's height rule was indeed written as 35 feet, but were just met with agitation. We confirmed in a follow up email that the location at the front setback was fine, and proceeded with our preliminary plans based on this feedback. The HOA also said they would "expedite" our plans, given the 4 months delay from April to August.

In November 2019, we submitted preliminary plans, and only days afterwards the HOA sent out proposed changes to the building rules that dropped their height limit from 35 to 30 feet. We waited the 45 days that the covenants allow for the HOA to respond, and since we did not receive a response on our preliminary plans, emailed the HOA that we would continue to final plans based on our preliminary plans to try to be ready to build in spring 2020. We received aggressive responses from the HOA that the 45 day rule in the covenants did not apply to preliminary plans, and that our preliminary plans were incomplete because they did not include everything needed for final plans. Days later, they changed the height rule from 35 to 30 feet (despite the covenants requiring "uniform rules and procedures" for architectural control), and told us we needed a variance for our height after they retroactively changed the rules. A friend who is an attorney attempted to help us out, and instead of continuing work on our final plans, we spend the next 6 months going around in circles with the HOA before we realized they would not cooperate at all. In March 2020, our attorney was in a call with their attorney and the same board member who insisted the height rule was 30 instead of 35 feet, at which point the story changed that the height was not the issue, but the house location, and that it would block our neighbor's view of the mountain. I did a basic view analysis, and sent it to our neighbor (on the board), who said it looked fine to him, and he forwarded it to the board. For the next 3 years, the HOA and their attorney insisted that the view analysis I provided was inaccurate, and that our house would block our neighbor's view, without providing even so much as a picture as any sort of evidence or analysis. We received various arbitrary statements that we could drop the height to 30 feet, or move the house back 15 or 20 or 30 feet, but that would only increase the chances of approval.

By July 2020, we realized it was futile to try to get any sort of answers from the HOA, and so continued with our plans. Since we had delayed from January, people were no longer available to work on them (COVID didn't help), so instead of a few months to get the final plans done, it took about a year. I also made various information requests in accordance to CCIOA, and the HOA provided some information, but refused to provide much of the information, such as internal communications related to their actions with our preliminary plans. Some of the most important information I requested in 2020 and 2021 still has not been provided.

In August 2021, we submitted final plans. We received a notice of rejection from the HOA's attorney, based on that our plans were incomplete among other things. We were missing two minor details on the site plan (construction boundary, and that a small retaining wall would be rock), so I sent over these updates. At the end of October, we received a final rejection of our plans, claiming that we failed to request a height variance for the rule that was retroactively changed after we started the plan process, the impact to the neighbor, and other things, and failed to move the house or drop the height. We did drop the height slightly, and also dug it in about 3 feet further to try to mitigate the board's concerns, but they didn't even acknowledge that we made changes until early 2023. We also explained that the changes they demanded would mean we would have to completely redesign the house as far as we were concerned, and were unwarranted given that we had zero variances per the rules when we started in 2019, and had even met with the HOA before submitting plans to confirm the location and height, but they just continued to stonewall us.

In May 2022, we had a law firm send a demand letter, and also information requests, many of which were simply repeats of the refused information requests from 2020 and 2021. Despite giving the HOA's attorney a 2 week extension on the information requests beyond the 30 days allowed by CCIOA, we did not receive any of the information on time, and much was again refused. Our attorney asked for justification for the refusal, and was ignored. We still have unfilled information requests, some more than 3 years after we first formally requested information. In addition, the HOA has failed to hold board member elections in 2021, 2022, and 2023 in accordance to the bylaws. I ran for the board in 2022, since I had people tell me I should try to get in and fix things, and was one of 7 people running for 7 open positions- all positions were expiring. The HOA board failed to have a community election, reelected themselves, told me they would not elect me, and instead appointed someone else a month or two later. They did talk to me directly for the first time in 2 years (from June 2020 to June 2022 I communicated with the HOA's attorney, and the property manager, but the board itself never responded directly), and said they would contact me quickly and try to work things out. It took 1.5 months before they even contacted me, we met with a new board member on the property a bit later, and were told we could resubmit plans to the new board. After taking some time to get our plans from 2021 back to resubmit (the architect kept them instead of the HOA, despite the covenants only allowing "limited use" of an architect), we resubmitted plans the beginning of November 2022. We again waited the 45 days per the covenants, and didn't have a response. Finally, in January 2023, we got a short letter saying they were "working diligently" on our plans, but needed to have an independent view analysis done. This view analysis we were told months earlier in June 2022 was started and would take a month or two to complete, but still hadn't started. Finally, in March 2023, 3 years after we provided our view analysis, the new view analysis came back, and confirmed the one I provided in 2020 as accurate.

At this point, we were expecting to simply receive an approval note, but no, the HOA and attorney continued to do everything it could to prevent us from using our lot. They changed the building rules once again in March 2023, increasing the deposit from $2000 to $8000, and also changed the deposit rules that instead of a deposit to get a building permit, with no time limit from approval to start of build, that required the deposit immediately and loss of the deposit after 12 months. They initially tried to get me to agree to a settlement statement that forced the new rules retroactively, and also required me to sign away many of my rights as a property owner, including the right to information requests as a requirement for plan approval. When my attorney sent back what I would want in the settlement agreement, they flat out refused it all. They then tried to send me an "approval letter", which was in actuality a signature required legal document that again forced the $8k deposit, and said I would lose the deposit and all plans approval if building wasn't started in 12 months. Due to the excessive, 3+ year delay from the HOA, building costs have roughly doubled as well as interest rates (possibly increasing our costs by $1 million), so we are not currently in a position to build like we were in 2019-2020, and we have made this known to the HOA. These new, retroactive rules would effectively set us back to having nothing in 12 months, and be out $8k, so it became clear they still would not cooperate reasonably, so we filed a court complaint, which is just getting going now.

Overall, the HOA failed to follow it's own rules, tried to retroactively force new rules on us more than once after we submitted plans, has delayed us 3+ years, which threw our overall life planning into disarray. We still moved in 2021, but instead of having a place to move to, had to quickly find housing in a terrible, COVID market, with the stressful decision of whether to rent temporarily and hope the HOA would cooperate, or overpay for one of the few places on the market where we could live for the medium term. Luckily, we decided we could not trust the HOA to work with us, and managed to buy something that we could live in for a while. When we started the process in 2019, we were married less than a year and thinking about a family on our wedding property, and now, still without an approval of our plans, have a 3 year old and passed our 5 year wedding anniversary. The HOA has also refused to fully provide information requests per CCIOA, some of which are more than 3 years outstanding at this point. The HOA has also failed to hold elections for the past 3 years, and has instead self-elected, despite this being included in our court complaint. Instead of happy memories of our wedding on our property, it is now just something that depresses us, and if building costs don't come down, we may never be able to afford to build at this point due to the excessive delay from the HOA.

The state of Colorado needs to do some serious cracking down on HOA's, as they can have enormous negative impacts on citizens. We have heard many other horror stories from other people, from this HOA as well as other HOA's, including people who have moved from their longtime homes due to harassment from the HOA. The fact that citizens have zero recourse other than an expensive lawsuit to hold HOA's accountable is simply unacceptable, full enforcement of CCIOA needs to be handled by the state, otherwise HOA's will simply do whatever they want knowing that the majority of people have no resources to fight them in court. Fines and punishments also need to increase drastically, and more transparency required. Unless something qualifies for an executive session, all emails, texts, etc from HOA boards, everything should be required to be provided to members. In addition, instead of only an option to provide communications with an attorney to the community after a matter is concluded, HOA's should be fully required to provide all communications and such with the HOA's attorney to the members, so that members can see what their money is spent on. For litigation, it can be delayed until the litigation is concluded, but should be required for anything that has concluded. HOA's currently in a way have more power than local governments, as they cannot be held accountable for their actions through reasonable means, and have the ability to absolutely destroy the quality of life of the citizens who live in HOA's. I realize that most HOA's do not act in this way (I was on and off an HOA board for a condo complex several years ago, so know how one should operate), but the ones that do harass, discriminate, and negatively impact their members need to be forcefully held accountable by the state. Otherwise many, many Colorado citizens all over the state will continue to suffer needlessly because their government has failed to take action against these HOA's that are destroying their lives.