Not Petty and the Homebreakers

If it's in your covenants, it's not petty. It's a covenant that you agreed to comply with when you moved into the association. There is a responsibility to follow the rules and to pay the assessments.
- Lallis Jackson. H.O.A. Task Farce. January 16, 2024.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDa3Rh0J4U @ T+2:48:43

You can't make a Community Association omelette without breaking a few homeowners.

Ask Val Ford whether a homeowners association can do harm, and he will respond that his destroyed his health and wealth.

Ford, 72, and his wife, Ann, are on the verge of losing their home after the Master HOA for the Southcreek Townhomes in Englewood foreclosed on them.

The HOA, which charges dues of $240 a year, has amassed $9,000 in fines and late fees against the ailing couple in a nine-year battle that started with a misplaced trash can that Ford used to collect debris from a nearby community mailbox.

“We have taken it, taken it and taken it,” Ford said. “There is no recourse as far as I can see.”

He violated rules that limited his ability to fly an American flag or display a lit cross at Christmas and Easter. When he put the wrong kind of slats on his fence, he had to rip them out.

Ford said he thinks the HOA is looking for any chance it can to punish the couple. In late 2010, before his wife’s surgery for breast cancer, the HOA won a court order allowing it to garnish their bank fund. The HOA took all the money the couple had saved for the surgery.

“Touching HOA law is always a bit dicey around here,” [ Colorado State Senator Morgan ] Carroll said of the vested interests surrounding the state’s HOA laws.

- Aldo Svaldi. H.O.A. "Horror Stories ..." Denver Post. February 12, 2012.

$ 240 / year in H.O.A. dues x 9 years = $ 2,160
vs
$ 9,000 in fines and late fees

I've seen articles leaning as if H.O.A.s are out here and they're a big monster trying to trying to take over something. The H.O.A., I promise you, does not want your house. They just want you to follow the rules. That's it.
- Lallis Jackson. H.O.A. Task Farce. October 24, 2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5k8hRj6iNc @ T+0:58:29

What's really driving this is the dynamics of these [H.O.A.] collection lawyers who are just out to generate fees and to sell these houses off as fast as they can.
- Evan McKenzie, former H.O.A. attorney and author of Privatopia (1994) and Beyond Privtopia (2011). Quoted by ABC on 20/20 in “Do Homeowner Associations Go Too Far?” Arpil 19, 2002.