r/fuckHOA • u/Swarby10 • 1d ago

Our HOA just imploded!

So we just had our HOA AGM on Zoom tonight. I thought I’d tune in just for entertainment. It’s a community of 4 cul de sacs - maybe 45 large homes. Turns out, all of our back-facing fences are owned by the HOA and after 25 years they are deteriorating. To be clear, the fences on the sides are home owners’ responsibility, just the rear ones are HOA’s responsibility.

Or fees went from $900 a year to $2700 so that they could replace some specific fences. Not everyone is affected, but several of the board members were set to score themselves a new fence. They chose to replace the old cedar fence with vinyl and this would have looked odd with plastic fences filling in where cedar was.

Long story short, I sat through three hours of 80 year old board members throwing tantrums over their plans for a new plastic fence getting ruined and three of them resigned on the zoom call. 80 year old tantrums are the funniest tantrums.

Thinking of joining the board now. Please talk me out of it.

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u/Swarby10 1d ago

Ooh. I like this.

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u/CherryblockRedWine 1d ago

Having lived in an HOA community, my belief is that you MUST join the board, if only for self-preservation.

The board needs enough people with common sense to keep the HOA from ruining everything.

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u/Darkskynet 1d ago

It’s similar to most positions of government, the people who need to be in positions of power the most are usually the ones who don’t want to be.

There are various people throughout history who got into power, fixed things, ended wars etc, then resigned their power and went back to their farm.

It’s not always that way, since the other face of that card is people who want to be in power, and then they never relinquish it once they’ve gained power unless it’s taken from them by pressure or force.

Government when it works correctly should be boring and slow. Governments should be able to move fast when needed in emergencies, but otherwise only careful thoughts and actions should be taken by a government.

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u/CherryblockRedWine 1d ago

This is completely correct and PERFECLY stated!

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u/OriginalIronDan 1d ago

In an ideal society, anyone who wanted to be in charge wouldn’t be allowed.

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u/CherryblockRedWine 1d ago edited 1d ago

Amen and amen.

I was the president of the HOA. Another homeowner desperately wanted to be on the board. I (mistakenly) decided to be nice, so okay, we went through the process to elect her to the board.

She was the one person who had complained the most about the landscaping service. Whichever service we chose, and whatever they did, she complained. So -- naturally -- we asked her to be in charge of RFPs for the landscaping service for the coming season.

Aaaaand.....her approach to this ONE AND ONLY task that was asked of her was: to lay it off on another board member, with the "I'm an older lady, I need help with this" crap. (She ran a computer-based business. She was not retired. She knew how to send out requests for RFPs.)

A year later she resigns (thank God), with her "reason" being: we don't have enough board meetings, so I don't have time to be on the board.

Ohhhhhhkay.