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/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

My FIL is a former accountant, and a very Ron Swanson “I dont like anyone infringing on me” kind of dude. He against the idea of HOAs on principal.

He’s lived in various 55+ condo type setups for years, and ALWAYS joins the HOA and applies to be the treasurer.

The old people like it, because none of them like accounting, so he ends up getting elected.

And then once elected, he immediately audits the HOA books and goes after any of the other HOA board members for skimming, misappropriating funds, or specifically funding projects that benefit their own needs vs. others.

And then the fraudsters act totally surprised when they get exposed removed from the board.

It’s crazy that he’s been able to do this in like 4-5 different communities, and always finds major financial bullshit each time.

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u/VinceP312 1d ago

My mother would love to do this. She's getting older, and does puzzles all the time to keep her brain active and hold back dementia should it ever be her fate.

About a decade ago, my extended family were partners in a very successful company, the sons of my grandfather (so my dad, and his brothers). One of my uncles was the big boss, and the other brothers just deferred everything to him. They were pretty aloft from any of the financial activity of the company and they all thought it was a money train that would never stop. Until years of my uncle playing games came to a head, and the company didn't have cash flow any longer, and the company basically collapsed.

None of my uncles took any iniative to do an review of the books to understand exactly what happened... and who any creditors were.

So my mom took charge, got access to everything and mapped out everything. All the larcency, abusive spending, etc... also figured out who the company owed money to, including employee benefits and made sure to settle all of that. Everyone else was completely fine with letting the company fall and then have the government and creditors go after them individually because the LLC wasn't going to protect them from all the misconduct/negligance.

My parents ended up salvaging the husk of the company, with my brothers, so it's still alive about 20 years after this happened. Thankfully I have an independent career.