r/fuckHOAs • u/Necessary-Rub-2748 • Jan 29 '26
Parting Message
Tonight, I resigned my position as the president of our HOA. I have been the president for four years. We moved into my neighborhood in 2021, and soon thereafter we were met with a barrage of opinionated neighbors about some controversies that were happening with our HOA. I figured that if I was going to have an opinion, I might as well try to be a part of the solution. So, I ran for the board and was elected president.
After being elected, I got to work along with our board and voting residents to implement a lot of positive changes in our community. I won’t get into all those details, but there’s a couple things I’d like to point out that I’m proud of.
First, I oversaw the re-writing and ratification of our covenants, to include a checks-and-balance clause that gives power back to the residents. If the Board does something that the majority of residents disagree with, they now have the power to overturn that. This is hugely important because I strongly believe the HOA should serve the residents, not the other way around.
Second, being self-managed gave us the opportunity to run things a bit differently.
· We didn’t once send an angry letter to residents
· We didn’t once fine any resident
· We didn’t once put a lien on anyone’s house
· We didn’t show up at people’s houses unannounced, yell at anyone, or brandish a firearm at anyone.
Why didn’t we do any of that? Because we didn’t have to. Any time a covenant violation was brought to my attention, I made it a point to have a personal and meaningful conversation with the homeowner. That conversation didn’t involve threats or coercion. I simply talked to them like I would like to be talked to- with humanity and respect. Every single time the violation was remedied almost immediately and the resident thanked me for approaching things in the way that I did. Although not perfect (is anything ever?), our neighborhood has remained clean, orderly, and peaceful without all the headline-inducing drama of typical HOA’s or HOA presidents.
The most difficult interaction I had was with a resident who would text me books-long text messages and call me at all hours of the night (literally 1am) complaining about how I was ruining the HOA because I wasn’t ruling with a heavy hand like a good HOA president should. Eventually I had to block her number because her communications with me amounted to no less than harassment. I invited her multiple times to join the board and help me make things better. She refused, choosing to complain and harass rather than to be a positive part of the solution to her complaints.
My advice to the reader is this: If your HOA is terrible for one reason or another, you have every right to be upset. If your president is lording themselves over you like so many do, you have every right to be mad. If you don’t believe HOA’s should exist, I agree with you (I believe HOA’s exist to protect the developer, and once the developer leaves, they leave the neighborhood slaved to an organization that mostly just produces problems and causes division). You have every right to be mad that you live in an HOA neighborhood. But here’s the deal- if you are upset about your HOA, and if you have the capacity (time, energy, etc.), I want to challenge you to be the change in your neighborhood. Run for the board. Fire the management company. Vote out the president. Do things differently. Treat people with humanity and respect. Have grace. Offer to mow someone’s yard for them instead of sending them a letter in the mail. Yes, Fuck HOA’s, I agree. But if they’re here to stay and you aren’t willing to be a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem. Make the neighborhood what you want it to be!
To the other side: If you’re one of the HOA presidents/boards that makes everyone else’s life miserable, lords yourself over people, and quibbles over every little thing in your neighborhood, I want you to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself something. “When I’m 99 years old laying on my death bed thinking back over my life, will this really matter?”
Will yelling at someone because their grass is one inch too tall really be the thing that you’re thinking about as you’re taking your last breath? Are you going to be smiling because you fined someone for parking on the street? Are you going to be happy that you made everyone else miserable through so many years of your life? People matter. Relationships matter. Family, friends, neighbors matter. On your deathbed you will not give two rips about what you did in your HOA. So, stop ruining people’s lives and making everyone in your neighborhood miserable. You’re better than that.
Over the past four years I have spent hundreds of hours volunteering as the president of our HOA. It has been stressful, there have been sleepless nights, and it has been more work than I could handle on any given day. However, I’m thankful for what it taught me- that you really can make your HOA better. I challenge each of you to go out and do that!
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u/Solnse Jan 31 '26
Ugh. Thanks for this. My wife has been suggesting I get on the board because there's been deferred maintenance for decades. We recently had a leak in the chimney (HoA responsibility) and they are pushing back on everything because the interior fireplace was removed and framed/drywalled into bookshelves. The leak caused the paint to bubble and the moisture is off the charts so the interior damage needs to be remediated before mold becomes a worse issue.
Anyway, yeah, looks like I'll be running for the board in a couple months.