Everyone wants something a little different when it comes to owning a home, but one thing just about everyone agrees on is that they hate their Home Owners Association.

After years of this poster’s parents being very ‘hands-off’ when running the HOA, an entitled Karen takes the helm and becomes a nightmare for the entire neighborhood.

Let’s see how it plays out for her.

Now YOU get to be HOA president!

About 25 years ago, my parents built their dream house. Although the house is now in the middle of a large metroplex, when they built it was in the fringes of countryside, with rapid development over two decades. When they bought the lot, they were the first to purchase from the developer. The developer sold to three original neighbors (my parents +2 others), all at the end of the caul-de-sac in a row.

The other streets in this plat became a large subdivision with a fancy name that would come to bear a lot of prestige. But that meant being part of an HOA.

They didn’t want that.

The developer wouldn’t sell them the land without an HOA.

“If you aren’t part of the community, you’ll need to form your own HOA and get it approved.”

If you are forced to be in an HOA, you may as well run it yourself, right?

So my dad, with a beatific grin, said he would be the HOA president of our single suburban street.

He and the two neighbors drafted the bylaws of their own HOA in strict accordance with the planned neighborhood. But they added a special provision that the President of the HOA could name a successor, instead of having the street vote on one.

Absent a majority rejection, the successor would be the President. (Essentially trying to avoid terms/campaigning, while still offering folks a way to dispute the HOA President – important for later).

So, in the winter of 1994, my father very seriously took the thick black CD binder full of laminated and hole punched instructions and pages on how to be a good HOA president – and put that binder in the very back of a cabinet and forgot about it for the next 16 years.

The homeowners of our street were not asked to pay an annual fee, and the “HOA” didn’t police number of cars, colors of front doors, or any other ridiculous standards HOAs enforce.

As it was a quiet caul-de-sac, no one did anything more egregious than the occasional reckless teenager.

Then a new family built the house across from us. It consisted of 2 children, a husband, and a SAHM we’ll call Gladys (Kravitz, for the Bewitched fans).

After 16 years of HOA bliss, this neighborhood is about to take a very unfortunate turn.

Now Gladys was a real busybody.

She would stand at the front windows of her house to watch/patrol which cars were using the caul-de-sac to turn around, when houses down the street held events/parties and were using the front of HER house to park (for literally a night), and sending noise complaints to the police about barking dogs, her other neighbor’s kids (there were 6 in a blended family), the other neighbor’s cars (they were collectors, not even repairing cars), and other ridiculously petty things.

She didn’t have a job, so ‘Safety Patrol’ became her Whole Identity. She would always hurry over to gossip whenever my mom was taking out the trash cans to the curb.

Sadly, my dad contracted a neuromuscular disease in 2005. It got bad quickly, and he was confined to a wheelchair.

I learned to drive for my hardship license in a handicap van, and we had more than the usual number of cars due to round-the-clock caregivers in the later years.

Gladys decided it was time to “offer help” to my poor mother who was slaving absurd hours just to keep creditors at bay.

Gladys very sweetly approached, expressed her sympathies for our struggles, pointed out the number of cars in our driveway, and generously – so generously! – offered to take over the President of the HOA duties, if my father would name her successor.

After being hounded the sixth or seventh time, (and Gladys hinting that if my mom was struggling so much, maybe she could send my dad to hospice and move houses to something ‘more suited.’ In fact, Gladys’ best friend was looking for a house and would love to live across the street and buy our house…) my mom snapped.

She basically told Gladys to stop asking, and that her husband was dying, and it was incredibly insensitive and rude to offer to kick us out of the neighborhood and take over just because she wanted clout to annoy the neighbors about letting kids play basketball after 6pm.

Gladys responded nastily that my dad would have to name a successor because when he died (“soon”), the HOA presidency would revert back for election.

Okay then Gladys! You’re absolutely right! My dad should name someone the HOA president as his successor after his 16-year reign.

Malicious compliance activated.

From beyond the grave, dad sticks it to the annoying neighbor one last time.

After my dad died, my mom found out she was named as the next HOA president in my dad’s will.

Dad never said anything about it while he was alive, but his humor was always understated.

Gladys was APOPLECTIC.

She tried to overturn the successor claim and ‘run against’ my mom, but nobody else on the street contested the choice.

No one (all new neighbors after 20 years) even knew we had a special single-street HOA.

And for another 9 years my mom did absolutely NOTHING as HOA president.

Unfortunately, it looks like Mom is finally going to give in.

My mom had to sell the home in 2019 very unwillingly (as it was the house my parents built together). But with the development of the city, property taxes had risen too high and priced her out. I took a week off work to fly out & help her pack, and while packing up the house we found my Dad’s OG 1994 HOA binder, bylaws and all.

And of course, Mom had to name an HOA successor…

So this time she DID comply (the malicious part was more against everyone else).

Very ceremoniously (lol not), my mom finally named Gladys the presidents of the HOA and gave her “The Binder” (which apparently has long since been digitized, and something Gladys had been reading for fun in preparation of this moment).

Why would Mom do this to her former neighbors? It sounds like the new HOA president is as bad as expected.

Apparently Gladys went rabid with the power (as her kids had gone off to college) and promptly charged everyone on the street $100 a month towards “neighborhood incidentals” (supposedly for “mowing the strip” that people just mowed themselves) and a “highly encouraged” neighborhood BBQ one Saturday a month to “address the neighborhood concerns.”

She also outlawed basketball hoops in driveways, dictated no cars could be parked on the street or in driveways but only in garages, things like ‘landscaping & holiday decor approval’ and other inane, absurd power trips.

My mom kept her NextDoor app open and watched Gladys go down in flames. Three separate households moved and dropped long hate-filled call-out posts about Gladys making their lives a misery until they couldn’t stand it anymore.

That’s 3 of 12 houses, btw. Yeah.

Gladys wrecked the single-street HOA with a quarter loss.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending once the old neighbors revolt!

Gladys got everything she wanted: my dad to name an HOA successor; my mom to name an HOA successor; for us to move away; and for her to finally be HOA President.

And now everyone absolutely hates her, and no one will pay her $100 or go to her BBQs, and before my mom finally deleted the street from her NextDoor, it seems that the rest of the street had voted to hold an election for a new HOA president.

Her tenure lasted six months.

Gladys doesn’t understand why people talk so fondly about my parents as the most ideal HOA presidents, since they “never did a thing.”

My mom is two years into her new home, and does not miss the neighborhood anymore, at all.

Alls well that ends well I suppose, but I have to wonder why Mom named her president in the first place. Unless she secretly hated her neighbors or something.

Let’s see what other people on Reddit had to say about the situation.

This person loves the approach that Dad took to the situation:

I was wondering the same things as this commenter. How was this HOA set up?

And another person who is upset with Mom handing over power to the ‘Devil.’

Even if everything worked out in the end, neighbors were upset (and some even had to move). Sometimes, petty revenge isn’t worth the suffering it causes.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.