What’s worse than having a bad neighbor?

Having a bad neighbor who knows exactly how to get their way.

What’s better than beating that neighbor at their own game?

Nothing.

Read on and find out how this person did it.

You need to follow the law! OK, no problem

I live in an apartment block in Europe with about 100 apartments in total.

Every year we have an election for what could be compared to an American HOA, where we elect a president and a couple of board members to manage the general expenses and daily maintenance tasks (fixing garage port, cleaning common areas, security cameras…).

While we do have a rulebook of sorts, nobody in the board has ever been too bothered by neighbors going their own way as long as there is no complaints.

OP then proceeds to describe this neighbor…

Oh do tell…

I am the president of this HOA as of today, and I have had my fair share of interesting neighbors… but this one takes the cake.

He bought a fancy Tesla, which he made an effort to flash around the neighbors (kind of condescending on how useless “old cars” are, how we live in the past…). Thing is, we don’t have a charging station in the garage, so he has to go to the gas station to fill up the battery.

Shocker – this neighbor suddenly needed the rest of the world to catch up to his convenient needs!

There was no charger when he came in, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise here. But as soon as he got the car, he started pestering the board asking about the EV-charger (we need to keep up with the modern times, you know?).

We repeatedly answered that it is in our plans, and that we would love to get him on board to help us, as he was the main interested person for the task. This should make the process much more efficient.

But he ghosted.

He never responded to the invitation to join and help (there is even a small payment for the board members!), and we are slammed with other higher priority tasks that have suddenly popped up (fire alarm upgrades, changing parts of the sprinklers…), so we really cannot use much time in EV charging, although we all agree that we have to get that going.

Now the EV-charger is paramount! HURRY!

Suddenly, I got a phone call from an electrician reading from the law that we cannot deny a EV-charger in the garage, and that he would come the following week at our earliest convenience.

I just asked him for some time to read the law and make sure we were on the same page, and in the conversation he slipped the name of the person who had ordered the charger.

Gee who do you think that could have been??

To no surprise, it was the Tesla man! (There are others with EVs in the garage, and we have a fluent communication with them about this matter. They prefer to wait than to work on the case, which is fine by me).

So, I re-read all the laws and our internal regulations to make sure that we were following everything to the letter. It turns out that the law forces a HOA to facilitate the infrastructure for EV charging (not the stations themselves) as long as there is not a force majeure reason against it (like economical reasons).

And our internal regulations state that changing essential infrastructure of the building needs to be done under the approval of the general assembly, which happens once a year.

So OP did their due diligence, and got the process moving.

I talked to our finance manager, and he argued strongly against such an expense without getting a loan to partially finance it, as it would destabilize the economy of the community. With all that, we decided to comply with the regulations fully:

Look at this detailed plan!

What a responsible president!

1- We won’t decide on any structural changes on the building until the next general assembly

2- We need a person dedicated to following the steps of finding providers, comparing offers, and presenting them first to the board and then to the rest of the neighbors. This also includes safety measurements for the upgraded infrastructure.

3- Once we have a budget, we will find bank offers for the loan that we will have to take most likely

4- We need to hire a lawyer to update the rulebook to account for the use of chargers in the garage

And here’s where the malicious part of the above compliance comes in to play.

As steps 1 and 3 are dependent on general assemblies, the process will inevitably be prolonged in time, and we know that neighbors are generally against taking up a loan that will increase their monthly costs.

So he will have to fight an uphill battle for being a pain in the butt.

Sounds like being a squeaky EV wheel isn’t always the best way to be.

The best part of this is that before all this happened, we were considering setting a temporary charging station for everyone (instead of the “ideal” solution of everyone being free to set their charger on their spot), that would not require a loan, and was planned to be done during 2022.

Now, we will have to ask the assembly if this is an interesting way forward, and abide by the response.

I feel bad for the EV owners, because when the Tesla guy invoked the rules, the game changed, and now they have to wait for all the official process instead of having a temporary, just a-ok solution while we got the rest in place.

Let’s see what folks had to say.

Ha, this person was just day-dreaming about Mr. Tesla’s reaction.

And this person had some fantastic advice, as it related to their experience in the States

While another person chimed in with some MORE helpful advice.

Look, people were coming out of the woodwork with helpful tips!

Oh nooo we’ll have to discuss that for months, I’m sorry.